(Translated from the post in Japanese on October 10, 2019)
Hello, it’s KA-TSU.
Shortly before the release of the GR III, I wrote an article on high ISO noise, but it was too dark to test the low light performance of the GR III then. It was also too early in the year to shoot the “center area of the Milky Way Galaxy (dense Milky Way)” that many people love in winter.
After that, the spring passed, and even in the summer, all the shooting conditions- my holiday, the weather, and the moon age- were not met. Oh no, I haven’t taken this year's dense Milky Way... This year, astrophotographers all over Japan seem to be struggling with the weather.
In the beginning of autumn, the center of Milky Way Galaxy appears only early in the evening. You also have to make sure the moon is not there.
On the night of September 27 (Fri), when these conditions were barely met, in Norikura-Tatamidaira area, my usual place, I managed to photograph it through a gap of clouds for only about 20 minutes. Please see the same image as the top in a little larger scale.
ISO3200, F2.8, 20sec, WB 4000K, focus ∞, Shake Reduction OFF, Low-Pass Selector Strong, tone curve adjusted in RAW development in post production
Let us enlarge the area around the Milky Way and the signboard at the lower left of the image to see in detail.
The first image is a part of the Milky Way, where the original image is cropped by about 1/2 and resized to a postable size. The second image is a 100% crop of the signboard you see at the lower left.
Even though some adjustments have been made in my astro-oriented RAW development, the first one displays the center of the Milky Way clearly and how the dark skin of the mountains looks. In the second, cropped image of the lower left, the letters on the signboard are readable.
In the original image, the light in the close view including the people on the terrace (actually it was too dark to see their faces) is brighter than the landscape but is not overexposed. You can tell that the GR III has a sufficiently wide dynamic range.
In the picture above, there are clouds covering the Milky Way, but please see the image below taken when, for a short period, there were no clouds. Due to the difference in location, the center of the Milky Way is partly hidden behind the mountain, compared to the photo above.
ISO3200, F2.8, 20sec, WB 4000K, focus ∞, Shake Reduction OFF, Low-Pass Selector Strong, tone curve adjusted in RAW development in post production
The image is clearer because there were no more complicated light sources.
The shutter speed was a little longer, 30 seconds, as I moved to a slightly darker spot.
It turns out that the GR III has a sufficiently high ISO performance as a camera with an APS-C sensor. The colors are well reproduced, too. I can no longer return to the GR II when taking starry sky photos!
During this season, the Milky Way sets into the west horizon as it gets late. Here is another example. It was in early September, though.
With wide conversion lens (21mm equivalent), ISO3200, F2.8, 20sec, WB 4200K, Focus ∞, Shake Reduction OFF, Low-Pass Selector Strong, tone curve adjusted in RAW development in post production
In this example, the wide conversion lens is attached, but the images at the four corners are sharp- GR quality.
Some of you might think the focal length of 28mm equivalent is a little too narrow for astrophotography. In such a case, I would recommend you to use the wide conversion lens.
Just before the morning twilight, the summer constellations set. On the other side of the sky, the winter constellations rise. This looks like the photo in my article published in late October last year.
You can take landscape photos with a starry sky all year round as long as you have a dark place to shoot. I hope to enjoy shooting the winter constellations between now and spring and save the dense Milky Way for the next year.
（KA-TSU）
