5 replies to this topic

[drmikevt]

I don't see a dedicated camera phone forum so I'll try here.  

 

I'm going on vacation to a very dark place (Bonaire) and will only be taking my iPhone 15 Pro Max and a tripod, but I've seen some really nice images from that set up.  Looking around on the App Store, there are a number of apps that will help set exposure time, ISO, etc,  and help run your session.  Anyone have experience with this - and maybe even a favorite?

 

Thanks!

[Lead_Weight]

The only thing I know about an iPhone is they are hardware exposure limited. Meaning even with apps, they're faking longer exposures by combining shorter exposures to overcome the hardware stop on exposure time. So it might be worth using a camera app like Halide over a dedicated dark sky photo app so that you can control focus and shoot in RAW format. Then use proper processing tools to combine those images yourself.

[drmikevt]

Thanks for turning me on to that app - seems very useful

[pfile]

there is this app called "milkycam" that is super janky and kind of hard to use, but it's an integrating camera app for astrophotography. i've used it a couple of times and it does work but it's kind of a mess. might be worth a look.

[drmikevt]

Thanks, I saw it and decided to try others - looked janky like you said, and its a terrible name

 

Since it hasn't been mentioned, I'll mention the pretty amazing app, PhotoPills.  I'm sure some folks reading this are familiar.  It has a number of tools for planning sessions around the sun or moon, star trail planner helpers, and others related to night photography but the coolest thing is an AR (augmented reality) view of the paths of the planets, sun, moon and some major stars, so that you can plan images by standing in a spot, pointing your phone's camera - say, between 2 trees or at a mountain and the app will rotate the sky so that you can see exactly when the moon will be between the trees or exactly above the peak of the mountain, or whatever.  The effect is a lot different than using a planetarium app and super useful. 

 

Photopills and Halide, in combo, gives everything you'd need to plan and take good iPhone astrophotos, I think.  

[airscottdenning]

AstroShader is amazing. As LeadWeight says, it's "faking long exposures" by stacking, which is of course just what we do with most DSO imaging. 

 

But the implementation is great. You can control focus, set sub exposure length and overall exposure, choose which lens, and color balance. Then you set a delay and let it grab a sequence. It aligns and stacks in the phone. 

 

I have a very old phone (11 Pro) but it works quite well even still. You can get fantastic MW images on the 15 Pro Max.