of photos that I want to someday take,

and one of them looks a lot like this.

There's a large sprawling valley

and snow-covered mountaintops,

but of course the main focus of this photo

is the beautiful Milky Way,

cutting straight through the center of the sky.

So I hit up the person who took all of those photos

to teach me how they do it.

Welcome back to "Full Frame," buds.

Becca's first astrophoto.

On not just a DSLR or mirrorless either.

- All right, Becca.

So really regardless of what you're shooting with,

you have to know where to go and when to go

to get the perfect shot of the stars.

(upbeat music)

my name's Bettymaya Foott.

I am the Director of Engagement

for the International Dark Sky Association

and an astrophotographer.

Basically you want to avoid light pollution

that can be caused by a number of things.

Skyglow is light scattered in the atmosphere

from a nearby city or town,

obscuring the view of the night sky.

Glare is light that's entering your field of view

at shallow angles that causes visual discomfort.

Light trespass is light from another property

trespassing onto your property or into your home.

At the International Dark sky Association,

we work to protect the night from artificial light.

So a great place to go to start to look for a dark place

is our International Dark Sky Places program,

but there are a lot of other places around the world

that are still great to shoot. One of my favorite maps

to look at online is lightpollutionmap.info.

So when you've found your place to shoot,

you're gonna wanna take a look at the moon cycle

and figure out where the moon is in its phase

before you go out to shoot.

If you're looking for that really, really dark sky,

you're gonna wanna to go before the moon rises

or after the moon sets or during a new moon period.

It's also really great to use crescent moons

to light up your foreground as well

while not blocking out too much of the night sky,

and brighter moons are really good at brightening up

your foreground completely and it almost looks

like daytime with stars.

You're also gonna want to check the weather.

You want a good clear night with no clouds

in order to see the most amount of stars.

- [Becca] Bettymaya and I decided

that we'd meet in Ridgeway, Colorado,

which is right near Top of the Pines Recreation Area.

It happens to be the most recently designated

Dark Sky park in the US.

So I called in some filming friends and away we went.

- [Pilot] Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to be the first

to welcome you to Denver, where the local time is 1:34 PM.

- [Becca] And there was one more expert I enlisted

to help us take the perfect photo of the night sky.

Give us another clap.

- Good morning.

My name is Val Szwarc and welcome

to the San Juan Mountains outside of Ridgeway, Colorado.

(upbeat music)

I'm a retired meteorologist.

I used to work for NOAA in Boulder

and I'm the local dark sky point of contact

for Ridgeway, Colorado and Top of the Pines.

- Whoop.

I'm a little concerned about how cold we're gonna be.

Both Val and Bettymaya stressed the importance

of scouting your location during the day,

and making sure you will have nighttime access.

So our local guide Val led us up to Top of the Pines

to get a lay of the land.

- [Bettymaya] This is our big break, Val.

- This is such a nice open horizon.

- So I'm looking for just something intriguing

that will draw your eye into the foreground.

And you're also noticing kind of any leading lines

or any color blocks or different parts of the landscape

that are gonna draw your eye to a particular

part of the photo.

- After a whole bunch of scouting and truthfully

getting most things wrong.

And the Milky Way comes out of the west this time of year?

- No, it comes out of the east.

It's gonna be probably right over here like this.

The brightest part of the Milky Way

is gonna to be below the horizon, actually.

- [Becca] We agreed upon a spot, did our last checks

of where the Milky Way and major constellation would be

before heading home to prepare our gear.

(upbeat music)

Bettymaya brought along the Canon 5D mark IV

with a Sigma 14 millimeter F1.8

and also a Canon 6D with a Rokinon 24 millimeter F1.4.

You might notice that the lenses she brought

are both wide and they stop down to at least an F1.8.

- When you shoot with a wider lens,

you can expose for a longer amount of time

before you notice the trailing in the stars.

- I see.

I decided to bring along the Canon 5D mark IV

with a Canon 24 millimeter F1.4, and then of course,

the Pixel 6 Pro and the iPhone 13 Pro.

And we took our last few moments of warmth

to dial in camera settings as well.

- Changing our focus to manual focus here on our lens.

White balance, it's good to start in daylight.

We're gonna change our shutter speed.

We're doing moonlight shots.

We'll start at about 10 seconds.

Let's go down to aperture 2.2. - Roger.

- We'll take our ISO, let's start with 3,200

since we're doing 10 seconds.

Then we are going to make sure that our LCD brightness

is all the way down.

- Ooh, good call.

- And we're also gonna make sure we have image quality raw.

- And why is it important to keep your eyes

acclimated to darkness?

- So you can see the mountain lion that's coming to get you.

- Don't tell me that! Oh no.

- Are we (indistinct) with the Pelican or the backpack?

- [Bettymaya] Pelican.

(people talking softly)

(eerie music)

The last thing we had to do before hitting

the shutter button on our cameras was focusing.

The first step is to set your lens to manual focus,

then focus to infinity.

Next, bring up the live view

and punch in at least 10X magnification

in the middle of your screen and find a star.

Bring that star in and out of focus

until it is the smallest dot of light that you can make it.

Then finally, take a photo and don't forget to zoom in

and review your focus before you take any more.

(shutter clicking)

- [Bettymaya] I spent most of my childhood summers

sleeping on the trampoline as a kid,

looking up at the night sky.

To me, it always helped me wonder about the universe

as well as just understand that we're both so small,

but also so big and such a part of this infinite universe.

- [Becca] We spent close to four hours

out shooting that night, and it was incredible

to be under something so grandiose

in a space so vast and quiet and cold.

And although I wish the photos that we took

came out of our cameras looking as good

and contrasty and punchy as the photos you just saw,

well, unfortunately, there's one more part

to getting the perfect astrophoto.

(upbeat music)

- I like to think of editing photos

as I try to create a scene that makes me feel

like I felt when I was there experiencing that moment.

- [Becca] Bettymaya uses a combination of Lightroom,

Photoshop and a program called Starry Landscape Stacker

to reduce noise and bring out

what's called air glow in the image.

- Air glow are particles

releasing energy as light, as photons,

and here we can see it.

You can kind of see these lines.

- We ended up shooting with six different camera systems

while were out there, from Canon to Fuji,

Sony to Apple and Google, and I was most impressed

by the work that the Pixel 6 Pro was doing.

The level of detail it was able to capture

and instantly process, especially when compared

to the iPhone 13 Pro had me saying

holy shit dude, again and again.

For printing, enlarging, extended time-lapses

or bringing out more of that air glow,

the DSLRs and mirrorless are obviously going to provide

far more detail and control,

but no matter the camera system,

getting the perfect astro shot

ultimately comes down to one step.

- You have to know where to go and when to go

to get the perfect shot of the stars.

- Man, I always get sad at the end of the project.

You know, it's like, what do I do now?

Drop a comment down below.

What photo are we knocking off the list next?

And a big thank you to Bettymaya and Val.

I could not have done this without you.

All right, buds. We'll see you on the next one.