Willie, Alan, and I spent a week at Glacier National Park back in August and the trip was everything but what we expected. This particular night was about the only night that went as we intended. The weather forecast seemed great before we arrived but we witnessed poor conditions after poor conditions. For 2 days we couldn’t even see our feet the fog was so thick. On our first night the clouds stayed away and we did the one thing we planned on: getting some Milky Way shots from Logan Pass.
I had seen this waterfall earlier in the evening and photographed it as the last light hit Mt. Reynolds, disappeared, the stars came out, and eventually the Milky Way moved into position. I knew that Milky Way would eventually move parallel to the right edge of Mt. Reynolds but I didn’t realize how long it would take. It wasn’t until around midnight that it got dark enough and the Milky Way moved far enough to the right.
I used a 4 image focus stack to make sure the entire scene came out in focus. As you’ll notice the sky doesn’t entirely look as sharp as it could. I rented the lens from BorrowLenses and it quickly became clear that this particular copy of the lens had some serious coma flare issues. I did my best to get rid of some of it but eventually removing it became tedious and I gave up. BorrowLenses customer service was awesome and I was given a coupon for the price of the rental to use another time!
Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 24mm f/1.4G ED:
Sky: 24mm, f/1.6, 13 seconds, ISO 3200
Foreground: 4 images, 24mm, f/10, ISO 100
