Reflection Canyon is in Utah. It’s part of Lake Powell.

There are two ways to get to Reflection Canyon: by boat, or by 16-miles round trip trudge on unmarked trail.

I went by boat on an Action Photo excursion. There were six of us plus two guides.

By boat you need to scramble up 400-500 feet in a half-mile with a 40-50 pound pack. That’s better than going 16 mile round trip over land with an even heaver pack because you need more water.

There are a couple thin ridges, about a foot wide, where you do not want to fall. Fortunately you are leaning into a rock wall, with lots of hand holds so no one had a difficult time.

Getting the Shot

Normally I use a star tracker on a modified camera. With a star tracker I am at ISO 1600 or 2000 for 50 seconds or so.

The added weight of the tracker was too much so I opted for the normal process.

I had a very fast 24 MM F1.4 MM lens but 24 MM is not wide enough to fit in the entire arc. And at 24 MM, you can’t shoot longer than 10 seconds or the stars will blur. The solution was 10 seconds at ISO 5000. The result is a lot of noise.

To circumvent noise, I took three consecutive shots then shifted the camera 15 degrees to the left. Blending three images reduces random noise.

The pano for the stars was 10 frames (X3) and for the land was another 10 frames (X3), a total of 60 frames for the image. These were vertical stitches. Horizontal stitches would have been half the number of images or less. For proper blending you need about 50 percent overlap.

I blended each set of 3 in Photoshop, then the resultant 10 images in an excellent stitching app called PTGui. I then took those two panos (one of the land and one of the sky) and blended them manually in Photoshop.

The land sequence was taken about halfway through blue hour. Blue hour ends about an hour after sunset. The Milky Way series was taken about 2:30 AM.

If you do the land sequence at 2:00 AM instead of the blue hour, you are looking at 5 minute exposures.

Some people on the trip opted to avoid the process I just described, and instead used a wider angle lens with single frames capturing less of the arc.

We had a nice sunrise a few hours later. Please see my previous post Reflection Canyon Sunrise for several images including a sunrise pano.

Equipment

Those interested in my equipment and recommendations can find it here: Mish’s Equipment List.

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Coming up: Reflection Canyon from the water, and Stud Horse Point near Page Arizona.

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Mike “Mish” Shedlock