Chewy the Cat 😺

Chewy the Cat

This is my first post. No edits!!

No edit

Be prepared

I don't want to spend too much time explaining this point because I think it's already the most discussed and known one: you must have a tripod to stand the phone in a good position and point the subject you want to capture (landscape, milky way), also, it's highly recommended to use Stellarium to find easily when the moon is out the sky, where the milky way is, when it's visible, etc, etc. you have also look for a day with clear sky, no fog, no clouds, no light pollution.

Don't touch manual controls

This could be caused by my device model (Pixel 7), but as soon I touch any of the available controls (brightness, shadows, white balance) the others lose their auto balance, Astrophotography mode automatically handles those controls great. There are situations in which you can't get the results of the default mode by changing the manual controls, take this example when I set the white balance at maximum, see how the result I got has a mediocre white balance:

Default

White Balance set to max

Also, I did the test changing only the exposure and the white balance got terrible, it seems when you touch any of the manual controls, even when the others seem to be auto, they are not.

Avoid RAW

I challenge you to do the test, but when using RAW mode you lose most of the default post-processing magic that your Pixel does, the quality is worse and less detailed, here you have the comparison:

Raw vs Default

Practice your editing skills

This could appear irrelevant but it's in the end one of the most important things, you don't necessarily have to use Lightroom, you can use the integrated editor on Google Photos or Snapseed, they are great for simple edits, don't be afraid and play with the contrast, brightness, tint, wb, saturation, see others work as reference, watch to youtube tutorials. Now if you want to go a step further I would recommend you use Lightroom, especially if you have some landscape, it makes it easier to edit each part of the photo differently.

Here you have how I quickly edited the previous photo:

Edited

Edited on Adobe Lightroom