Astro Portrait

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We have posted two articles about astrophotography in the past. But it was about pictures only of the sky, without people. More likely than not, a lot of people would want to be photographed together with the Milky Way in the night sky. However, if you search for such pictures online, you will see that there are very few pictures of the Milky Way captured along with people in the frame. Even in those, most of the people appear as silhouettes. In some cases, people even come out translucent. That's how difficult it is to capture stars and people together.

This time, let's learn how to film the night sky and people together so that they are more likely to both come out properly and become visible.

Please refer to the following two links for the previous posts on Astrophoto mode.

Astrophotography - Samsung Members

Astrophotography camera for the Astrophoto mode de... - Samsung Members

The reason why there are no people in astro photos is the extreme filming environment.

Let's take a look at the below pictures first. Without special skills, you'll end up being photographed like this.

* The temperature was minus 15 degrees at the time of taking this picture, hence the thick winter clothes.

All three pictures above were taken in the same composition in the same place. In particular, pictures 2 and 3 show a striking difference despite being of the exact same composition. In both the long-exposure photos, the person comes out blurred making it difficult to recognize the face, while the flash photo looks black in the background.

It's no easy thing to film the night sky and people together. The specific reasons being that,

1. The difference between bright and dark is extreme.
2. Most of it is too dark.
3. The subject moves.
4. The difference in distance between the two objects (night sky, people) that need to be filmed at the same time is too large.

There are many ways to resolve the issue such as slow sync, manually controlling the external lighting, and synthesizing by taking several pictures, but those are difficult for the public. It takes a lot of trial and error and requires complex and professional post-processing. Perhaps that's why most pictures of the stars with people in it have the stars as the main characters and not the people, who simply get processed as silhouettes. Silhouettes are relatively easy to shoot.

So how do you take a picture where you can see the person's face as well as the Milky Way in the sky?

In short, it combines flash photos of a person and long exposure photos of the sky taken without flash.

Let’s dive into the detailed process:

1. Take a portrait using lights such as flash or surrounding streetlights.
2. (The steps from 2 to 5 are the same as astrophotography. See link.) Take at least 10 background photos including the sky at a shutter speed of 30 seconds without moving the camera and without a model, in the same composition. (From the below steps, assume that it is 10 photos.)
3. To reduce noise and bring out the details, stack 10 photos together to create a single photo. Since stars move, they appear to be in a stick formation in this photo.
4. Align and stack the 10 photos of the sky based on the stars to create one photo with less noise and more clarity. At this point, the background becomes blurred.
5. Separate the person from the photo in step 3 and the sky from the photo in step 4 and merge them into one photo. Now you get a clear background and a clear sky.
6. Take the person from the photo in step 1 and merge it with the photo from step 5.
7. When merging the person and background, as each of their lighting conditions is different, the processing of the merged boundaries and correction of heterogeneous colors must be done well.

The explanation is too complicated, isn't it? The actual process of filming and editing is even more difficult than the explanation.

If you're doing this on a PC, you'll likely have to take dozens of photos and edit them on your PC for hours to get the final result of a single photo.

Astro Portrait mode, on the other hand, does exactly the same thing as above with just the press of a button and some moments of waiting. Only the detailed settings are a little different.

In Astro Portrait mode, you only need to stand in front of the camera for 3 seconds. After 3 seconds, you can come out of the frame and wait for the shooting to end. And then, you will end up with a great picture.

You can see an example picture at the end of the article.

Now, we will tell you how to actually shoot it.

First, mount your smartphone on a tripod and select the Astro mode in the Expert RAW app as shown in the picture below. Then, a window will appear in which you must select Astro Portrait.

You can set the capture time in 3 different levels. The actual capture time varies depending on the brightness of the surroundings. The longer the time, the better the quality of the photo, not brighter. Noise is reduced, and a little more detailed expression becomes possible. Even if you cancel shooting in the middle, the photos taken up to that point will be processed, so if you want to, you can stop it in the middle.

Now, strike a pose and press the capture button. If you're filming by yourself, you can use the self-timer.

The flash will turn on, and after about 3 seconds, when the flash turns off, step out of the frame. Feel free to do something else while you wait for the shooting to finish.

The photos above were taken with Astro Portrait. As shown in the pictures above, you can see the Orion constellation taken in winter and the Milky Way taken in summer, along with a clearly visible person. Came out pretty well, didn't they?

* The ground is red because of the taillights of a parked car.

* Filmed in a safe location.

Astro Portrait is not without its limitations.

To spare the subject from the glare of the flash, we used a continuous light with a low brightness instead of flashes, and tried to take pictures in as short a time as possible. Nevertheless, the eye strain may be inevitable. Also, there may still be some shortcomings, such as the failure to recognize people in some instances due to insufficient light when the subject is too far away.

However, we believe that the experience of taking new pictures in an extreme filming environment using Astro Portrait Mode can be amazing. We hope that everyone will make good use of it and preserve the emotions and memories felt under the starry sky in pictures.

PLEASE NOTE:

The flash will turn on. When the flash turns on, it can be very disturbing to people nearby who are quietly admiring the stars, so do be mindful of fellow stargazers before taking pictures.

* The above images were taken with the Galaxy S24 and Galaxy Z Fold6 using the Expert RAW app.

* The above images are for the purpose of helping consumers understand, and may vary depending on the actual filming environment.