Google Pixel 7 Pro Astrophotography Review Part 2

Have you ever wanted to go to Burning Man, to see all the celebrities and talent there?  Well… We’re not going to do that.  We are going to the Playa where burning man is held though, and we’re going to see stars, lots of stars.  This week we’re headed to the Black Rock Desert outside Gerlach, Nevada, for some astrophotography.  What?  That’s basically the same thing, come on.  Let’s roll that intro, and get ready for a different kind of trip into the universe.

So first let me explain why I’ve been away for a while longer than I’d like.  I actually went on this photo trip a couple weeks ago, and haven’t posted a proper video since then.  The day we went to Gerlach to do the shoot happened to be Super Bowl Sunday.  We pulled into town about 2:30 or so, and went out to scout some locations.  The black rock desert is just a gem, super beautiful, always love getting out there.  After the scouting, we headed back into town.  If you’ve never been to Gerlach, and I’m quite sure most of you haven’t, it is not a massive town.  There’s one motel there, just the one.  To check in, you stop by the bar of the same name and get your key.  When we checked in they let us know that they had a Super Bowl special buffet, looked reasonable.  So after we scouted, having little else to do, we stopped in there.  It was nice, we enjoyed the game.  What we didn’t know was that there was an invader there, a dirty little COVID bug was waiting for me.  To be fair, I don’t know for sure that that’s where I got it, but I do know that within a couple days I was down, pretty hard.  That was almost 2 weeks ago now, and I still can’t taste anything, and I’m sure you can hear that there’s a difference in my voice.  This was a rough one, hope that doesn’t happen again anytime soon.  

Ok, that’s out of the way, let’s get back to the photography.  I chose this spot for a few reasons.  One, it’s truly dark.  It’s pretty far away from any significant light sources, making it a really awesome place to catch the stars.  Two, I was hoping to be able to use the striking foreground of the lakebed to give me an interesting frame.  As it turned out the lake actually had water in it, so the thought then became to get the reflection of the night sky.  Unfortunately we didn’t end up lined up very well with the milky way or interesting patches of sky, so it wasn’t all that useful, but it was a good thought.  We did discover a glitch in the computational photography though.  It sharpens the stars in the sky, but the stars in the reflection leave trails.  Might make an interesting concept, but it didn’t really work for me.  The night was moonless until almost midnight, so it seemed like a great location to really see what the Pixel 7 pro could do.  

Go back and watch the video the first part of the astrophotography mode I released a month ago. The only thing that I did differently now was setting the focus to FAR instead of Auto. I think that tweak really helped with the focus and clarity. 

I had the right weather and conditions to get better shots this time, I also  expected better.  I see all these amazing shots in instagram, and I thought my phone would allow m to do something similar.  Turns out there’s a little more to it than that.  If you have any suggestions for me on how to get something that looks like this, please do leave them in the comments.  For some reason the shots I took lack that color, the easily recognizable milky way.  I was pointed at it, but it almost seems confusing, like there are just too many stars in the frame, hard to really get a story out of it.  There might be some variables I’m missing, the time of night/year, not pointing in the right direction, something.  But especially when we look at the photo right out of the camera, there’s just nothing that moves me.  

After using the  Astro edit option, I coukd certainly pull out some more drama, color, sharpness.  This one is edited with just the phone, and I must say there’s an incredible amount of detail here.  It’s also really great to be able to get this kind of a long exposure shot without the need for a mount to track the stars.  The Pixel’s AI takes care of all that, so you don’t get the trails you would otherwise.  If you take these shots and run them through light room or a similar editor, you can get something like this, which is really not bad for a phone.  Is it what I expected?  No.  Is it the best astrophotography experience I’ve ever come across on a smart phone?  For sure.  

So a couple lessons.  

One, this will not work as well as a professional camera mounted on a computerized star tracking mount.  

Two, this doesn’t cost $5,000.00 plus.  

Three, take this as an excuse to get out to a really dark place and do some stargazing.  It’s just so striking when you’re used to the city sky, well worth getting out there. We actually saw the smoke trail of a small meteorite.It was such a dazzling moment. We didnt catch the flame and the trail was faded out before we could get it on camera but still..

Four, the pixel7 pro  is an amazing tool, but you do need to do a fair amount of research and planning to do astrophotography right.  There are night sky maps you can use, and you really have to watch the weather and moon conditions to get it right.  

Five, get vaccinated, COVID sucks.  

Looking forward to your suggestions on getting those stunning milky way shots, hope you enjoyed mine.  I’ll get back to 100% soon, but we have a pretty solid round of snow coming in.  I’m really hoping for some warmer weather soon so I can get out more nights without freezing my tuckus off.  Thanks for watching, have a bright and focused week.

—>Watch this on Youtube by clicking HERE.