Ok guys. Yeah, I borrowed a 1000 dollar camera, went to the middle of nowhere, took a photo of some stars, copied it to my phone, uploaded from my phone to the photobucket, stripped the EXIF (whatever that is), and posted it here, just so I could cop a load of epic immaturity and accusations.
You guys clearly havent seen australian stars....
Oke, we are not saying this photo was not taken with your Nokia 930. We are saying this photo was not a ~1 second hand held shot, which you claimed it was.
We do have alpine stars mate, plus much cleaner air and less light pollution. The 930 has a lot of options including a multi-dial mode to quickly change ISO, shutter speed, focus and white balance and an option that takes multiple (10) pictures over a set time, which are then overlaid. You guys really need to look up the phone before you lose your shit over it. Its getting pathetic.
You act as if Australia is the best of the best for astrophotography. There are many places in the world where one can find a clear sky, just look at where the major telescopes are.
ISO and shutter speed are all that matter here, white balance and focus don't make a difference in capturing that shot with that much light.
As for taking multiple photos and combining them, I believe you are referring to HDR mode, which takes 3 or more shots (exposed, under exposed, and over exposed), and combines them. This is not the same as image stacking which is used in astrophotography. HDR mode will not help here, and will actually make the photo much worse due to the even longer exposure needed to overexpose this photo.
Since this is going nowhere, let's move on from this BS.
It is an HDR of three different exposures spaced by 1 EV. It looks pretty much like what I was seeing but it isn't 100% perfect...
I do like this photo, it looks very natural. However because it looks natural, it lacks any sort of "pop" that one tends to associate with landscapes. To be blunt, it looks very dark, dreary, and muted. The trees look a bit underexposed as well as I can't see much detail in them, and the mountains look a bit soft, likely due to the cloud/fog in between.