Night time star photography?

[fundabug]

Tonight is supposed to be crystal clear with lots of stars due to this weekend being a New Moon. I've never tried to take pictures of stars and constellations, so I've got a couple of questions. We have a 300 acre farm about 15 miles from the nearest town, which is a small town that doesn't create a lot of light pollution. I'm going to take my tripod, but I'm not sure which lens I have that would be best suited for this situation. I have a Canon 50mm 1.4, a Sigma 70-300mm, a Sigma 10-22mm, and the good old Canon 18-55mm kit lens. Since I've never tried this before I'm kind of confused on which lens might be the best choice. I guess they could all be used for different types of shots. Also, I'm not sure what settings I should use for this type of photography. I know I need to keep the shutter open for a while, but how long is that before I start getting star trails. What aperture settings are best for long exposure star photography? What kind of white balance setting do I need or does it matter? What ISO setting should I use, but not too high, so my shots don't turn out with a lot of noise? And finally, do I need to focus my camera to infinity or should I actually try to focus on a particular star (maybe the nearest star to the center).......Now that I think about it, focusing on a star millions of miles away would be focusing to infinity wouldn't it? Sorry for the long read, any suggestions would be very helpful!!!!! Thanks

[howzitboy]

http://web.canon.jp/imaging/astro/index-e.html

read here for some answers.

[fundabug]

http://web.canon.jp/imaging/astro/index-e.html

read here for some answers.

Thank you, I was just looking at that from the link on the other thread. I think that answered most of my questions and I guess the rest will just have to come from trial and error.

[Marnault]

If you just have a tripod and don't have a equatorial mount you should stick to wide angle lens. If you try to use a telephoto lens the apparent motion of the stars will cause star trails even with short exposures of 10-15 seconds.

With a wide angle lens and short exposure times (5-15 seconds) you shouldn't have any issues with star trails.

Iso should be set to 800, apature as big as possible. With a wide angle lens focusing shouldn't be a big issue just set the focus to infinity.


If you want to take picture of star trails a good plan is to have the north star in the field of view, because all the stars appear to rotate around the north star. ISO 800, exposure time should be as long as possible, the longer the exposure the longer the star trails. You will need to experiment with the apature size, the the longer the exposure the smaller the apature to prevent overexposure.

[fundabug]

Cool.....Thanks man, that's the questions I needed answered!

[carpenter]

Don't forget tomorrow night at 9 starts the Perseid meteor shower. hundreds or meteors abound.

[Neil1986hk]

Hi! Both 10 - 22 and kit lens are suitable for fixed tripod astrophotography.

As light pollution doesn't matter, I recommend using 10 - 22. Set the aperture to f/4 and raise the ISO to 400 or even 800. A 30-second exposure is ideal for recording the constellations.

Article:
http://www.astropix.com/HTML/I_ASTROP/TRIPOD/TRIPOD1.HTM

The Starry Sky by Mr. Juza
http://www.juzaphoto.com/eng/articles-photo_essays/0014-the_starry_sky.htm