My first attempt with new camera

Recently bought a used 450D off ebay, it is my first DSLR, moving up from a G11. The purpose of this post isn't "look at my great shot" I know it's not that good. Rather I had a heck of a time with the focus. I couldn't see any stars thru live view or the OVF, and auto focus didn't work. My lens is the kit lens. This was taken around 9pm and I do live in an area with a lot of light polution. Any advice would be welcomed.

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Not bad for a first try. What was your ISO?

Not bad for a first shot. Even got a couple of deep space goodies in the Sagittarius region!

Nice start ... it can be difficult to see stars even through the OVF I've found, especially if it's a wide angle lens. Some beginner advice (ie. from a beginner) would be:

- set your lens to manual focus
- try it set to 'infinity' focus, take a few pics at different exposures, then review
- adjust focus slightly, try some more pics, then review again
- try different ISOs ... anywhere from ISO 400 - ISO 1600 (remember the higher the number the noisier it'll be, older cameras I hear don;t like going over ISO 800)

If you get into stacking images the noise issue can kind of be taken care of ... kind of. Check out things like Deep Sky Stacker, is that's what you're after.

It can be misleading relying on the LCD on the back sometimes, so be ideal if you can plug the camera into a laptop via USB, and use the Canon software to review on screen.

Just checking you have a tripod and remote release? Or at least using a 2 second delay to avoid shaking the camera when you press down to take the photo.

Hope this helps, keen to see your progress!

- Daniel

Very nice start. For first attempt its well good.

Stopping the lens down a couple of stops makes it much easier to hit infinity focus. So set manual focus on the lens, stop down two stops from wide open and rack the focus all the way in, you should hit infinity. Focusing on something a long way away (moon/skyline/city lights) will confirm.

Tiberius47 wrote in post #13167613
Not bad for a first try. What was your ISO?

ISO 800
f/5.6
20 seconds

legoman_iac wrote in post #13168266
Nice start ... it can be difficult to see stars even through the OVF I've found, especially if it's a wide angle lens. Some beginner advice (ie. from a beginner) would be:

- set your lens to manual focus Yes I did
- try it set to 'infinity' focus, take a few pics at different exposures, then review
- adjust focus slightly, try some more pics, then review again
- try different ISOs ... anywhere from ISO 400 - ISO 1600 (remember the higher the number the noisier it'll be, older cameras I hear don;t like going over ISO 800)

If you get into stacking images the noise issue can kind of be taken care of ... kind of. Check out things like Deep Sky Stacker, is that's what you're after. I'm sure I'll try this

It can be misleading relying on the LCD on the back sometimes, so be ideal if you can plug the camera into a laptop via USB, and use the Canon software to review on screen. This is a good idea I'll try that

Just checking you have a tripod and remote release? Or at least using a 2 second delay to avoid shaking the camera when you press down to take the photo. Yes, tripod and 2 sec timer, the focus was what I fought with

Hope this helps, keen to see your progress!

- Daniel

Thanks for the suggestions

martyn_bannister wrote in post #13169920
Very nice start. For first attempt its well good.

Stopping the lens down a couple of stops makes it much easier to hit infinity focus. So set manual focus on the lens, stop down two stops from wide open and rack the focus all the way in, you should hit infinity. Focusing on something a long way away (moon/skyline/city lights) will confirm.

Good ideas, the moon wasn't available, and in my neighborhood there isn't anything so far away, that I can focus on, and would expect the stars to also be in focus at that setting.

I'm also thinking I should shoot in black & white, this may be a better shot as the light polution won't show up as the orange-red color. Also at such a wide angle I don't think there is any color to capture in the night sky.

Setting your lens to infinity won't guarantee stars will be in focus, but its usually a good place to start.

Are you shooting RAW or JPEG? If you shoot in jpeg, you'll be stuck with the colour mode you shot with, if you shoot in raw, you'll preview black and white, but have the freedom to change your mind later ... this can be confusing, as you'll be looking for B&W but only find colour pics, you just have to turn on grayscale in camera raw.

Also, best to shoot raw for astro work. My numbers are likely wrong, but approximately ... jpegs give you 256 'shades' from white to black per RGB channel, where raw gives you around 4096 shades/steps per channel, allowing you to capture shades of colour which fall between the cracks of jpegs.

Again, hope this helps and good luck!

legoman_iac wrote in post #13172559
Setting your lens to infinity won't guarantee stars will be in focus, but its usually a good place to start.

Are you shooting RAW or JPEG? If you shoot in jpeg, you'll be stuck with the colour mode you shot with, if you shoot in raw, you'll preview black and white, but have the freedom to change your mind later ... this can be confusing, as you'll be looking for B&W but only find colour pics, you just have to turn on grayscale in camera raw.

Also, best to shoot raw for astro work. My numbers are likely wrong, but approximately ... jpegs give you 256 'shades' from white to black per RGB channel, where raw gives you around 4096 shades/steps per channel, allowing you to capture shades of colour which fall between the cracks of jpegs.

Again, hope this helps and good luck!

I understand, good point. Looks like I may have clear skies tonight.

This time I used the EOS utility and remotely took the pic. Although I still had to manually focus thru trial and error, took about 4 shots and I found the sweet spot. I did try auto focus, but got a focus error message

Years ago I used a 35mm SLR and focus was straight forward, infinity at one end and close focus at the opposite. Using the kit lens it was somewhere in the middle I'd guess.

This is a RAW tweaked a little with my limited knowledge and even less experience with RAW.

ISO 400
f/5.6
30 sec

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Nice improvement ... hopefully I'm helping more than hindering. Though looks like 30 sec might be too much for your lens, this seems to have some slight drift creeping in around the edges. Do you have any 15 and 20 sec subs? Also, there are some great tips and tutorials online for processing which will be a great help. Some suggest to do several rounds of adjustments, as you need to stretch the data.

Ofcourse something I should have mentioned earlier, to help with focusing (though not sure how well it works with camera lenses, but it's great for telescopes) is a 'Bahtinov mask'. They go for around $40 in Australia, so probably US$10, haha. You hold this in front of your 'scope' while focusing and you see spikes around your stars. It's like an X with an I overlayed, when it's out of focus the I will be offset slightly, you then focus until the spikes are centred. Might be worth looking into if you have no joy with your lenses.

Could be your old film gear focused better, but something I see online is that there's a lot more pixel peeping going on and everybody is more critical of focus these days, where you'll view an image 100% (or more) and not as it is printed out from the local photo lab spits them out.

Another tip I've seen posted, is to tape the focusing ring on your lens once you've got it right, saves accidently bumping it, especially when working in the dark ... though you'll probably bump it slightly when taping it ... again something to try as it might be worth it. Try something that isn;t too gluey or leaves too much residue, I find 3M micropore tape from pharmacies works well for some of my gear.

The EOS utility is probably better for reviewing shots as the Live View is only slightly better than the back of your camera. If you do use Live View, make sure you select the '200%' or '2x' button, to zoom in, helps to magnify things a little.

Best of luck!

- Daniel

p.s. Don't be put off if you buy some gear and get clouds for a week or two, always happens!

the jimmy wrote in post #13173530
This time I used the EOS utility and remotely took the pic. Although I still had to manually focus thru trial and error, took about 4 shots and I found the sweet spot. I did try auto focus, but got a focus error message

Years ago I used a 35mm SLR and focus was straight forward, infinity at one end and close focus at the opposite. Using the kit lens it was somewhere in the middle I'd guess.

This is a RAW tweaked a little with my limited knowledge and even less experience with RAW.

ISO 400
f/5.6
30 sec

Yeah, trial and error focus is what I always have to do. Though with experience, you'll be able to set your focus manually pretty close, so zeroing in won't take too long. For my lens, it's move all the way to the infinity stop, and then back it off "a bit".