Tried out my new camera

I just bought a 600d and decided to see how it faired at taking night photos of the sky. I found the 6400 iso a bit to slow and yielded a bit to much noise. All of the shots below were taken with iso 3200 with a 10 sec shutter. A couple decent shots for a quick set up in a not so rural area. I can't wait to try some more. I believe I was slightly out of focus in the first shot, but still kind of neat how many stars I actually captured being in the middle of a suburb.

What other settings were you using? Focal length?

The 600D is pretty good at night photography, even in suburbs - this were shot from my back yard:
Orions Belt taken with the 50mm ƒ1.8 - 2.5seconds at 3200 ISO, ƒ2.8

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/mikeymack/82720​55408/

I believe I was at a 18mm with a f4.0 @ ISO 3200and a 10 second shutter. Now that I think about it I could have opened the aperture to f3.5! I forgot!

Would it help me to move up to 50-55mm from 18mm?

liquorboxracing wrote in post #16242516
I believe I was at a 18mm with a f4.0 @ ISO 3200and a 10 second shutter. Now that I think about it I could have opened the aperture to f3.5! I forgot!

Would it help me to move up to 50-55mm from 18mm?

18mm would be good for a wider field of stars, say to get the Milky Way, but you can afford to go for a longer exposure maybe around 20 seconds, ƒ3.5 and 3200 ISO?

I also think going up to 20 seconds could give you better result. 10 sec to 20 sec increase should be more critical than opening aperture from f4 to f3.5. Yet, getting enough amount of light is important since you are shooting at such a lightless environment so it should work best prolly at widest aperture and 20-25sec with proper iso level. iso level should not be too high if you are shooting near the city light but if your place is dark enough it can go up to 1600-5000ish. At 18mm,30sec can give you star streaked. But around 25sec, you could get fairly good image of star points.

"I also think going up to 20 seconds could give you better result. 10 sec to 20 sec increase should be more critical than opening aperture from f4 to f3.5" I agree!

the photos I took the other night at 20 seconds were not as good as the ones I took at 10 seconds. The 20 second shutter speed yeilded more interferance from the lights in town. Does a lower ISO and slower shutter work better for photographing stars?

liquorboxracing wrote in post #16244332
the photos I took the other night at 20 seconds were not as good as the ones I took at 10 seconds. The 20 second shutter speed yeilded more interferance from the lights in town. Does a lower ISO and slower shutter work better for photographing stars?

Yes and no, a lower ISO will reduce noise, however you'll need a longer shutter to let in the same amount of light as a higher ISO and shorter shutter speed. Example ISO 6400 and 10 sec shutter equals ISO 3200 and 20 sec shutter, the light pollution will find you either way. BTW the above values are for example only, I'm not saying those values are equal.

You can use high ISO and stack images to eliminate noise? This one is 3200 ISO and only 5 shots stacked:

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/mikeymack/85834​40053/

NCHANT wrote in post #16245091
You can use high ISO and stack images to eliminate noise? This one is 3200 ISO and only 5 shots stacked:

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/mikeymack/85834​40053/
Large Magellanic Cloud by Mikey Mack, on Flickr

I so want to be able to get a pic like that someday!

stargazer24 wrote in post #16260476
I so want to be able to get a pic like that someday!

You can that was taken with the 40mm ƒ2.8 pancake, awesome little lens!

You need to process your images.. there's more in them than you can see at first glance.

I had a very quick process and there's a lot more stars in there as well as lots of JPEG artifacts.

Did you take RAW frames?

Derek

NCHANT wrote in post #16260694
You can that was taken with the 40mm ƒ2.8 pancake, awesome little lens!

How much is that lens?

stargazer24 wrote in post #16261428
How much is that lens?

Very cheap $2/300 here? It's not the best for astrophotography but still gets some shots

For AP you don't need autofocus.. it doesn't work, you have to manually focus, so you can use old lenses.

I'm looking at using my old praktica 50mm f1.8 lens with a cheap adapter.. an old FD lens would be fine so long as it's optically still fine.

50mm f1.8s are pretty universal and have been made for a long time with good optics.