well our furst trip to yellowstone

any advice on using my rebel and its kit lens and a decent tripod for images of the mikyway while im up there ?

tulsatom wrote in post #16696784
any advice on using my rebel and its kit lens and a decent tripod for images of the mikyway while im up there ?

Heya,

Yeap. Check star charts before you go (Stellarium) to get an idea of where the Milky Way will be (though you should be able to see it honestly). Watch out for the moon, it will kill off the ability to do good dark sky shots as it brightens everything up and is blinding to the sensor when you go long exposure.

Plan your foreground, you want to keep composition in mind. If no foreground, then don't worry about it (pure sky shot).

Tripod, shutter release (or timer) is necessary.

Manual focus, do not use autofocus. Turn it off. Point to something like Jupiter (easy to spot right now), using Live View. Mag 10x on your screen. Manually focus until it's sharp. Leave it there. Keep autofocus OFF. Turn off IS too, it will not help with long exposures in the 10+ second range and just adds vibration.

Shoot in RAW format.
Keep aperture wide open. Do not stop down. You want as much light as possible.
ISO 1600 to start. Adjust to preference based on outcome. Do not use auto.
Shutter time is based on focal length. Include crop factor in this calculation.
A safe "bet" is to use 600/focallength(includ​ing crop factor) and it will result in exposure time in seconds.

Example: 18mm * 1.6 = 28.8mm, 600/28.8 = 20.8 seconds. So your exposure time, maximum, before stars begin to trail is 20 seconds at 18mm on your kit lens. Try it at 20 seconds. Also try it at a few seconds under 20 to ensure no trailing.

Do single exposures for now.

If you really get into it, you can start learning how to prepare for stacking--but only do this after you figure out how to do good single exposures. Stacking takes a lot of planning and time. Weather can foil a long stack process real quick.

Very best,