NOOB - but i'm trying....

S i've been doing a lot of reading up before i go out on my first astro shoot and it seems to be i should start with
30sec exp, wide open, set to infinity on my lens (by the line marker) and shoot at something like 3200iso.

my question is i presume i need to take a 30 sec exposure with the lens cap on to help with noise removal?

urbanfreestyle wrote in post #17194503
set to infinity on my lens (by the line marker)

You'll be a lot better off doing manual focus. Most easily done using LiveView and 10x magnification. Find a bright star and use that.

ah ok, i was thinking manual focus but just going off the lines on the lens, i'll try to focus on a star, any recomendation about taking shots to remove noise? is 30 sec short enough to avoid startrails?

urbanfreestyle wrote in post #17194554
ah ok, i was thinking manual focus but just going off the lines on the lens, i'll try to focus on a star, any recomendation about taking shots to remove noise? is 30 sec short enough to avoid startrails?

If you're going to be stacking images then you'll want to take a few dark images (shot at the same time as the light images, and for the same exposure time, but with the lens-cap on). Otherwise, if you're not doing star-trails, the camera's long-exposure noise reduction will do the same job automagically.

30s will be pushing it. It all depends on the focal length of your lens. For 10mm (on an APS-C camera) I'll go up to 30s. For longer lenses you'll need shorter exposures.

The best thing is to take one shot and see how it turns out. Then you can adjust ISO and exposure time to get the ideal exposure.

i'm thinking 24mm on 1.6 crop.
Thanks for the information, i'll be sure to post up my results!

Does anyone have any instructional vids / step by steps to get some good shots?