17-40 F4 Adequate?

I tried the above Canon lens at f4 with focus set at infinity, shutter at .30 of a sec and ISO at 3200 yet all I got was a black screen, the interval was every minute. The stars were bright and plentiful. Perhaps I need a f2.8 lens for this or my setting were wrong?

Not to be a smart ass but was lens cap removed? You should have gotten something at those settings.

Yes the lens cap was removed as I can see some of the brighter stars but not many thats for sure! I tried this setup from a large high hill in Chile with no city lights.

picworx wrote in post #17436594
Yes the lens cap was removed as I can see some of the brighter stars but not many thats for sure! I tried this setup from a large high hill in Chile with no city lights.

Expose for longer duration, try 60sec and see what you get.

Nothing fancy here, but this is with a 15-85mm at 30 sec. and 1600 iso.

I also have a 24-70 2.8 and a 50mm 1.2 I think I will try those as well, thoughts?

Was your shutter set at ".30 of a sec"? If so you need to try 30 seconds.

Ron

mainbyte wrote in post #17436740
Was your shutter set at ".30 of a sec"? If so you need to try 30 seconds.

Ron

Was going to say this, if you were at 1/3 of a second you need a longer exposure. Try 20-30 seconds.

I took this with the 17-40. 58 second exposure @ f/4

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/pAs6​WX

17mm on a fullframe will be about 34 secs before star trails appear. 23secs on a cropped

Try iso 3200 if poss.

Don't put the lens on infinity, you have to focus. Find a bright star, live veiw and zoom in 10x. The focus manually.

No expert, but thats what I've picked up so far.

jamstar35 wrote in post #17436940
I took this with the 17-40. 58 second exposure @ f/4

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/pAs6​WX Milky Way over Cottonwood, AZ-4 by Jamel Thompson Photography, on Flickr

Nice shot! How was the light pollution on that location? I got the same lens and was hoping to capture the milky way on a street light polluted location.

There was little to no light pollution here. None of the residential streets have streetlights and if remember correctly, I believe its considered a dark city. This shot was taken at around 9pm, so I am sure if I had went out later, I could've gotten something better. The light thats in the photo is coming from a garage light across the street.

picworx wrote in post #17436582
I tried the above Canon lens at f4 with focus set at infinity, shutter at .30 of a sec and ISO at 3200 yet all I got was a black screen, the interval was every minute. The stars were bright and plentiful. Perhaps I need a f2.8 lens for this or my setting were wrong?

I'm assuming it's not a typo, 0.30 seconds will not get you much.

On a full frame at 17mm, taking the rule of 500, you should set it to at least 25 seconds if not 30 seconds (stars might trail a tad bit). On a crop you're looking at 18 seconds max. Obviously if you crank the ISO to 6400 you should get more stars but it will be noisy.

If you're in Chile you should get some gorgeous shots.