Very new to astronomy - Visited Dead Horse Point (Utah) and gave it a try.

I took a vacation to Colorado and Utah and gave it a shot with shooting starfields and star traces. These are not spectacular, but I'll give you my four best shots and a little description of what I tried.

I mostly used my 24/1.4L II lens on my 5D3, but I kind of reached the conclusion through trial and error that the results got better when I stopped down to f/2.8, so my 24-70/2.8L II was actually just as useful. I could have left the prime at home. Oh well, one lesson learned.

These first two shots are obviously from the same spot. I did the field at f/2.8 and then tried the trace at f/2. Given how bright the trace wound up being, I should have stuck with f/2.8 or even f/4 and shot longer.

I think I also found that it is not great to have the Milky Way in a star trace, because it turns into a weird whitish patch.

I tried two other things. One was just a pure shot of the sky when I first started out to see how it would come out.

The second was an attempt at lightpainting. That is really hard to do in a single shot!. For this one, I started off focusing on the dead tree. The flashlight was on for about 1-2 seconds, and as soon as it was off I attempted to manually shift the focus to infinity. It kind of worked.....but not super great. I could see this being a place where composite images would be better.

Anyway.....headed up north of Lake Superior later in August and if the skies are clear I will be trying this again! Lots of fun.

Turned out really good for a first attempt.

Looks good to me, thanks for sharing.

Nice shot with balanced contrast to make live night sky

really nice

there's something that always appeals to me about shots of stars and old trees

well done

Dave

Ya done good! I like the tree. Your MW looks good too. Might even be able to punch it up a bit more in Post.