Beginners Advice?

Hey everyone,

So tonight is a clear night and I intend to drive to the mountains near me (south wales) and attempt to do some photography of the night sky.

I hope to capture the stars in general as well as star trails. This will be my first ever time experimenting with this so if I only get one good or even mediocre shot I will be happy.

The equipment I will be taking with me are:

• Canon 1000D
  
• 18-55mm IS
  
• 55-200mm
  
• Tripod
  
• Shutter release remote
  
• Torch
  
• Flash Unit
  
• other essentials such as gloves and liquids
  

mattyb240 wrote in post #7850392
Are there any tips or things to look out for? How hard is it to focus? Should I be focusing on the foreground or the stars themselves? I dont intend on stacking my photographs so I am going to try a series of different exposures to look at the end results. Should I be shooting at my widest aperture 3.5? Or my sharpest at 8?

Sounds like you're taking all you need. Make sure you've definitely got the battery fully charged and the memory card in the camera before you leave. I've been out either with a flat battery or no card before, and it's darned irritating!

Focus on the stars if you can, and using Live View on the 1000D this should be pretty much a doddle. Just pick a bright star, set the aperture wide open and the exposure to several seconds, then zoom in and the focus should be simple enough. Remember to put it on MF by the way!

I tend to put the aperture wide open and the ISO on 1600 to capture as much light as I can in the shortest possible time, but then I'm usually dealing with long exposures and not the best tracking. With no tracking then you might as well stop down the aperture a little will help hide some aberrations. Plus ISO 400 or 800 should be fine.

Basically just muck around with all sorts of settings and exposures until you get what you're after.

Plus you say you're not going to stack, but stacking lots of 30s or longer shots into a big star trail is sometimes the best way. Plus you can put the camera on burst mode, (turn off mirror lock-up), lock down the remote, then go and sit in the car and have a drink and listen to the radio for 20 or 30 minutes while the camera does it's thing...I often do this when I'm at home.

Good luck, and hope you get clear skies.

Hey Matty,

I have done lots on this and have my own website to cover it. You are welcome to go have a look at it, than ask me as many questions as you like mate.

http://www.asignobserv​atory.com/widefield_an​d_time-lapse.aspx

Cheers.

Barry.

Thanks for the tips guys, and Barry your website is very informative thank you! I ended up doing quite a few different test shots to try and experiment, I did find focusing particularly hard even with live view. Regardless of how my pictures turned out the whole experience was breath taking.

These are two of my favourite from the night, please let me know what you think:
1

2

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Ah I have noticed I exported them at a lower quality Jpeg so please forgive some of the lack of smoothness between colours.

Matty, they are looking good. What I tend to do when I am not hooked up to the laptop in the field, it to switch the lens to MF, grasp the front ring on the lens, and turn it all the way to infinity, then back it off just a fraction. It takes a good eye. Make sure you are fully dark adapted first helps. The eye takes about 5 minutes to start to adapt and up to 25 minutes to fully dialate. If you look at a bright light, (Yes even a red one) you have to start again.

Thanks very much, I was using MF but found focus hard to judge, as although I was dark adapted the moon was very low over head that produced quite a lot of glare! In the second photo everything is in focus its just the crappy upload I have done I'll try this one instead.

Is tethered shooting a good experiment to try with this type of photography? I appreciate the feedback, I want to go and do more but its waiting for clear skies! Damn this photography stuff is addictive

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