Meteor Shower

Hey everyone,

I'm going to Devils Punchbowl out here in California for the Meteor Shower. I want to take some pictures (never done anything like this before). What settings would you recommend i use? Thanks

Well, the first thing to do is set your alarm clock for around 03:00. That means you'll be shooting after the worst of the moonlight and during the best period for the meteors.

Set your camera on the tripod and use your 28-135 at 28mm, with the focus set manually to infinity. Point the lens up towards the Big Dipper. Put the camera into M mode and set the aperture to f3.5, shutter speed to 30s and ISO to 800. Then, using a wired remote if you've got one, take a shot. Have a look at what you get and check that the stars are in focus (small points) and that the sky is fairly black. Adjust focus if needed and take another check shot. If the sky is orange then you might want to give in, or drop the ISO to 400.

Now take a lot of shots. Watch the sky at the same time and be amazed at how loads of meteors appear in the direction your lens isn't pointing. You can change direction if you want, but the meteors will now appear in the original location. It's just the Universe being nasty.

When it's time to quit (which will be: when you get bored; when dawn arrives; when it gets too cold; when you battery expires; when your card fills up) pack your gear, go home, upload all the images and step through them one-by-one looking for, hopefully bright but probably dim, streaks.

If you don't change the camera position you can always use the Startrails program to make a composite image.

Any Startrail program you would recommend?

This one. http://www.startrails.​de/html/software.html

Looks like this only works on windows, any that you might know of for Mac? If not ill try to get a copy of windows and install on it my Mac. Thanks

emagana02 wrote in post #11306845
Looks like this only works on windows, any that you might know of for Mac? If not ill try to get a copy of windows and install on it my Mac. Thanks

That's what I did, VMWare Fusion + WinXP on my iMac 27" i7, works great.