Camera Labs

was camped in the Little Desert on a recent family trip away.
Aside from sitting around the campfire and watching the possums, the sky was quite amazing.

have never done star photography before and tried a few different things. Wished I had read the tutorial earlier all my shots with the 85 prime were at 20-30sec exposure and the stars had moved. Did get some good shot with the 30 Sigma.
viewtopic.php?t=206

just curious when pp these sort of photos, what do you look for. Any tips


IMG_8428jpg by maxjj, on Flickr


Southern Cross with Pointers taken in Little Desert National Park by maxjj, on Flickr

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Canon Powershot S95, Canon 7D, 15-85, Canon 85 1.8 USM, Sigma 30 1.4, 50mm 1.8, Canon 100 2.8L IS Macro, Canon 70-300L IS USM+Kenko 1.4 Pro 300DGX, Canon 430EX II and RS 4 Classic

Nice photos! Do you mean post-process by PP? If so, then I think a lot of simple astro-photography is about getting the colours you want, which may mean darkening the sky (or reducing light pollution), turning the Moon more grey than yellow, that sort of thing. More advanced astro-photogs go for accuracy, may reduce bright star sizes, that sort of thing.

Keep going!

thanks Gordon, I was using LR and noticed that sharpening, masking and noise reduction was causing stars to disappear. Its not like processing photos of birds.
Now that I have read the tutorial and have a better understanding of focal length and exposure time, I am keen to have another go. Its a different technique than what I am used to. There is something special about seeing all the stars when camping out in the middle of nowhere, away from light pollution.
Focusing in the dark, in manual wasn`t easy, I think next time I might prefocus in daylight on a far object and tape up the focus ring or mark it somehow.

The first pic is the jpg, the second was raw and then using daylight for awb and a few tweaks. Just couldn`t find tweaks in LR that actually made the picture better.

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Canon Powershot S95, Canon 7D, 15-85, Canon 85 1.8 USM, Sigma 30 1.4, 50mm 1.8, Canon 100 2.8L IS Macro, Canon 70-300L IS USM+Kenko 1.4 Pro 300DGX, Canon 430EX II and RS 4 Classic

Excellent pics.

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Nikon D700 & D7100 bodies + Nikkor 300mm F2.8 VR11, 1.7TC, 50mm F1.4G, 16-35mm f/4G VR, 105 F2.8 VR macro, 70-300mm lenses. A couple of filters, Giotto tripod & ballhead. Lowepro Slingshot 302 AW

http://www.flickr.com/photos/oldcarlos/

Very nice shot!
Is that really just a single exposure?

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Nikon D7000; Nikkor 35mm 1.8 DX, Nikkor 50mm 1.4 G, Nikkor 70-300mm VR, Tamron 17-50mm 2.8 (non VC)