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well, it was another clear night so I thought I would try again at shooting the stars, and this it what I came up with.


18mm f5.0 shutter speed 35min
I wanted to get the light trails


18mm f5.0 shutter 61 sec
The long orange line was a shooting star

18mm f5.0 shutter 69sec
It looks as tho anything longer then 60 sec you will start to see the light trails

I like #1 because it looks cool, but #2 I think is the best of the three.
What do you guy's think?

Nick.

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Canon Rebel XTI, Tamron 70-300mm w/180-300 macro AF, Canon 18-55mm,Canon 50mm F1.8, Sandisk ExtremeIII 2gig.
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Hi Nick, great work!

If you're anything like me when I started astrophotography, you'll soon know the exact time at which the stars will begin trailing at any focal length! If you zoom into 100%, I'm betting there's a bit of trailing at 60 seconds even zoomed out to 18mm (27mm equiv), but you might get away with 50 secs... depends how much you want those stars to look like perfect dots!

Also remember the further the stars are from the pole, the more they'll trail. In fact, try a really long exposure with the pole in the middle, maybe zoomed-in to accentuate the effect and see what happens!

PS - how come you closed the aperture to f5 on the 60 second exposures? Was the sky too bright otherwise?

And what ISO were you using?

#1 and #2 are ISO 100 #3 1600. I was just out side the city and there was still some "city light" in the backround.
I was just south of the city looking south west I think. so that would have put the pole just about above town. . . right?? I don't know very much about star maps. just a few names and about where they are. no more then that realy.
Still playing with the settings taking notes as I go. I had a small amount of time (only about 1hr. takes me 15-20 min to get there) before I had to pick up my brothers from the movies, so I only got 4 shots off. If I had more time I would have stayed longer.

It might be clear fri & sat so I will go out again.
I have got the canon 50mm 1.8 on order now. should have it next tue or wend.

How far would one have to be to be far enough away from the city lights?
I was about 2.5-3 miles away the way the bird fly's.

Nick

Nick

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Canon Rebel XTI, Tamron 70-300mm w/180-300 macro AF, Canon 18-55mm,Canon 50mm F1.8, Sandisk ExtremeIII 2gig.
Nikon N2020.My Flickr

#2 is just specially nice as you got the shooting star.

Looks really great

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Nice shots!

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Graham
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Hi Nick,

Nice shots and thanks for posting. A lot better than my own effort when I first pointed a 400D/XTi at the stars. You will see a big difference with the f/1.8 lens.

Scattered light from street lights is the bane of most of us. However it is quite acceptable if some creeps into your shots as it can subsequently be removed by post-processing. I use IRIS, which is free. It's a very powerful program but has a slightly quirky and unfinished user interface. Fortunately there is an active user community out there who share tips. The web site also has links to some tutorials as well as an online help system.

Removing a constant sky background is pretty straightforward (can be done with a lot of image processing software) but IRIS makes it possible to go the next step and remove a gradient background (quite common near the horizon). Removing a sky gradient is described here.

Clear skies.

Bob.

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OM-D E-M5 + ED 12-50mm, H-PS14042E, H-F007014E, L-RS014150E, M.ZUIKO DIGITAL 45mm 1:1.8.
Gitzo GT1541T, Arca-Swiss Z1 DP ball-head.
Astrophotography: TEC 140 'scope, FLI ML16803 camera, ASA DDM60 Pro mount.

Great shots love teh shooting staro on the second image!

I was wondering did you combinw two images to with 30sec to make it 61 or can u choose teh option on your camera for sucha long exposure time?

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No, I bought a shutter release for the camera. It was $30 I think, and I had the camera set into "Bulb".

Thanks Bob for the link. I will take a look at it. I have PS CS3. It can all so be done there. . . . right??

I am still playing with it and don't realy know how to use it.

Nick

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Canon Rebel XTI, Tamron 70-300mm w/180-300 macro AF, Canon 18-55mm,Canon 50mm F1.8, Sandisk ExtremeIII 2gig.
Nikon N2020.My Flickr

Yes, you can do a huge amount with Photoshop. Gradient removal is probably a lot easier with IRS though. So easy that I haven't even tried it in Photoshop. IRIS is by no means the only game in town. I've never used it but MaximDL is another one to look at and isn't too expensive if you are going to use it regularly.

Bob.

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OM-D E-M5 + ED 12-50mm, H-PS14042E, H-F007014E, L-RS014150E, M.ZUIKO DIGITAL 45mm 1:1.8.
Gitzo GT1541T, Arca-Swiss Z1 DP ball-head.
Astrophotography: TEC 140 'scope, FLI ML16803 camera, ASA DDM60 Pro mount.

I've been trying to shoot the night sky but can't quite get the focus right. Many say just to use manual focus and set it all the way out. I do this and the stars in the image are blurry. Not streaking across the sky as they would with too long of an exposure. No, these are definitely out of focus. Auto focus won't lock on the night sky with my Canon XSI. So how do I go about getting the proper focus?
Thanks,
Chris

The end position is usually beyond infinity, which is pretty far away! It is put there to allow for variations. Infinity is just a little before then.

Best way would be to manually focus by eye and leave it.

If there is something else bright and far away (moon, far buildings etc), you could try focusing on that with AF then switch to MF, making sure not to disturb the focus in the process.

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Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
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3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.

I didn't know the difference between infinity and beyond infinity. What's the distance beyond which I should use beyond infinity?

And is the reddish color of sky due to the city lights?

Cheers,
Tony

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GALLERY