Camera Labs

I'll be going to Hawaii on vacation at the end of next month, and am planning on going up to the Mauna Kea visitor info center for their nightly stargazing program (http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/vis/visi ... ogram.html if you're at all interested).

I'd love some tips to help me get the most out of the visit! I'll only be going up one night as it's about a 3 hour round trip from where we're staying. There will probably be about 2.5 hours of good shooting time (starts at 6pm goes till 10pm). You can see my gear in my sig below. I'm also looking to pick up an intervalometer to do some time lapse - but since my time will be short(ish) I won't have a lot of opportunity to mess around with settings, etc.

I've read the Easy Astrophotography sticky, but would really appreciate any other advice with my current setup (yes I will have a tripod as well for the trip, good and sturdy).

Thank you!!!

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Canon EOS T1i | Canon 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS | Canon 50mm f/1.4 USM | Canon 70-200mm f/4L
Lowepro Slingshot 200

http://www.jessegamble.com

What exactly do you want to achieve? Star trails, widefield images, timelapse video?

If you've read the sticky here then there isn't probably much to add.

As a summary I would ensure the following:

1. Sturdy Tripod;
2. Fully charged batteries (and spares!);
3. Switch to manual;
4. Remote Release;
5. Focus to Infinity (switch off AF);
6. ISO 800

The biggest difficulty you will have if you want to shoot a widefield shot is timing your exposures so you do not end up with star trails. I would suggest doing a little experiment with your lenses and write down the maximum exposure you can get away with before star trails become apparent. Then you know what to use.

Of course if you want to shoot star trails then I would go for exposures of several minutes and then stack them together.

HTH

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Lee Diggle
My Astronomy Blog | My Photography Gallery