Dummies guide to star photography ?

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xpd

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#188992 12-Dec-2015 22:29

Borrowed a camera from work for a work related function over the weekend, and decided Id have a play at taking some shots of the stars.....

Managed to get some "ok for an amateur who has no idea what hes doing" shots, but would like to try to finetune it if possible ;) Also know I need to get away from the house some more, still a bit of light caused by street lamps etc.... if I can figure out what Im doing before tomorrow night, Ill duck down to Shakespeare Park and try from there.

Camera is a Canon EOS 6D with a Canon Zoom lens EF 24-70mm. And yes, Im using a tripod :)

So, anyone offer some "dummy" hints, preferably with step by step for settings on this camera :-p ie: Telling me change exposure time etc means well, but I may not have a clue where to find that option on this beastie :-p

Some shots I just took :

https://imgur.com/a/YbqpZ

XPD / Gavin

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kiwifidget

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#1449423 12-Dec-2015 22:34

Nice shots of Orion.
I know nothing about photography sorry but I do enjoy watching the night sky.

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josephhinvest

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#1449540 13-Dec-2015 08:17

Thierry Legault, an amazing astrophotographer, has a book that looks great, not really "Dummies" level, but would surely be an excellent resource. He travels the world setting up incredible photographs that only have fractions of seconds to be captured. Pretty amazing. This one is of an ISS transit of the moon(tricky!) during a lunar eclipse(ludicrous!). . This is the Hubble Space Telescope, passing in front of the sun, during a transit of Venus! Mind boggling!

Cheers,
Joseph

Edit. I love that for this last photo in the description this is just casually mentioned "HST distance to observer: 750 km. Speed: 7.5 km/s." Absurd!

tdgeek

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#1449544 13-Dec-2015 08:45

Awesome. Ive toyed with this topic, particular scopes, but never done it. My barrier has been how to start. I can see a situation of me one day becoming pretty versed in telescopes, then seeing how its a pity Ive gone through numerous scopes in the learning process. Not cheap.

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#1449546 13-Dec-2015 08:50

https://www.google.co.nz/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwi3w6Pfi9fJAhXLG5QKHee8AkMQjRwIBw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fspaceflight1.nasa.gov%2Fgallery%2Fimages%2Fshuttle%2Fsts-110%2Fhtml%2Fsts110-353-012.html&psig=AFQjCNG43t1sIycc93G2diuFsWwqkniOvQ&ust=1450036116862813

xpd

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#1449547 13-Dec-2015 08:51

Just looked up price of the camera... yeah, not a hobby I'll be wanting to get into full time ;) I know work wont mind me borrowing the camera once in a blue moon but terrified something will happen to it now LOL

If this cloud cover buggers off tonight Ill play some more and see what I can do...

XPD / Gavin

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andrew027

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#1450148 14-Dec-2015 14:08

If you google it, you'll find plenty of advice. I was reading this guide just a week or so ago: How to photograph the milky way.

But, as you asked for a "dummies" guide, there's always this: Photographing the Night Sky Using Your Digital SLR - for Dummies!

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Jaxson

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#1450155 14-Dec-2015 14:22

Usually boils down to taking a fairly quick high iso shot, because you get a lot of movement with the earths rotation.

example guide here

Basically you don't get much time using a zoom lens before the stars will start to streak on your image, as they move across the sky.

To avoid this you either need to:
1) take a single quick photo, at reasonably high ISO
2) make a mount that will move your camera at the same rate as the stars are moving, so you can take a longer exposure at a lower ISO
3) use a Pentax that will move your camera sensor instead of the camera.

After that you're into the world of Post Processing to try and make the most of what you've captured.
To aid this, you should be shooting RAW file type, as this contains more information over a JPG equivalent.

Remember to use manual focus, using focus peaking and digital zoom to assist with nailing the right focus.
And to use a solid tripod and lock your mirror up in advance. Not sure how to do that on a Canon, but all the best.

RileyB

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#1461224 4-Jan-2016 21:56

Jaxson:

Basically you don't get much time using a zoom lens before the stars will start to streak on your image, as they move across the sky.

Zoom lens makes no difference on star streak, only focal length, exposure time, and where the camera is pointing. For example, and 400mm prime lens will get streaks much worse at the same exposure time as an 24-70 zoom lens.

As a rough guide, I would start out at about 20-30 second max for an 24mm focal length, then reduce that time in half , each time you double the focal length. So at 50mm, about 10-15 seconds, and 100mm about 5-10 seconds.

Taking Aurora, or wide angle milky way shots, vs using telephoto lens to look at individual groups of stars etc use very different methods. For the wide angle shots, all you need is a good tripod, wide open aperture (F2.8 or F4 depending on what version 24-70 you have), longish exposures (~20 sec) and nice high ISO. Don't be afraid to use 3200/6400+ on the 6D. Use live view zoomed all the way in to find a bright star that you can use to manually focus. Find something interesting to put in the foreground, and your done.

The later I don't have much experience with, but basically there are two methods I know of, a star tracker which can be fairly expensive, allowing you to use low ISO long exposure shots, or by using a method of stacking lots of very short images together, taken on a stationary tripod, the software corrects the movement. I believe these two methods can be used together for even better images.

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#1461263 5-Jan-2016 00:52

Yeah rushed that reply and poor choice of words to keep it simple.

The link I posted should give indicative shutter timings for your given choice of focal length.