shooting stars ?

[jabber]

im off hiking into the welsh mountains in a few days...

Im after some tips on photographing the moon and star constellations...
I have dabbled in the garden but am realy disapointed with the result...tbh they were crap ! seems to be too much waste light around. I fiddled with lots of different settings but to no avail

any ideas on camera settings to start me off ?


Thx

JABBER

 

[jgs001]

Jabber, I presume you are going to be using a tripod to mount the camera as opposed to an Astronomy mount (too heavy for hiking ). Manually focus on the moon if she's about, Jupiter if you can see it, or a really bright star that you can see, it's easier to focus zoomed in and then zoom out again. On neither of my lenses can I just set the focuser to infinity as it's too far. Don't forget to turn off IS if you have it, I did once and it plays havoc with the star shapes.

If you use a wide angled lens, or the wide end of the kit, you can get away with about 20 - 30 second exposures, before the stars start to trail (unless that's the effect you want). If you want to capture the star field, then set for a nice wide aperture, 30 second exposures and ISO around 800. Capture a bunch of them (at least 10, the more the better). Then when you're done, but without changing any camera settings, put the lens cap on and shoot another 10 (these are called darks and are used for subtracting sensor noise, amp glow etc from the image frames). When you get back, you can use a program like Deep Sky Stacker to combine all the images into one and subtract the dark frames. Then you can process the resulting image in PS to bring out the stars even more, reduce light pollution etc. I've posted some I took from a reasonably dark site here.

Star trails will require a bit more experimentation, as you want longer exposure in bulb mode. There's some info in this thread.

For the moon, you're probably going to be looking at about 1/80 to 1/125 depending on the phase and whether you're zoomed to the moon or going for a more atmospheric wide angle shot. It's really hard to get the moon in a star field due to the difference in brightness levels, I've managed it once, but the moon was so burnt out it left an enormous aura across that section of the image as well.

Hope that helps.

 

[jabber]

excellent thx...i got burnt out images....and really jsut lots of blurrrrr

Im after really sharp images ( if poss )in a landscaped scene .

ill take a look at that software now

liking the shots u linked

thx for advice

jabber