Star sky exposures

sc0ttie

sc0ttie

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Scott
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I am looking for information on images like this one
http://www.kulturologia.ru/files/u1866/national_geograf_4.jpg

The examples I have seen seem to suggest they had a high iso and wide aperture for the exposure. Can anybody explain why this is and how that works as opposed to a smaller aperture and lower iso? I want to try some but would like to understand the process a bit better?
 
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Larger the aperture the more light that can get into the camera, meaning shorter shutter speed. Especially seeing as there is a person in the photo if you have like a 1 second plus shutter speed the person is going to move and look blurred.

Also higher the iso the brighter the shot, but high isos can make an image look noisy. I'm sure someone else will post with a far more detailed answer.

But basically the settings the picture would have been taken with make it as easy and quick as possible. Yes you could use smaller apertures and longer shutter speeds, but this just means more things can go wrong. Hope that helps a bit...
 
DuncanDisorderly said:
Good answer from Adam :)
Longer shutter speeds make the stars look blurred.
If you want stars as points, then the 500 rule comes in handy...

The best guide to night photography I know of, is this 24 page free download PDF.
It explains the 500 rule and much much more.
Click to expand...

Thanks for that link, I have read this and have found it very helpful. I hope to take some of these type of shots next week on a evening photography mission.
 
Thanks for the above link, looks like a good point for my first attempts.
 
You can't use a long shutter to shoot stars because the earth is rotating!
 
scottishguy said:
I'll think you'll find you can.
;)
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It depends on the focal length of the lens you are using as to if it will show but there is a point that you will reach depending on length of exposure where the stars will show trails due to the earth rotation unless you use a tracking mount or piggy back the camera on a scope attached to a decent goto mount.

Pop outside on a clear night with a tripod and lens and give it a go the biggest trouble now days is light polution as you will find when you start to experiment with astro photography as images such as the widefield shot of the milky way require dark sky sites to be able to capture them.
 
Gadget-Guy said:
It depends on the focal length of the lens you are using as to if it will show but there is a point that you will reach depending on length of exposure where the stars will show trails due to the earth rotation unless you use a tracking mount or piggy back the camera on a scope attached to a decent goto mount.

Pop outside on a clear night with a tripod and lens and give it a go the biggest trouble now days is light polution as you will find when you start to experiment with astro photography as images such as the widefield shot of the milky way require dark sky sites to be able to capture them.

A tracking mount that some amazing pictures on here have been taken with is all thats needed. Have tried astrology photography and its not the easiest subject to do.

If I could afford one of the motorized tracking mounts, I'd do a lot more night photography.

As I said originally said. You can do long exposures of the stars, as the previous poster had said you can't.
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Depends on how much you mean by expensive as you dont need a complete goto mount now days like you used to.

Have a look at this link http://astrotrac.com/ as you can sometimes pick up the earlier model on E-Bay at a reasonable price.

Very portable,very accurate and you dont need an expensive scope to use it ;).
 
Read last weeks amateur photographer which covered this.
 
JSER said:
Read last weeks amateur photographer which covered this.
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Do you not think it would be more helpful, and a bit more in the spirit of Talk Photography, to actually offer some advice rather than just telling the poster to read a magazine?
 
JSER said:
Read last weeks amateur photographer which covered this.
Click to expand...


Why? He is asking on here. Advising him to read a magazine as about as helpful as a dose of scabies.
 
fracster said:
Why? He is asking on here. Advising him to read a magazine as about as helpful as a dose of scabies.
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Especially as the magazine referred is a weekly publication, and is removed from the shelves when the new edition arrives - so - what you're saying is "go and spend £££ on a back issue of a magazine (the sat 22/10/2011 edition), because I can't be bothered typing a sensible answer...
 
DuncanDisorderly said:
And you still wont get better than the link posted earlier in this thread!
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I agree with the above.

As for the inane comment about scabies from another poster, many a reply on talk photography refer people to magazines and other sites, it just so happened that AP did a good article on just this subject last week.
 
Well, Jeremy, if you read the journalistic feast, then perhaps you could share your gained knowledge with him, rather than just refer the OP to said publication.
 
JSER said:
I agree with the above.

As for the inane comment about scabies from another poster, many a reply on talk photography refer people to magazines and other sites, it just so happened that AP did a good article on just this subject last week.
Click to expand...

And we do try and stop all those replies.
 
scottishguy said:
It depends on the focal length of the lens you are using as to if it will show but there is a point that you will reach depending on length of exposure where the stars will show trails due to the earth rotation unless you use a tracking mount or piggy back the camera on a scope attached to a decent goto mount.

Pop outside on a clear night with a tripod and lens and give it a go the biggest trouble now days is light polution as you will find when you start to experiment with astro photography as images such as the widefield shot of the milky way require dark sky sites to be able to capture them.

A tracking mount that some amazing pictures on here have been taken with is all thats needed. Have tried astrology photography and its not the easiest subject to do.

If I could afford one of the motorized tracking mounts, I'd do a lot more night photography.

As I said originally said. You can do long exposures of the stars, as the previous poster had said you can't.
Click to expand...

astrology photography ..... ?
 
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Gadget-Guy said:
Depends on how much you mean by expensive as you dont need a complete goto mount now days like you used to.

Have a look at this link http://astrotrac.com/ as you can sometimes pick up the earlier model on E-Bay at a reasonable price.

Very portable,very accurate and you dont need an expensive scope to use it ;).
Click to expand...

The astrotrac is a very competent piece of kit and is as you say very portable. However it''s certainly not cheap at about £600 and then you'll need a good sturdy tripod to use it. I have the first model and can't fault it much but you still need a reasonable understanding of the sky to be able to use it.

@ OP

Shots of the Milky Way are easy enough with a decent WA lens and fairly short exposures 15-20 secs is usually okay and allows for some nice foreground interest. Take lots of shots then align them in PS or DSS (free)

If you want to do deep sky stuff such as Orion, Pleiades etc then you can easily use a lens of about 200mm to get some good results but you will need a driven mount. Look for EQ1, EQ2 or EQ3 type mounts, bigger the number the more sturdy it is and all these are often on Ebay second-hand and reasonably cheap.

If you are thinking of buying a scope to use? then most come with the mount at not much extra cost, but do your homework as there are some really poor scopes out there.
 
I think he ment astro photography when he replied to my post unless he means wide field shots of the constellations ;).

Theres loads of info on the net regarding wide field astro photography so Google is your friend but that first link is a great starting point and a very good read :thumbs:
 
Gadget-Guy said:
I think he ment astro photography when he replied to my post unless he means wide field shots of the constellations ;).

Theres loads of info on the net regarding wide field astro photography so Google is your friend but that first link is a great starting point and a very good read :thumbs:
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I know what I meant, lol. Have just read that back what I typed earlier. Made more sense that I thought it would. Was sitting A&E at the time after getting morphine and other pain killers for kidney stones. Don't actually remember typing most of it lol.:bonk:
 
scottishguy said:
I know what I meant, lol. Have just read that back what I typed earlier. Made more sense that I thought it would. Was sitting A&E at the time after getting morphine and other pain killers for kidney stones. Don't actually remember typing most of it lol.:bonk:
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Feel for you mate as have been in that situation myself but the morphine is good :D

O.P.

A little bit more info can be found here as a starting point but its not as good as that first link.

And if you get the bug then cloudynights.com is a good site with loads of info about astro photography.

There are also a few free apps available for the i-phone and android that will help you find your way round the night sky that work really well such as Google Sky Map and also Heavens Above is a good place to find details of up and coming meteor showers and when the International Space Station is passing over the UK and they also have an app.
 
Hi

I recently tried this out on a trip to Tuscany, where we were staying in a place with very little ambient light.

Things I learnt:

- You need some foreground interst, like a house, group of trees etc
- Use the widest angle lens and point the camera up to the night sky, framing in your point of interest.
- Use an ISO of around 800. This I found gives the best results
- Set apperture to infinity
- Set the exposure time to 30secs
- set to JpeG (I know, I know - but you really don't want 300 raw pics to convert).
- Use a remote release, so you can leave the camera to automatically take pics every 30 secs (around 2-3 hrs is enough). Make sure you have an empty card and a full battery.
- Some people say set your camera to bulb and leave it open as long as possible. However this produces a pic with lots of noise and worse can burn out the sensor on a digital camera
- Download http://www.startrails.de ( a free app) this stitches all your pics together into one photo - awesome for a free download.

Oh and Most important set the camera up before it gets dark and before having a glass of wine !!
 
photolc said:
Oh and Most important set the camera up before it gets dark and before having a glass of wine !!
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LOL :beer:

And... If anyone on a Quad bike stops to have a chat; tell them to turn off their headlights!
Happened to me and I had to throw away lots of the 30s shots I was taking; but at least I got something, a single exposure would have been ruined!
 
I'll tag onto your thread, as I wanted to ask a similar question.

I'm off to the lakes in a couple of weeks, and the place where I'm staying has no light pollution, or extreme minimal. And it's like looking at a scene from Star Wars when you look up to the skies, proper amazing scenery.

However, I'd love to know how to take a photo of the stars, capturing it how I see it, so non star trails in my photo if possible. What would I need to do, to take a photo of that, with no landscape, just pitch black sky with millions of stars?
 
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