Help with taking pictures of the sky..

[brtaman]

What ISO setting were you shooting at?

30 sec should be plenty. I usually get best results with f/1.8 and around 20-25s with an ISO greater than 400 usually 800. Seems to do the job, lots of stars which aren't otherwise visible appear. However, I shoot at an altitude of around 1000m with an extremely low amount of light pollution.

If you are at your lowest f-stop and highest exposure setting, the only thing to do is bump up the ISO

 

[samsomiler]

A few things - shooting the sky with lots of light pollution can be pleasing. It can make clouds visible that otherwise would have been hidden: http://www.ineedcaffeine.com/conten...2130-to-2330/brian-stuckey-photography-13.jpg

..but that is not what we're going for here.

As far as actual tactics go, long exposures have drawbacks. On most dSLRs, a long exposure will cause the CMOS sensor to heat up. This causes little dots to appear on the final image. While they are easy to remove, they can still be a pain.

Large aperture clearly helps, but large aperture + a decent focal length = $big money.

That leave bumping up the sensitivity of the sensor. That will allow you to record images in lower light, but that also means more noise.

The best galaxy photos that I've seen non-pros take generally involve several exposures combined to reduce noise + lots of luck. The sky will move, but it does so in a predictable arc. You can generally get the stars to align across multiple exposures but doing so will cause your ground to shift. You'll end up creating a composite photo with the ground and the sky taken at different times. That is not a bad thing - it is just a lot of work.

As far as when and where to shoot: Cold nights in the middle of the country with no light pollution. Cold air (30's F...) doesn't hold moisture and that will give you a sharper image. Humidity will cause things to look a little blurry/fuzzy so shooting on a dry night should help your final product.

Just my 2 cents. I could be wrong

About the clouds .. check out my profile pic.. I had no clue those clouds were there!

 

[randomlugia]

What ISO setting were you shooting at?

30 sec should be plenty. I usually get best results with f/1.8 and around 20-25s with an ISO greater than 400 usually 800. Seems to do the job, lots of stars which aren't otherwise visible appear. However, I shoot at an altitude of around 1000m with an extremely low amount of light pollution.

If you are at your lowest f-stop and highest exposure setting, the only thing to do is bump up the ISO

That seems like a bad idea. Putting the ISO that high on most point and shoots that aren't designed for low-light pictures usually turn out horrible. I can set my camera to ISO 3200 for 1/2 sec, and see way more stars in the picture, but the grains just aren't worth it. I know some SLRs can use ISO boost to ISO 12800, but I'm not sure how great that would look.

 

[dr-ebert]

1. Open the shutter to a low f-number. Don't use the lowest one you've got, stay one or two clicks above it (the lowest one will most likely reveal serious lens aberrations).
2. Generally use a focal length in the 50mm area (well, for analog cameras - I guess for digital ones that would be around 35-40mm) to capture a sufficient amount of interesting detail, like a whole constellation. Longer focal length also generally means higher f/number which translates to much longer required exposure times.
3. Use a high DIN/ISO (sensitivity) setting. Again you may have to experiment; too high and you may get too much image noise.
4. If you're using exposure times above 15-30 seconds and you don't want star trails, you need to "track" the sky. The easiest way is to mount the camera atop a telescope with drive motor ("piggyback").
5. If your camera is limited in exposure time, you can take multiple pictures and then "add" them using special astro software. That's a complex process (you'll also need to take "dark frames" and subtract them first from the raw pictures, and other things), so it may be more than you want to tackle.

A good area to point your camera at in the coming months is the constellation Orion. You've got not only an easily-recognisable constellation and the famous Orion nebula, but there is a lot of other nebulosity in the area like the horsehead nebula, the flame nebula and "Barnards loop". Another very rewarding and still visible area is the constellation Swan/Cygnus.

 

[brtaman]

That seems like a bad idea. Putting the ISO that high on most point and shoots that aren't designed for low-light pictures usually turn out horrible. I can set my camera to ISO 3200 for 1/2 sec, and see way more stars in the picture, but the grains just aren't worth it. I know some SLRs can use ISO boost to ISO 12800, but I'm not sure how great that would look.

Yes it is true high ISO images produce quite some noise, but it is generally completely manageable on my slr, don't really have much experience with point n clicks.

The ISO noise produced by a camera is generally directly based on the sensor size, slr's have much larger sensors, especially full-frames. In use with long-exposure noise reduction makes a pretty nice picture of stars.

Here is a picture at around 800 ISO, don't really recall (lost alot on downsize -.-)

The main thing with photography is just to experiment. You will learn the most.

 

[Laser_Ben]

That is a stunning picture!