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Stars and Moon images with 450d (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter Nikon Kid
- Start date
Ray.Scott
Well-known member
Never tried taking the stars, but the attached moon shot was taken with my 30D + 400 lens + 2x converter on tripod - on 23 December 2007.
Settings were Manual mode, 60th sec at F11, 100 Iso and using mirror lock up to prevent camera shake through vibration of the shutter.
I took a few shots at varying speed settings ranging from a 40th to 120th sec, which resulted from slightly over exposed to under exposed.
Another thing which can affect the shot on a clear night is light pollution from street lighting etc, in other words try and get to the darkest place possible out the way of other lighting.
The above settings might be a good starting point, then just try altering to suite.
Hope this helps.
Settings were Manual mode, 60th sec at F11, 100 Iso and using mirror lock up to prevent camera shake through vibration of the shutter.
I took a few shots at varying speed settings ranging from a 40th to 120th sec, which resulted from slightly over exposed to under exposed.
Another thing which can affect the shot on a clear night is light pollution from street lighting etc, in other words try and get to the darkest place possible out the way of other lighting.
The above settings might be a good starting point, then just try altering to suite.
Hope this helps.
Attachments
Phil Bishop
Well-known member
To be perfectly honest, if you are trying to get images of stars, star filed etc, you are not going to get any worthwhile results with your lens.
The big problem is that stars are much fainter than people expect, and thus the exposures required are very long. The Earth rotates-stars on the celestial equator move just about a degree-thats twice the diameter of the Moon every four minutes. Near the celestial poles it is significantly less but even Polaris shows some trailing after a comparatively short time with a long focal length.
Your best bet if you do want to record stars is to try a short focal length lens, something between 20 and 50mm will do, set the aperture wide open (though you will see vignetting and the stars near the edges wont look all that sharp) and try various exposures and iso settings and see what happens. From my suburban garden, with an F1.8 lens I cannot go much more than 20 seconds at iso 200 without the sky going orange. With a 35mm lens I start to see slight trailing of the stars on a fixed tripod at this exposure.
Best bet is a proper driven mount and a dark sky when exposures of several minutes produce great results. You could probably use the 400mm then, though tracking accurately will need to be considered.
There are plenty of astro photography resources available on the net for all levels of expertise-this is worth a look
http://www.astropix.com/HTML/I_ASTROP/INTRO.HTM
The big problem is that stars are much fainter than people expect, and thus the exposures required are very long. The Earth rotates-stars on the celestial equator move just about a degree-thats twice the diameter of the Moon every four minutes. Near the celestial poles it is significantly less but even Polaris shows some trailing after a comparatively short time with a long focal length.
Your best bet if you do want to record stars is to try a short focal length lens, something between 20 and 50mm will do, set the aperture wide open (though you will see vignetting and the stars near the edges wont look all that sharp) and try various exposures and iso settings and see what happens. From my suburban garden, with an F1.8 lens I cannot go much more than 20 seconds at iso 200 without the sky going orange. With a 35mm lens I start to see slight trailing of the stars on a fixed tripod at this exposure.
Best bet is a proper driven mount and a dark sky when exposures of several minutes produce great results. You could probably use the 400mm then, though tracking accurately will need to be considered.
There are plenty of astro photography resources available on the net for all levels of expertise-this is worth a look
http://www.astropix.com/HTML/I_ASTROP/INTRO.HTM
Vectis Birder
Itchy feet
For basic constellation shots, you'd need to set your camera and wide-angle lens up on a tripod, open up your lens to its widest aperture and use a shutter speed of at least 30 seconds. That's about as long as you can get away with before the stars trail badly, after that you'd need to get a telescope drive for your camera. This tracks against the Earth's rotation allowing astronomers and astrophotographers to keep the objects they are looking at in the field of view.
Also, for decent shots you need to get away from light pollution as well.
Also, for decent shots you need to get away from light pollution as well.
dahyon
Well-known member
Have a look at this site of Jerry Lodriguss, it shows you what is possible with a wide range of equipment, the moon section has a table for various exposure situations:
http://www.astropix.com/HTML/I_ASTROP/TOC_AP.HTM
Here is an image of the milky way from a 135mm lens on an equatorial mount at an exposure of 80secs. There first is unprocessed showing light pollution the second after processing with the freeware PixinsightLE: http://pixinsight.com/download/LE/index.html
The problem for me is the UK weather...
http://www.astropix.com/HTML/I_ASTROP/TOC_AP.HTM
Here is an image of the milky way from a 135mm lens on an equatorial mount at an exposure of 80secs. There first is unprocessed showing light pollution the second after processing with the freeware PixinsightLE: http://pixinsight.com/download/LE/index.html
The problem for me is the UK weather...
