Nightscape – How I shoot the stars and Milky Way …

update an old share from previous old blog site How I shoot stars.

it is not difficult to shoot stars as long as we have the luck and right setting, and let me share some of my experience… but it is fun and tiring for sure ……

as Earth is rotating itself, so all the stars are moving (except for the Poles star, North star, or call Polaris)… so while we shoot the sky for more than certain time the stars will become either lines or circle (depend which direction, how long you shoot usually >30s small line will be appear). to avoid this, extra telescope equipment (e.g.Losmandy G11 with Celestron C8), we can either shoot a star trail or max ~30-50s else the star will be look like a small lines instead of blinking stars….

e.g. of 727s single exposure

and sample of 30s

– I do not own one those equipment so I do not know in depth .. but basic is those equipment will auto trace the stars so we can have longer exposure (which really need it while in real dark environment and do not want to shoot super high ISO

so … I shoot as below
1. star trail

a. in real dark environment, make a rough estimation of exposure with setting below
i. biggest aperture as possible
ii. infinity focus
iii. manual focus
iv. mirror lock up
v. high ISO normally I use ~400-1600 depend the environment
vi. for the exposure depend on the light pollution … may need few try to get right exposure
vii. shoot 2 picture .. the sky one could be very long and make the foreground over expose. so shoot another exposure for foreground

– refer picture above expose 700s in single shutter

b. not so dark environment
i. biggest aperture as possible
ii. infinity focus
iii. manual focus
iv. mirror lock up
v. high ISO normally I use ~400-1600 depend the environment
vi. shoot 10-30s depend how bad is the light pollution
vii. set shooting mode to continuous shooting, and use remote to continue shooting for >20mintues (you should see some line or curve depend which direction you face)
viii. shoot 2 picture .. the sky one could be very long and make the foreground over expose. so shoot another exposure for foreground
viiii. use a software call startrail.exe (google it) or StarStax (MAC) and it can auto stack the all shots into single frame which combine the star as line/curve

or check out here
x. shoot north and south 😀 , if possible… if you prefer circle/curve compare to lines
xi. I use a software load into my android call skymap .. real coold application, you should have it , if you love night photography

so here is few sample for option b

~40minutes exposure

exposure of ~30minutes of F2.8 @ISO800

 

to capture Milky Way, it is almost same like a star but it is more sensitive to light pollution and rotation.. (mean star trail , and we try to avoid that for Milky way as it crease blur cloud object instead the beautiful milky way)

we may need to take note of rule 600 where

600 rule simply basic rule to avoid “star trail” effect while we have too long exposure on our effective focal length.. e.g.

16mm on FULL frame, we should have max exposure of 600/16=37.5s

16mm on canon APS-c , we should have max exposure of 600/16*1.6=23.4

so if we have anything more than the exposure time the the rotation of earth will create “star trail” effect create blur effect on to our frame.

 

with minimum light pollution .. the color of the milky will look so beautiful

from Bali …

 

e.g. of light pollution

 

and Milky way near city (Kuala Lumpur) .. not viewable by nake eye .. but make use of big aperture len .. it can be capture

 

 

 

### update June 2012

some other topic may related

Nightscape – Other light sources ?

How I shoot Milky Way with smaller aperture lenses

more NIGHTSCAPE picture .. click HERE