More Night Sky Photos

[fraser_paice]

Hi all, I've been playing in the dark again, beginning to get the hang of this astrophotography thing. do go and have a look.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/weezel...7649383738335/

[copespeak]

These are so beautiful!

I have planned to do some oils of 'last light' landscapes and you have spurred me on to have a go!

[D Akey]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDcVay5edTk

Those shots of the moon. . . man oh man is that detailed or what?

So what turned the trick where you figured out how to do these nighttime shots better, as you say?

I imagine those where they're sort of split earthbound and the stars really light up, that gives a whole new look at the idea of 'here and there'.

Super satisfying I would imagine being the photographer, sort of trawling for brilliance.

[fraser_paice]

Mr D Akey, it's all a bit of a balancing act, you need a long exposure but not so long that the Earth's movement makes the stars blur, a wide angle lens helps you use longer exposures because of maths, also a fast lens is good. The biggest thing is the fact that modern cameras can get astonishing ISO levels. Shooting RAW files allows to to drag more details when post processing and finally living somewhere with low light pollution. Most of those were taken with a 23mm lens 15 seconds, f2, ISO 32000.
The moon is a different kettle of fish.

[Peter Pinckney]

No,no,no Neil...................you've been talking to the wrong people.......................the Moon is made of cheese" not fish.

Stunning photos mate! ! ! !

[hildee]

Absolutely gorgeous! There's nothing like the feel of being "out there" amongst it and being awe-inspired!

[narf]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDcVay5edTk

Those shots of the moon. . . man oh man is that detailed or what?

So what turned the trick where you figured out how to do these nighttime shots better, as you say?

I imagine those where they're sort of split earthbound and the stars really light up, that gives a whole new look at the idea of 'here and there'.

Super satisfying I would imagine being the photographer, sort of trawling for brilliance.

You need a DSLR with a chip which has very low noise at high ISO values and you need a dark sky at the country side or
your sky will turn into green from the city lights after 20 seconds.

With a short focal lenght you can do shots with 30 or 40 seconds without any stars turning into stripes. A lot of
people do timelapse videos from the night sky with high ISO and 20sec exposure time.

Here some links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJmTbhC1O3s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EM5lM5WEY3Q

http://vimeo.com/71692811
(This was done by a club mate of mine. Note, that the long exposure time turns night into day
And the bright object in the sky is not the sun, but the moon.)

It is always fun to watch those videos on a beamer.


With my crappy cameras and city sky, I can only do moon photography atm:

http://astrofoto.bloggt-in-braunschweig.de/mond/


It is a quite expensive hobby, Many of my friends use something like the
Canon EOS 5D Mark III with lenses which cost much more than 1000$.

Some guy said: Astronomy is a hobby like a black hole where we all throw our money in. ;-)

[kenmo]

Very nice....many thanks for sharing....

[Victor Osaka]

Have you heard of a program called DeepSky Stacker? http://deepskystacker.free.fr/english/index.html

I've had great success with it. It's also free.

It really enhances / captures many more starts than you would normally capture using standard techniques.