Night Sky Photography

fixXxer

Just wondering if anyone here has experience shooting star scapes at night?
I'm heading to Achill Island at the weekend and (weather permitting) I thought I might try taking some night sky shots to see what I can come up with. I will be using a Nikon D3300 and a 35mm 1.8 with a wired remote. I plan to try some 15-30 minute exposures for star trails, and I'm reading up on overlaying shorter exposures to build up an image.
As I've not tried this before anyone with advice on shooting or post processing would be welcome

paulusdu

from my own limited experience, shooting at night at this time of the year, you have a lot of light still left in the sky even if you leave it til around 12 or 1. Achill is as west as you can get, so its bright there until 10ish. Shoot late, and use as low ISO as you can to reduce the noise. Make sure you have your tripod on really solid ground, don;t put it on decking or anything that will move when walked on.
Have fun and make sure you stick up some results.

.Longshanks.

Wear warming clothes than you thought you would need!

Camera wise. Focus to infinity usual manual focus. Turn off AF and any image stabilisation. You will need a minimum of 30 seconds to pick up a star trail using the 500-rule:

500 divided by the effective focal length = Maximum exposure time you can use in seconds before the stars start to trail. So if using 16mm on a full frame camera, then the maximum exposure time I can use will be 500/16 = 31.25 seconds.

I have tried both super long exposures for 30+ minutes and also multiple 30 second shots stacked - with better results with the stacked. The reason is because you know pretty quickly if something is wrong. Plus it means you can significantly cut down on noise and its not as draining on the battery.

If stacking shot Jpeg as it cuts down on the computer processing time afterward. You can find free programs via google to automate the stacking process. I used StarstaX on my mac.

paulusdu wrote: »

from my own limited experience, shooting at night at this time of the year, you have a lot of light still left in the sky even if you leave it til around 12 or 1. Achill is as west as you can get, so its bright there until 10ish. Shoot late, and use as low ISO as you can to reduce the noise. Make sure you have your tripod on really solid ground, don;t put it on decking or anything that will move when walked on.
Have fun and make sure you stick up some results.

You only need to stick to low ISO if going for a long exposure.
Stacked with ISO 640


Single exposure ISO 4000

fixXxer

Thanks for the tips! I'll definitely give both themoths a try but I have to admit I'm a little worried about the 30 minutes overheating the sensor. I see there's a windows version of starstax was well so I can read up on it on the train tomorrow
Looking forward to trying this but as always, prepared for the first attempts being failures!

OldGoat

Don't forget to chat with that nice bunch of nerds over in the Astrophotography forum.
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=1578

Tiriel

Also, we were just told about a fireworks display in Bray as part of Summerfest this weekend - Monday night - a group of us might head to it if you'd like to join us. http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057260309#

Nerro

For star trails have a look at this page, some very good advice there

starcircleacademy.com/startrails/

M.J.M.C

This article really helped me understand astrophotography:
http://petapixel.com/2014/01/29/picking-great-lens-milky-way-photography/

LUZ

ive always wanted to have a go but i never get the evenings to myself, im keeping an eye on this thread too for all the tips : )
a friend of mine does some really lovely night photography but i dont think id ever get to that level ..

fixXxer

OK, Back from Achill.
The night time shoot didn't go so well. There were a lot of fast moving clouds which made multishots and long single shots messy and bad looking. Also, the moon was stupidly bright, so there was only a limited square of sky I could shoot at and not have bright patches. Still, it was fun to try.
I walked down from Valley village to the waters edge nearly, down a pitch black lane way between pitch black fields. It was quite a surreal experience to be on my own in all the blackness away from people and sounds. I did have an invisible donkey friends though. I never saw him in the night, but his braying drifted across every now and then. Oh and checking my phone on the way home was a bad idea. I didn't notice the bright screen was blinding me to my path and I strayed off the track and fell into a ditch.

So in summary, the tips I read here seemed like they would work well, I just need some better weather conditions before trying again.

Cork_girl wrote: »

Also, we were just told about a fireworks display in Bray as part of Summerfest this weekend - Monday night - a group of us might head to it if you'd like to join us. http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057260309#

Cheers for the invite! However I'm on child duty tonight so won't be able to make it. Are meet ups usually announced here?

OldGoat

Meetups and Walks usually get announced in the Photography Events & Projects subforum. There is no fixed format to them, usually just someone makes an announcement with a "Where and When".

If you include pub time they are more popular.

fixXxer

Not really the same as star photography but got a decent shot of the supermoon:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/sad_ryu/14878594254/

Tiriel

fixxxer wrote: »

Not really the same as star photography but got a decent shot of the supermoon:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/sad_ryu/14878594254/

Great shot - interested in seeing how you get on with the stacking software, I've never used any myself!

eoglyn

i'm not really sure what you expect you'll achieve by stacking 30 images of the moon. I don't think you'll get any benefit of focus stacking the moon.

Interested to see any examples where you've see this done before or your own results.

fixXxer

eoglyn wrote: »

i'm not really sure what you expect you'll achieve by stacking 30 images of the moon. I don't think you'll get any benefit of focus stacking the moon.

Interested to see any examples where you've see this done before or your own results.

Well, it was 30 odd shots at different light levels.

I read this on dpreview:
http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/51728430

Seemed like an interesting idea to try and get some more detail out of a shot. I've not had huge success with the stacking though. The edges of the moon look great but the central area is a mess.

eoglyn

cool, interesting link.

i think the difference might be that they have shot a half moon rather than a full, i think that way you get the cool shadows on the craters, it brings out a kind of 3d effect. You won't get that with the supermoon.

Also their focal length is ridiculously long.

fixXxer

eoglyn wrote: »

cool, interesting link.

i think the difference might be that they have shot a half moon rather than a full, i think that way you get the cool shadows on the craters, it brings out a kind of 3d effect. You won't get that with the supermoon.

Also their focal length is ridiculously long.

The Half moon is the 17th so I might try again over the next few days just to see what I can do. The focal lenght is a problem. Limited to 300mm and heavy cropping. Would be nice to get my hands on something around the 800mm or higher lenght but thats too rich for my blood. A telescope with a DSLR mount would be an option if only I knew someone with that set up

eoglyn

I'd say anything but a full moon for a similar result, doesn't have to be exactly on the half.

probably little point in investing in specific equipment unless you are going to get into astrophotography in a much bigger way.

Wailin

fixxxer wrote: »

Well, it was 30 odd shots at different light levels.

I read this on dpreview:
http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/51728430

Seemed like an interesting idea to try and get some more detail out of a shot. I've not had huge success with the stacking though. The edges of the moon look great but the central area is a mess.

Yeah there is no need to stack moon shots, ends up looking over processed I think.
One shot at 1/200sec and cropped:
Moon by Wailin..., on Flickr
If, on the other hand your shooting fainter objects like star clusters, gas clouds etc, you'll definitely need to stack and the more the better to reduce noise.
This, for example, is a stack of 12, but really you'd want 20 plus if you were thinking of printing:
Orion nebula (M42 & M43) by Wailin..., on Flickr

Still, good effort with 300mm focal length. Shooting a half moon is much more rewarding alright, looking forward to having another go myself when the conditions are good.

fixXxer

To my untrained eye, that skywatcher looks like a monster bit of kit!

Wailin

fixxxer wrote: »

To my untrained eye, that skywatcher looks like a monster bit of kit!

It is, and it's also massively under used!

fixXxer

selling it on the cheap then?

Wailin

fixxxer wrote: »

selling it on the cheap then?

Ha yeah, it has crossed my mind but no, I'll hold onto it for now.