Taking pictures of night sky and stars?

Bulls**t, the second and fourth photos are insane. Wow. Seriously impressed here.

Looks like rain here today. Here's hoping for a clear night soon :)
 
Amazing photos!!! I don't want to thread-jack or anything, but I just have a quick question for Sw1tchFX.

I've tried shooting at night and, like you said, I messed up my first attempt. My exposure, focus, etc was good, but I'm struggling with finding the star that the others rotate around and my lens always gets foggy. Can you cover what to do in these instances?


 
Awesome shots, Sw1tch. I'm inspired.
 
As other said,amazing pictures
thank u all for advice,i will read everything carefully...than try it out^^
 
Thanks for the tips, and Awesome Pictures...
 
Amazing photos!!! I don't want to thread-jack or anything, but I just have a quick question for Sw1tchFX.

I've tried shooting at night and, like you said, I messed up my first attempt. My exposure, focus, etc was good, but I'm struggling with finding the star that the others rotate around and my lens always gets foggy. Can you cover what to do in these instances?



The central star the others rotate around is Polaris, or the north star, its at the end of little dipper. as for lense fog? im not sure?
 
Amazing photos!!! I don't want to thread-jack or anything, but I just have a quick question for Sw1tchFX.

I've tried shooting at night and, like you said, I messed up my first attempt. My exposure, focus, etc was good, but I'm struggling with finding the star that the others rotate around and my lens always gets foggy. Can you cover what to do in these instances?

Thanks for the comments everyone!! :blushing:

The star that the others rotate around is the north star, if you find that then you're golden. When you shoot a picture headed north, you can generally get a good idea where it is after your first exposure.
 
How do you get the focus right for a star field shot ? I tried to take some last night, using a Nikon D5100. In manual mode using 30sec exposure and various iso settings and low f number. The camera was unable to autofocus on the stars. I tried using the landscape mode and that focussed great, but in that mode it wouldn't allow me to set a long exposure ......?
 
One thing to note: long shutter speeds typically create a lot of noise with a digital camera, this is not the case with film. It's one of the few areas where film still has it over digital.
 
:thumbup: As A.J. Meeker said. Beautiful pictures!
I also love nighttime photography. In the city is much easier for the shooting time will be shorter. Now, tripod and remote control are essential.

2659961710105226730S500x500Q85.jpg
2659961710105226730S500x500Q85.jpg




2220692310105226730S500x500Q85.jpg
 
Related question: does anyone know how to get the cosmos to appear in the shot as in this one?

http://rlux.com/star_party_lockwood_valley_laas_site.jpg

That has to be edited in some way. A dslr won't be able to capture nebulas! And there's a ridiculously large amount of stars in there. And that nebula is just too big. Even Orion nebula is just a small dot in the sword of orion, as is the Andromeda galaxy in the andromeda constellation.
 
Related question: does anyone know how to get the cosmos to appear in the shot as in this one?

http://rlux.com/star_party_lockwood_valley_laas_site.jpg

That has to be edited in some way. A dslr won't be able to capture nebulas! And there's a ridiculously large amount of stars in there. And that nebula is just too big. Even Orion nebula is just a small dot in the sword of orion, as is the Andromeda galaxy in the andromeda constellation.

That's not a nebula, that's the Milky Way... the exif says the following: 14mm, f/2.8, ISO 400, 245 sec shutter. The extremely long shutter time makes me think this is done with a motorized mount that compensates for the rotation of the earth.

edit: actually, now I'm sure of the mount, look at the motion blur in the trees.
 
Last edited:
Night shooting is a ton of fun, the results can be spectacular! Night shooting takes alot of time, practice, and more than anything, patience. Night shooting isn't something that you'll be done with quickly. Your first attempt will be ugly as hell, everyone screws it up the first time, trust me, don't get bummed about it. My first attempt was so bad, I deleted the pictures, and I never delete my pictures. But, over the past years I’ve formulated a pretty good method of shooting at night, but like always, your millage may vary.

Before you decide to go take pictures at night, you'll need 3 (possibly 5) things:

1. Freshly charged batteries. Nothing will kill your battery faster than long exposures. The picture of Mt. Hood below was shot on a fresh battery and believe it or not, my battery died just a couple minutes before the exposure hit 1 hour, leaving it slightly underexposed.

2. A cable release or remote. They're cheap, there's no reason you can't go and spend (maybe) $25. If you don't have one, long exposures are impossible. Pressing the shutter when your camera is set to Bulb doesn't work.

3. A real tripod. Not the crappy 25-60 dollar Sunpak/Quantaray/Slik sticks, they suck, and when it's breezy out, those lousy plastic heads don't do jack. Invest at least $200 in a Gitzo or Bogen/Manfrotto system. Trust me when I say it could easily be the last tripod you'll ever buy. I went through 3 of the lousy quantarays in 4 months to figure that one out.

(The possibly 4th one)
Another person shooting with you. If you don't have a good way to pass the time, you'll get impatient and thus, lazy, shooting yourself in the foot because you "just couldn't wait to see it".

(The possibly 5th one)
Hot packs, food, a flashlight, and a first aid kit. If you're out at 2 in the morning in the middle of a desolated area such as the mountains in below freezing temperatures, your camera battery will die quicker. Rubber band hot packs around the battery housing to keep the battery warmer and thus keeping it alive longer. Hot packs would have let my finish my Mt. Hood exposure, I know it. Food is good because it will help keep you awake, pass the time, and hey, you might actually get hungry. I always forget a flashlight and I always say "Damnit! I knew i forgot something!" I don't think I need to explain why a first aid kit is a good idea, if you're out in the middle of nowhere and something happens, it helps to be at least somewhat prepared.



Now that we have all our gear in order and we're at our location, how the heck are we going to pull this off?!?!

This is how I do it, and like i said, your mileage may vary.

Set up my camera on my tripod, hook up my cable release, compose and focus. My camera has a "virtual horizon" so I can easily see if 'm level or not, if your camera doesn't have that, I suggest getting your hands on a bubble level that slips in your hot shoe. Also, I set my WB pretty cool to keep things looking like night, if it's too warm, you'll make it look like daylight. I start off at about 2500K. (if you don't know what color temperature the light sources are, I suggest learning that quick instead of using the daylight, cloudy, or shade WB's).

Now what about exposure, the important part right?

I start off my very first exposure at 30 seconds ISO 6400, f/8. If that doesn't give me an accurate exposure, then I adjust my ISO up or down. I'd rather do 30 seconds at 25600 then 2 minutes at 6400. If I still don't get a good exposure, I’ll open up my aperture, if still under, THEN I’ll adjust my shutter speed. It's just a test shot, it's going to be deleted anyway, so why the heck should I care if its noisy or not. Once I find out what my exposure is, I count down and crunch the numbers to whatever the exposure is at ISO 100 and f/8.

Why f/8 you might ask? because it's your lens's sharpest aperture without being diffraction limited no matter what camera you're shooting, and 98% of the time, gives you enough DOF.

So, if my test shot is 30 seconds, f/8, ISO 12800, what is my final exposure going to be?

Lets bring down the ISO..

30 sec/ISO 12800
1 min/ISO 6400
2 min/ISO 3200
4 min/ISO 1600
8 min/ISO 800
16 min/ISO 400
32 min/ISO 200
1 hour/ISO 100

OY VEY! 1 HOUR!! What the hell am I going to do for an hour!! good thing I brought a friend over to chat and shoot with :)

Now, you might have to do something called "Long Exposure Noise Reduction" If you shoot Nikon and are using a D3, D3x, or D700, I'd go so far as to say you can skip this if your exposure is under 45 minutes. Nikon's full frame bodies are flat-out incredible when it comes to amp noise. The Mt. Hood shot was 1 hour without LENR (long exposure noise reduction), and it's pretty dang clean.

If you shoot Nikon and DON'T use a D3, D3x, or D700, then you MUST use LENR, otherwise, youre images will be riddled with noise and/or even worse, you'll get amp noise which looks like purple/magenta clouds in the sides and corners of the frame. My D70 was atrocious at this, anything over 2 minutes even at ISO 200 was completely worthless without it.

LENR is great, except for one thing. The way it works is that it takes another exposure for the same length of time then subtracts the noise pattern from the exposed image. So, if you have a 20 minute exposure, you've got 20 minutes of LENR, meaning you need to wait 40 minutes to see if you got the picture right (or wrong). Bummer. Also, ambient temperature affects noise in long exposures, so when your camera is doing LENR, you need to make sure that you leave your camera alone so it can be in the same temperature as your exposure was, that way the subtraction will be as accurate as possible.


So, as long as you're on a stable tripod, focused, composed correctly, using a cable release and are patient enough, you'll get awesome results from your digital camera. One great thing about digital is that reciprocity failure doesn't exist on it! If it did, you'd have to at least double your exposure! No way!

Good luck, and happy shooting!!

3083047186_0e591abb06_o.jpg



3058834582_1060c7d6ce_o.jpg


3107303322_2eed42e043_o.jpg


2280780393_2f1302e1b5_o.jpg


3104508280_9553edfd8c_o.jpg


3082211745_0861d7b3a1_o.jpg



STUNNING pictures. I've always wondered how to do a star trail! So you just look for the north star? Interesting! I'm going to save all this info you wrote for future reference. I really want to experiment now! :D
 

Most reactions

New Topics

Back
Top