attempt at the stars.

[qleak]

The camera won't be able to AutoFocus on something Infinity distance away.

This is true when there isn't enough light, but your camera can't autofocus on anything when there isn't enough light!

Most AF lenses manufacturers don't have the hard infinity stop and autofocus works at infinity or at least as close to infinity as necessary (we can't ever see an object an infinite number of meters away the light would never reach us).

Again, in this case mute point. If the lens used has a hard infinity stop use it. If not hope there's a visable moon to lock your autofocus onto (for a wider lens at least). Try a test shot at 100% zoom and see if it needs adjusted.

 

[DavefromCt]

kind of lame IMO, any tricks or tips for this kind of thing, I noticed the stars were out full force tonight so I ran out in the yard and gave it a shot.

shutter was probably open for 2 or 3 minutes, the stars seem to move a descent amount in a short period of time, more than i though they would.
View attachment 85397

I manually focus then set the iso to around 640-800, then about 20 seconds on the shutter with an f stop of roughly 2.8 - 5.6. This works up to around 50mm then as the lens gets more powerful you have to shorten the time. It's fun to take the sky shots because now and then you'll get a meteor or sattelite or plane to make it more interesting. I also have taken a ton of shots then stitched them together for long star trails that you could easily get with film in the old days.

 

[dannylightning]

that looks good, I always use a f/11 or something like that and 100 ISO to try to keep the sky black. You may have a blue sky in your shot but that looks good and i can really see the stars well. next time I see a lot of stars out ill give you way a try.

thanks.

 

[bc_steve]

Manual focus, use live view zooming in on a star. Your shutter speed should be 30 sec or less. So ISO will have to be 1600 at least if shooting f2.8, higher with smaller apertures. If you're trying to pull detail out of the milky way, an even higher ISO is required.

This is what I do to focus. Setting your lens to the infinity mark is not as accurate.

 

[pgriz]

What you're looking for is maximizing the signal (star light) relative to the noise (the sky glow). There are filters that are used by astrophotographers which filter out the wavelengths most commonly associated with man-made light. This can reduce the amount of skyglow, but realistically, you need to adopt a series of strategies to improve your signal/noise ratio. They include using relatively short exposures (under 2 sec), and the use of stacking images. Using a high ISO works as long as the sky background isn't picked up as well - so again, dark skies are important.

As for focusing, as noted previously, use manual focus, and find something on the horizon which you can use as a focusing target. Then use this setting to shoot the sky.