Bring a head lamp with you when you go out to shoot star photos. I like Sky Guide on iOS, and Sky Map seems to be a great Android option. If you want to take a photo of a specific constellation, use an app to help you find it.If there’s a lot of cloud cover, you won’t see a thing. It should be obvious, but the best time to take photos of the night sky is on a clear night.You can find the various twilight times on. Wait until after astronomical twilight ends, which is when the sun has dipped far enough below the horizon that its light rays don’t reach the atmosphere in your location. Even after the sun sets, its light still effects the night sky.Otherwise it will just interfere with your shots. If you’re just trying to take photos of the stars, try going out on nights with no moon. Here are some other tips to keep in mind: RELATED: How to Take Good Photos of the Moon Tweak things until they look good.Īs you can see, a bit of post-processing really brings it together. You should also fine tune the colors by increasing the saturation and playing around with the white balance. Using Lightroom, Photoshop, or your image editor of choice, go in there and use the tools to increase things like shadow detail, highlight detail, contrast, and exposure. One of the big “secrets” to astrophotography is post-processing. Don’t expect stunning results first time, just be prepared to learn from your mistakes. Just go out, follow the instructions above as close as you can and see what you get. Star photography, as you can see, is pretty technical, but that doesn’t mean it’s difficult. You need as much information in your images as possible. RELATED: What is Camera Raw, and Why Would a Professional Prefer it to JPG?Īstrophotography is one time when shooting RAW is essential. If your camera has a live view mode, use it to zoom in on the stars, then manually focus your lens until they are pin pricks. You won’t be able to take any star photos with your camera held in your hands! Similarly, because camera shake can be a problem, you’ll want to either use a remote trigger or the two second count down timer on your camera.Īutofocus doesn’t really work at night, so it’s best to use manual focus. Since we’re talking of shutter speeds measured in the dozens of seconds, it goes without saying that a stable tripod is an essential bit of kit. There’s also another reason to lean towards wide angle lenses: you get better landscape photos which means it’s easier to get more interesting foregrounds into your star photos. At 17mm, you can get away with 30 second exposures, while at 50mm, you will see them after 10 seconds. If you’re using a camera with a high resolution sensor, you should divide the focal length into 300 or so to get a more realistic number.Ī bit of simple algebra (or trial and error) makes it clear then, that the shorter the focal length, the longer the shutter speed can be before you see star trails. The 500 rule also doesn’t work as well with super high resolution cameras. First, if you’re using a crop sensor camera, you need to use the full frame equivalent focal length for the calculation, in other words, multiply the focal length by 1.5 before dividing it into 500. RELATED: What's the Difference Between a Full Frame and Crop Sensor Camera?Ī couple of caveats about the 500 rule. For example, if you take a photo with a 20mm lens, the maximum shutter speed you can use without star trails is 25 seconds. Simply divide 500 by the focal length of the lens, and you’ll get the answer in seconds. The 500 Rule serves as a guideline for what the max shutter speed you can use at a given focal length is. Because the stars move in the sky, if you leave the shutter open too long, they’ll smear, and instead of having sharp pin pricks of light, you’ll have weird blurs like you can see in the image below. Shutter speed is a little more complex for astrophotography, and it’s tied to what focal length you use. For professional cameras you can go to 3200 or 6400 in a push, while older cameras will probably need to drop to 800. For most cameras, this will be about 1600. This means you want to set your aperture to the widest possible value and your ISO to the highest value that gives you clean shots. For night sky photography, you’re balancing a couple of things: you want to let as much light into your camera without image quality suffering because of the stars moving or noise.
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