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HelenC

HelenC

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Helen
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Hi All
I'm thinking of heading out into the garden to try my hand at Astro Photography for the first time.
In my kit bag I have Canon 5D MkII with 24-105 f4L, 70-200 2.8 IS USM, 16-35 f4 IS USM plus a nifty fifty. Tripod, remote release etc.

Can anyone help with recommendations as to which lens / focal length would be best and any good ideas on settings etc. All help appreciated... I am in rural Suffolk so dark skies are good here and the next couple of nights forecast clear as a bell.

Helen
 
Immediate thoughts - since you have no tracking mount you're limited to short exposures before the stars start trailing. The longer the focal length the less time you have. It's the wrong time of year for the Milky Way so stick on a short focal length, point in the direction of some of the brighter constellations (try west or south west - also early in the night Venus is brilliant in the west at the moment) and experiment to see how long you can go before the movement of the stars becomes unacceptable. There is in theory a way of calculating how long that should be but it depends very much on where in the sky you're pointing. You're talking seconds rather than minutes so there's nothing lost by trial and error. Crank up the iso as high as you dare and use the widest aperture you have available. I don't know the 5D so I don't know how well or otherwise it handles high iso noise. Lens on manual focus, obviously. I'm guessing the 5D has live view so use that to get best focus. Watch out for these infernal Starlink satellites. Some people seem to like them. Those people are not astronomers! You might, though, pick up a Lyrid meteor if you're lucky. Just have some fun and see what you end up with. The beauty of digital :)
 
16-35 at f/4 for the whole night sky. At 16mm you should get away with up to 20 seconds exposure. At 50mm for constellations probably around 8 seconds max. ISO...... Maybe 1600 to start with....

Milky Way might just be starting to show before dawn in the south/south east but you'll want a low horizon.

Is your remote a programmable intervelometer? If so, you may be able to give star trails a go. I never have, my boy did from his house a few nights ago and he didn't do too bad really..... I need to do better obviously, as I can't be outdone by a 14 year old! :ROFLMAO:
 
Jannyfox said:
Immediate thoughts - since you have no tracking mount you're limited to short exposures before the stars start trailing. The longer the focal length the less time you have. It's the wrong time of year for the Milky Way so stick on a short focal length, point in the direction of some of the brighter constellations (try west or south west - also early in the night Venus is brilliant in the west at the moment) and experiment to see how long you can go before the movement of the stars becomes unacceptable. There is in theory a way of calculating how long that should be but it depends very much on where in the sky you're pointing. You're talking seconds rather than minutes so there's nothing lost by trial and error. Crank up the iso as high as you dare and use the widest aperture you have available. I don't know the 5D so I don't know how well or otherwise it handles high iso noise. Lens on manual focus, obviously. I'm guessing the 5D has live view so use that to get best focus. Watch out for these infernal Starlink satellites. Some people seem to like them. Those people are not astronomers! You might, though, pick up a Lyrid meteor if you're lucky. Just have some fun and see what you end up with. The beauty of digital :)
Click to expand...

Thanks Jan.. that's really helpful. I have done a bit of research on the technical aspects but probably need to know where to point the camera at what time of year. Much appreciated. As you say.. I can just play around and see what happens.
 
LeeRatters said:
16-35 at f/4 for the whole night sky. At 16mm you should get away with up to 20 seconds exposure. At 50mm for constellations probably around 8 seconds max. ISO...... Maybe 1600 to start with....

Milky Way might just be starting to show before dawn in the south/south east but you'll want a low horizon.

Is your remote a programmable intervelometer? If so, you may be able to give star trails a go. I never have, my boy did from his house a few nights ago and he didn't do too bad really..... I need to do better obviously, as I can't be outdone by a 14 year old! :ROFLMAO:
Click to expand...

Thanks Lee.. will give it a go with the shorter exposures. I have the right remote but perhaps not the patience for star trails just yet and it's still a bit nippy out there at night :LOL:
 
HelenC said:
Thanks Lee.. will give it a go with the shorter exposures. I have the right remote but perhaps not the patience for star trails just yet and it's still a bit nippy out there at night :LOL:
Click to expand...

You can stack multiple images to reduce noise as the next stage :) I use Sequator (PC) but there is one for Mac too but I can't recall it's name right now.

My boy set his up & started shooting about 10:30pm & went out to get it in at about 2:00 am :ROFLMAO: By then he still had battery left but he'd ran out of memory!! Ended up with 160ish images.
 
HelenC said:
Thanks Lee.. will give it a go with the shorter exposures. I have the right remote but perhaps not the patience for star trails just yet and it's still a bit nippy out there at night :LOL:
Click to expand...

Also, you can download Stellarium as an App or PC program which shows you where everything is in the night sky & will be in the night sky in the future!
 
Okay.. went into garden last night only to find neighbour with lights ablaze so not great conditions. I took a few "practice" shots and when I looked at them today I wondered if I caught some of the meteor shower I read about this morning or are they the starlink satellites? Have no idea what I am looking at until I get more familiar with this I wondered if anyone could confirm what it is?


IMG_6877 by Helen Cannon, on Flickr
 
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