First attempt at astrophotography

[danielfellowes]

Despite having no real previous experience shooting anything but humans, I've recently gained an interest in astrophotography. This shot is from my first little trip out, and I would love to hear everything wrong with it, and how I can learn to fix those problems

I will be having a good read through the discussion forum as soon as I get a chance!

 

[Cheffievrs]

I’m sure @MWHCVT will point you in the right direction.. A good subject to start with, I didn’t realise you were local, Matt sometimes organises local (ish) meets for a bit of the dark stuff..

 

[MWHCVT]

Cheers buddy @Cheffievrs looking at the photo there’s really not a lot wrong at all, I notice however that your using a 10-20 lens but at 20mm, if you’d shot at 10mm instead of 20mm you’d have first of all been able to open up your aperture that little more which does make a difference with Astro stuff like this to pick up the dimmer stars, secondly you’d have also been able to shoot a longer exposure before risking visible trailing in the stars, you’d have been able to do a little over 30 seconds vs a little over 15 seconds at 20mm

 

[gremlin16]

Lovely shot.

 

[Lemaildetom]

On the plus side:
- the composition is nice, and i like this monument on the horizon.
- the white balance pleasant
- the colours look lovelly.

On the critic side of things:
- I don't think you achieved a prefect focus to infinity. The star are looking a bit blurry but i could be wrong because i can only see a small image.
- it looks pretty noisy especially in the purple colors
- i think you cannot see a lot of stars, was this shot in total darkness? Is this a light polution glow at the bottom?

What was it processed with?

 

[danielfellowes]

Cheers buddy @Cheffievrs looking at the photo there’s really not a lot wrong at all, I notice however that your using a 10-20 lens but at 20mm, if you’d shot at 10mm instead of 20mm you’d have first of all been able to open up your aperture that little more which does make a difference with Astro stuff like this to pick up the dimmer stars, secondly you’d have also been able to shoot a longer exposure before risking visible trailing in the stars, you’d have been able to do a little over 30 seconds vs a little over 15 seconds at 20mm

Thanks! I went with 20mm purely for the composition. The little hut looked a bit lost shooting at 10mm. In hindsight, I feel like I should have got my 24mm f/1.8 out for it. I will be sure to test out the longer exposures on the 10mm next time I head out!

On the plus side:
- the composition is nice, and i like this monument on the horizon.
- the white balance pleasant
- the colours look lovelly.

On the critic side of things:
- I don't think you achieved a prefect focus to infinity. The star are looking a bit blurry but i could be wrong because i can only see a small image.
- it looks pretty noisy especially in the purple colors
- i think you cannot see a lot of stars, was this shot in total darkness? Is this a light polution glow at the bottom?

What was it processed with?

Cheers for the feedback!

I did struggle a lot with the focus, just whacking it up to infinity seemed to look out of focus so I was playing around with it but didn't quite nail it.
I had my camera on a very high ISO at this point (I was just testing stuff out) which is a bit of a shame.
Although I thought I was basically in the middle of nowhere, there was a fair bit of light pollution around apparently - it amazed me how few lights can cause such a dramatic effect on the image!

I just ran it through Photoshop and played with some curves and preset effects - it's not something I've done before so I was a bit stumped when it came to editing the shots.

 

[Daniel_Paul]

Looks great for a first attempt Daniel, I did the same as you a few weeks ago. I also found the focusing the hardest part in Live View! Well done though, nice shot!!