Night sky and star trails fail

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c-m

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Took my D50 & 35mm 1.8 with me to a dark skies sight last night.

It was a clear enough night, and obviously being in the middle of nowhere there were plenty of stars.

I set the camera up for multiple shots at 200iso f4 30s. The result was that the camera barely caught any light at all. There was no chance of any foreground showing up at all, and only the faintest hint of stars.

I then changed to 400iso and f2.8, but still everything was far too dark.

What was I doing wrong? Surely a dark area away from any light pollution is great for seeing the stars.

Thanks
 
It was my first go at it last night,
I found ISO400 would get most of the brighter stars but ISO800 picked up so much more!

Unsure if thats the problem in your case perhaps upload a image to show?

I'm sure some one knowing will post along soon!
 
Stupidly I deleted the images in annoyance after checking them on the computer last night.

On thing I found was that it was just too dark to check the images at the scene, so it was difficult to know exactly what I was shooting.

Perhaps I should have gone to a lighter area, instead of a stargazers spot. lol
 
Are you trying to do star trails or just a photo? Start rails I always do in one photo, not multiple shots,
 
Take a look at this tutorial - Photography Guide: Star Trails put together by one of our members (MWHCVT) and posted in the Talk Photography > Tutorials, Links and Reviews > Tutorials and Guides > Photography Technique forum.

There is contained within that guide, a caveat to using a single exposure for star trails -
There are to distinct ways to approach the capture of a light trail, the traditional way is to open the camera shutter for a extended period of time to allow the camera to record the movement of the stars across the sky, and it is possible under the right conditions to achieve exposures in excess of one hour in a single exposure to capture the stars movement. A note of caution with this method is the risk of your camera/sensor overheating so please take this into consideration
Click to expand...
 
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I took a load of images hoping to catch a Perseid or two yesterday morning. Only one Perseid, but I did get images good enough for star trails.

I shot 20 second exposures at f2.8 and ISO 1600. When you add the images for trails a lot of the noise disappears.
 
Are you sure you've not done something daft like leaving a polarizing filter on the camera or something? That would drop your exposure, obviously.

The only other thing I can think of is continuing to pump up your ISO. Here's a rough shot I took from the back garden of a house in a rural town (so quite dark, but with some light pollution). It was one of a series of quick test shots, just playing around to see what sort of settings might produce nice starscapes. Although, I was trying not to get trails, hence the fast(ish) shutter speed and the very high ISO to compensate:

6561576655_428427c9ef.jpg


50mm, ISO 3200, 8 secs, f/1.8
 
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