Beginner's advice on photographing milky way

[wolvie77]

Hi! all. I am learning to take photographs of the milky way. I have been trying to take at Marina Barrage over the past 2 Saturdays but have not been successful. i experimented with different ISO, Aperture & shutterspeed. I only manage to capture very faint spots of a few stars. during both occasions, i tried to take around 8pm to 8:30pm. Under what weather conditions is more favourable to take? Or is there any ideal spots i should try? I have a Canon EOS 650D with 17-50mm f2.8 lens & a Sony A6000 with 16mm f2.8 lens. are these good enough to take?

[ivan]

Were you pointing towards the sagittarius region? The summer milky way sets very early at this time of the year so I don't suppose you could have caught it. Try again in May to August next year. Also, there was high cloud in the sky the past two saturdays, so I don't suppose it was ideal.

[Sivakis]

Hi! all. I am learning to take photographs of the milky way. I have been trying to take at Marina Barrage over the past 2 Saturdays but have not been successful. i experimented with different ISO, Aperture & shutterspeed. I only manage to capture very faint spots of a few stars. during both occasions, i tried to take around 8pm to 8:30pm. Under what weather conditions is more favourable to take? Or is there any ideal spots i should try? I have a Canon EOS 650D with 17-50mm f2.8 lens & a Sony A6000 with 16mm f2.8 lens. are these good enough to take?

If its, as you mentioned, that you only "manage to capture very faint spots of a few stars", then it's unlikely that you will be able to capture the Milky Way even if it comes around.

The more pertinent question would be on your camera setting. You should be able to capture a lot more than just "faint spots of a few stars", even in Singapore.

Is your shutter too fast?
Is your aperture too tight?
Is your ISO too low?

That you are "experimenting" with the 3 settings means that you may not fully understand yet on how your cameras work. In terms of DSLR-astro, the 650D (with Tamron 17-50/2.8 I presume?) is more than enough - many of us still use the Canon 1000D or 450D to shoot so there's no reason why you can't.

Share with us your shutter-aperture-iso settings and your understanding and we can then start on setting you on the right path.

[Airconvent]

Hi
You can get some tips from here :

http://www.angelfire.com/stars5/singastro/

http://asignobservatoryii.com/astrophotographytips.htm