Advice on taking pics with DSLR

siahheng · Post by **siahheng** » Thu May 17, 2007 3:58 pm

Hi all, I will be going up a mountain in France (6000 feet) in June and will be bringing my Canon 400D. I would like to ask the experts here on what settings are recommended for taking pictures of the milky way and the night sky with a DSLR.

Thank you.

Siah Heng

JY · Post by JY » Thu May 17, 2007 4:04 pm

Where exactly in France are you going?
JY

Meng Lee · Post by **Meng Lee** » Thu May 17, 2007 6:13 pm

I would highly recommend Kenko Skymemo as the portable tracking mount for you to take beautiful pics. Bit don't overexpose until the pixels saturate. Take short exposures (depends on focal length and sky conditions), then average stack (or median stack), then you can preserve the colours of the stars and milky way and get a smooth, not so noisy pic.

Post by **weixing** » Thu May 17, 2007 7:30 pm

Hi,
Some suggestion you can try:
You can try setting the Lens to around F4 as most Lens perform quite good at F4 or slower... can try faster than F4 if you use those 'L' lens. Shutter speed will depend on your tracking accuracy. If you can track accurately for 5 min or longer, you can try ISO 400 or ISO 800 if you can't track so long. Took at least 10 frames of same exposure time for each shot.

By the way, remember to take in RAW mode and took at least 15 dark frames at the same exposure time. IMHO, don't worry too much about saturation... it'll took quite some time before it'll overexpose at a light pollution free night sky using ISO 400 to ISO 800... unless there is a Moon in the sky. Also, I think the histogram on the Canon DSLR is not a linear histogram, but a logarithm histogram... at least my Canon 300D is... so as long as there is some space at the right-end, it won't overexpose.... you can always try a test shot and determine the exposure time you need.

Good luck and happy imaging.

Have a nice day.

Meng Lee · Post by **Meng Lee** » Thu May 17, 2007 8:20 pm

Oops, hehe. The saturation I meant was, don't let too many stars saturate otherwise too many stars will appear white.

siahheng · Post by **siahheng** » Thu May 17, 2007 11:18 pm

Thanks Meng Lee and Weixing. Will not have any tracking equipment for the camera. Just a tripod. Perhaps I can only shoot star trails.

FY - Its somewhere in the French Alps where there is a monastery (La Salette). This trip is organised by my church.

Post by **weixing** » Thu May 17, 2007 11:27 pm

Hi,
Depend on your lens focal length and which part of the sky you shoot, you may be able to get a decent exposure time without star trails. Basically, the nearer to the sky at the pole, the longer the exposure time you can expose before star trail appear on the image.

Anyway, for your case, you might want to use ISO 800 or even ISO 1600 to get as many stars as possible in that short exposure. You can use the below exposure time as a guide:
http://www.singastro.org/viewtopic.php?t=3800

Good luck and happy imaging.

Have a nice day.

siahheng · Post by **siahheng** » Thu May 17, 2007 11:40 pm

Thanks Weixing. Will try and post my attempts when I come back in mid June.

Cheers.

Traveler · Post by **Traveler** » Fri May 18, 2007 1:38 am

weixing wrote:Hi,
remember to take in RAW mode and took at least 15 dark frames at the same exposure time.

Hi Weixing, may i know what's a dark frame? Thanks!

Meng Lee · Post by **Meng Lee** » Fri May 18, 2007 1:49 am

oh, by the way, make sure your tripod will be stable enough to withstand possible strong winds on the mountains.

A dark frame is an exposure equal in length as the light exposure and at the same temperature as the light exposure, so that the noise (mostly thermal) is recorded on the dark frame and will be used to subtract the noise from the light frame.

(I kaypoh and ans the question :oops: )