Birth of new meteor shower or meteor storm on 23 May 2014

[Sivakis]

wow. nice clear and crisp shot there! exposure time?ISO?

Thanks Orion!

Not as clear as I'd like, there's some trailing at the edges and the superimposing of the tree in the corner was done haphazardly..... (my fault... )

As for exposure, hmmm, off the top of my head, I believe it was:
Canon 1000D modified
Tamron 17-50 @ 17mm
Aperture 2.8
ISO 1600
Shutter 25 seconds
30+ shots I think....

I think I should have dropped it down to F4.0 and 20 seconds. That would have produced sharper stars. Too many fast-moving clouds that night though, discarded quite a lot of shots.

[CuriousOrion7]

I see! Congrats Sivakis!

I always wanted a crisp shot like that with such widefield array of stars. Mananged to get some simple shots however I guess I am facing an issue when it comes to ISO. Whenever I set anything abt 400 ( even for dark skies at Changi CP1), I get a washed out photo! I was so clueless. And guess what I did? I exposed for 1 minute 30 secs(as long as I don't see obvious visible star trails yet) and ISO 100 and F3.5(that's the lowest I can get in my DSLR I guess(Sony SLT A65). I guess my problem was exposure time. Should have kept it at 30 seconds and at higher ISO. Now I realise how dumb I was

And there was once I took a shot at ISO 1600 at a much shorter time but my shots contained so much of noise. I don't quite get this..do u guys as well face such issues?

Don't mind my ignorance! I am still learning.

-Magdalene Uma Maheswari

[Sivakis]

I see! Congrats Sivakis!

I always wanted a crisp shot like that with such widefield array of stars. Mananged to get some simple shots however I guess I am facing an issue when it comes to ISO. Whenever I set anything abt 400 ( even for dark skies at Changi CP1), I get a washed out photo! I was so clueless. And guess what I did? I exposed for 1 minute 30 secs(as long as I don't see obvious visible star trails yet) and ISO 100 and F3.5(that's the lowest I can get in my DSLR I guess(Sony SLT A65). I guess my problem was exposure time. Should have kept it at 30 seconds and at higher ISO. Now I realise how dumb I was

And there was once I took a shot at ISO 1600 at a much shorter time but my shots contained so much of noise. I don't quite get this..do u guys as well face such issues?

Don't mind my ignorance! I am still learning.

-Magdalene Uma Maheswari

No worries. If it makes you feel better, what you are experiencing is something that we all go through, even now.

It's good that you know the basics of photography and noise. Correct. ISO = noise (and sensitivity to light). Shutter = exposure to light and Aperture = volume of light (for want of a better explanation....)

You're not alone in terms of noise. We all get that. And I won't be surprised if your photos end up looking like this:

or even brighter and washed out.

You know what? Our photos start out that way too!

To change the exposure, contrast, shadows, highlights and colour, we usually tweak the photos in an editing software (whether it's photoshop, lightroom, gimp etc).

We also sometimes use a "stacking" software to combine multiple photos of the same exposure and the software helps to remove noise + hot pixels while retaining the constants (i.e. the stars and possibly structures). One free stacking software is DeepSkyStacker (http://deepskystacker.free.fr/english/index.html). There's a bit of a learning curve learning to use DSS and a fair bit of trial and error to get the right photos to use.

Small steps, that's my advice for now. There's a lot to learn in astrophotography and even I am only scratching the surface. Other members here have been doing it for a long time (and their stories will probably scare the crap out of me lol).

[CuriousOrion7]

Thanks a bunch for that encouragement and for being such an inspiration. will definetely look into all that you have mentioned and will post a shot later this with the standard settings. Would be going over to mersing this thursday. Hoping for clear skies depsite the weather app telling me otherwise abt Mersing's weather. *fingers crossed*

(keeping the message short as my lunchtime is over! haha)