Yes!
Been offline for the last few hours traveling. Thank you all for the continued discussion. Reached my location in the middle of no where. Skies are completely clear now and the sun sets in two hours. Here’s hoping!
Wow! That is way beyond what I expected would be possible, so I’ll be happy even if I fall well short of that.
That was with a DSLR, albeit a fairly old one, and better glass than is in your Sony. Experiment and see what you can get. A lot of the work may be in post processing.
Especially with cheaper lenses, the suggestion I read was to close up the lens if you can; it will be sharper if you use say, f/8 instead of wide open; then up the ISO accordingly.
I would suggest looking for the darkest possible place possible. Small-sensor cameras (like the H300) need all the help you can get.
Yes, exactly. I think I spent at least 5 hours in post to get that result. Much of which was experimenting with the settings of the DSS program, and letting the computer run. Those images you see that Aji linked - I assume there was quite a bit of post work done, as well as a lot of stacking. You’d never see that much daylight and stars without several shots.
If you don’t have a remote trigger, then I suggest you use a timer so you can minimize shake.
Sheesh, that’s beautiful.
By me, you’re as real a hobbyist as could be desired.
Make sure the camera is in full manual mode if it has one. Otherwise the camera will fiddle with the other settings trying to make the photo come out the way it “thinks” it should. The camera won’t expect the desired photo should be mostly black.
OK, my obligatory Milky Way photo.
Nikon D7200, Samyang 16mm f/2.8, ISO 6400, 15 seconds.
Beowulff, nice! Did you post that in a MPSIMS thread a while back?
Anyway - thank you all for your guidance! Got a couple of shots I’m thoroughly happy with, so I appreciate all your suggestions. They pale in comparison with the ones posted up thread, but are better than I expected I’d be able to do with the point and shoot I picked up, so it’s all good!
One thing that it took me a while to figure out - I was taking pictures just of the night sky, and they lacked a certain je ne sais que. Anyway, I then thought of Bone’s shot (I hadn’t seen Beo’s post at that time) and realized he had something in the foreground. So I placed a building in the foreground, and it made a huge difference.
Night, everyone.
There’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to capture the Milky Way. It’s visible to the naked eye, and the eye has worse photon efficiency than a CCD, and also can’t integrate for nearly as long.
Yes, I did…
I’d like to see what you captured…
But the eye’s “read noise” is less…
The issue with CCDs and long exposures is not so much quantum efficiency, but thermal noise.
The key to getting a good star field shot without a tracking mount:
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use the widest lens ypu can get. Even 50mm will result in star trails at 30 second exposures. Even 15seconds. So 15mm-24mm should be considered the max.
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use a fast lens. Another reason to shoot wide is that most small consumer cameras have really small apertures at long zooms.
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Focus is critical - and can be really difficult. One trick is to focus on something a long way away on Earth, then while focused switch to manual focus and don’t touch the lens again. Failing that, focus to infinity then back off just a bit. Then, try to take a series of images, touch the focus very slightly and take another set. Given enough time you can try to bracket several sets of images at slightly different focus settings. The little lcd on the back of most cameras is inadequate for finding critical focus.
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try different iso settings. There is definitely a tradeoff between high ISO noise and the ability to gather enough light to see details. Each camera will have a different sweet spot. I’d start at 1600 ISO unless it’s an old or cheap camera.
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the camera has to be stable, obviously. If you don’t have a tripod, put it on the ground facing up.
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if you can, take 10 or 15 images. Then later cover the lens with the cap and take 10 more images at the same temperatur, exposure, and ISO setting. Then download a program like Deepskystacker and stack the light frames with the dark frames, which will help get the noise under control.
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get to a dark site. In the city, a 30 second exposure at wide angle will likely result in a red frame with few visible stars.
If you want to try the next level, you can build a barn door tracker for about $5.00 in parts and a couple of hours’ time, and start getting some really cool shots with a simple camera.