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Raymond Geertgens's picture

FIrst attempt

My first attempt at Star photo's. Just trying to get the new lens figured out before I attempt milky way shots. so I know there is lots of room for improvement. Any and all advice is accepted and appreciated. Thank you in advance.

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5 Comments

These were taken with 10-22mm at 10, ISO 800 20s. Yes I know I need to get farther away from town for good shots but was only an experiment.

something that i'm always willing to suggest for stars shooting is using apps in your phone like "star walk". these apps tells you where the milky way is located or which time it will be near your composition. that's a great tool for any photographer that shooting stars and beyond. about the photos you uploaded i would like to suggest you to try more clean approach. if you want in your composition a tree than show it, if you want to show a house than do it. but the important thing is to frame it right so people will know you want it there. small parts of a house not helping the composition. sometimes framing a composition means taking out all what is not necessary for the image and put into the frame only whats needed to tell the story or the feel of the image. have a good luck and always keep shooting and improving.

I wouldn't recommend shooting at f/10 (my guess is for the DoF you need to include some foreground) if that pushes you to expose at ISO 800 for 20 seconds. I'd shoot the Milky Way wide open and put the stops into either shutter time (avoiding trails) and/or ISO (for crisper pictures). As for the foreground, I'd shoot a separate series of frames (and be free of any shutter time constraints, free to pick my DoF and shoot at native ISO) and then put it all together in post, as you would do with a focus stacked image.

Thank you for you comments and suggestions. In these photo's I really hadn't tried to compose the shots I just put the camera on the tri-pod and took the photo I was looking to familurize myself with the lens more than anything (before the super wolf blood moon). I promise to actually try to compose the next shots. I'm really not a pro just an amateur learning the craft and art form.

This might be obvious. But in case not... The part of the sky that you're shooting does contain the Milky Way, but its the faint part of the galaxy because it is toward the Galactic anti-center. It would be visible in your images running down between Gemini and Orion, and just to the east of Canis Major, but it's too faint. The brighter part of the Galaxy is up during the Northern summer. It follow a line from Cygnus down through Sagittarius and Scorpius, where the Galactic nucleus is located. Perhaps you know this already and are merely doing tests of your equipment, but wanted to make this clear, just in case. Good luck with your star photos.