Anyone who has ever attempted to photograph the starry sky knows that simply by turning on auto mode you won't get good shot. It goes without saying to shoot in manual modes, but if your camera settings are not optimal, you will also not achieve a great shot, as there are quite a few pitfalls hidden in the camera settings for capturing stars. In this photography tutorial, we will give you the best settings for taking great night sky photos.
So, as I said, if the camera settings are not optimal, then you can get a dark photo in which the stars will not be visible, or blurry. Things get even more complicated if you want a sharp foreground, or if you're trying to photograph the Milky Way.
Before diving into specific guidelines, keep in mind that the techniques in this tutorial are ideal for capturing sharp stars from a landscape photography perspective (where the stars aren't the only subject). If you're interested in astrophotography with a telescope, or capturing star tracks in landscape shots, then that's a slightly different story.
Choice of focal length
You can take night photos with any focal length, but it depends on the type of image you want to take.
If your goal is a classic landscape labeled "Milky Way" and you want everything to be as sharp as possible, the best option is to use a wide-angle lens. Ultra wide-angle lenses provide several major benefits for shooting night skies. First, because their field of view is so wide, you will be able to include more of the Milky Way in your shots. Second, since wide-angle lenses have a greater depth of field, it will be easier for you to get the foreground in sharp focus. And third, wide-angle lenses allow you to use slower shutter speeds before you see star tracks (star motion blur), allowing you to capture more light.
Personally, my favorite focal length for shooting landscapes with stars is 20mm or wider, but longer focal lengths can work too. And if you don't mind star tracks - or you're intentionally trying to capture that effect - you might prefer a longer focal length. For example, I shot the photo below with a FR-86mm (and used a particularly slow shutter speed) to get the movement of the stars:
NIKON D800E+ 70-200mm f/4, 86mm FR, ISO 100, 136 seconds, f/5.6
And if you're shooting deep space, trying to capture distant objects in the sky, a telephoto lens is the way to go.
Aperture selection
Aperture is usually one of the things you have to worry about the most, at least when it comes to landscape photography. With astrophotography, things are a bit easier as you will almost always be using the widest aperture on your lens.
The stars are so dim for your camera's dynamic range that you need to do your best to make them as bright as possible. Ideally, your aperture will be f/2.8 or wider, although lenses with a maximum aperture of f/4 may work just as well, but open wider if possible.
Unfortunately, using the widest lens aperture comes with several problems. First of all, the image quality will not be as good as at aperture down to, say, f/7.1, especially in the corners of the photo. And, if you include the foreground in your shot, a shallower depth of field can ruin the shot.
So, if your lens has a maximum aperture of f/1.4 or f/1.8, you can test and see how sharp your shots come out at those apertures. Pay close attention to the vignetting (dark corners) and smeared stars in the corners. If things get particularly bad with this, you can use an aperture that is 1/3 or 2/3 stop narrower. But if your lens has a maximum aperture of f/2.8 or f/4, it's generally not recommended to adjust more than 1/3 stop.
Here you are balancing between getting sharper edges of the frame and getting more light, which means faster shutter speeds. Where better to tip the scales there is no right answer, it all depends on your lens and personal preferences. If you are not sure what to choose, then I recommend taking pictures with several aperture settings.
Since my main wide-angle lens has a maximum aperture of f/2.8, this is my main aperture for astrophotography. But when I take photos of the Milky Way with my Nikon 20mm f/1.8 lens, I use apertures ranging from f/1.8 to f/2.2, depending on the compromise I'm willing to make on that day of shooting.
NIKON D800E + 20mm f/1.8, 20mm FR, ISO 3200, 20 sec, f/2.2
Shooting at the widest aperture is possible if your lens has a maximum aperture between f/2.8 and f/4.
If your lens's maximum aperture is in the f/1.4 to f/2 range, this advice still applies, but make sure you're happy with the sharp corners of the frame, as well as the vignetting in the photo. To get a slightly sharper picture in the corners, use an aperture that is 1/3 to 2/3 stops narrower.
Shutter speed selection
The next setting of great importance is shutter speed. It makes all the difference how bright your photo will be and whether you get tracks of stars or, as we intended, they will remain dots.
The stars move across the sky faster than you think. It would be nice to use multi-minute exposures to capture the Milky Way in order to capture as much light as possible, but due to the rotation of the earth, we are limited more short exposures, if we want to get the stars as points. (*If you are not using an “Equatorial mount”, a special device that compensates for the rotation of the earth)
So, how long can you keep the shutter open so that the stars stay in dots instead of blurring into tracks due to the rotation of the earth? It depends on a number of factors.
First, as mentioned earlier, this is affected by the focal length of your lens. Wide angle lenses allow you to use slower shutter speeds before you get the movement of the stars in the frame. The second factor is the direction in which you are going to shoot, since the stars rotate more slowly relative to the earth around the Celestial North and Celestial South (essentially the North Star if you are in the Northern Hemisphere).
Another factor that affects exposure is your personal willingness to let the stars move in your photos. I know some photographers who can't stand any movement at all. Their exposure at night can be no more than five or ten seconds. Other photographers don't mind a little movement in the stars and are more inclined to set shutter speeds in the 20-30 second range for the same shot.
Rule 600 (six hundred) was also invented. With different FR, the stars will visually look different at the same shutter speed. For example, with a shutter speed of 25 seconds at a 20 mm DF, the stars will remain dots, and with a 200 mm DF, they will already “float”. In fact, in fact, they will float by 20 mm, but we just won’t notice this because of the small approximation. Therefore, the rule 600 was invented, it makes it possible to calculate the maximum possible shutter speed for the selected FR at which the stars will visually remain dots. To calculate, divide 600 by the FR that you are going to use, this will be the maximum shutter speed. For example, FR 24mm, we divide 600/24=25 sec is the maximum shutter speed that can be used so that the stars do not visually “float”
But I end up not always sticking to this rule, and my shutter speed will be 10-25 seconds for most night work. Personally, with my 14-24mm f/2.8 lens, I tend to use a shutter speed of 20 or 25 seconds, i.e. I don’t go beyond the 600 rule, but I don’t follow the numbers exactly either.
NIKON D800E+ 14-24mm f/2.8 14mm, ISO 3200, 25 seconds, f/2.8
Perhaps the best decision when choosing a shutter speed is trial and error. Just take a couple of test shots to make sure you like the level of blur in the movement of the stars, and then move on to the creative part (choosing a good framing, etc.)
ISO selection
It can often be difficult to choose the perfect ISO to capture a quality starry sky shot. There are two options here:
1) Shoot at an ISO that gives you a photograph of the correct brightness - usually in the 1600 to 6400 range, but be prepared to deal with noise unless you're using a low noise sensor camera
2) Shoot at an ISO that will keep the stars from blowing out - usually in the 100 to 400 range, but be prepared to seriously pull your stars out of the dark in post*
*It's usually best to shoot at a high ISO. However, while it sounds crazy, there are some cases where you can take photos of stars at a low ISO (resulting in a very dark photo) and then lighten it up in a photo editor. Many will say that nothing can be pulled out of such a photo. This is not entirely true.
Some cameras, more precisely the matrices of some cameras are close to ISO-invariant at low ISOs. This means you won't see any difference between the two shots (one taken at high ISO and the other at low ISO, but it's brightened up when the RAW file was developed in Lightroom or Photoshop).
The idea is that some cameras shooting at high ISOs will "blow out" the stars, so you can shoot at a lower ISO and then lighten up the shot. Again, if your camera is ISO invariant, you won't lose any image quality by doing so. (It should be noted that most cameras are notISO-invariant to that extent, but some of them are close!!!).
NIKON D800E+ 14-24mm f/2.8 14mm, ISO 200, 25 seconds, f/2.8
Personally, my Nikon D800e is close to ISO-invariant, so I periodically use low ISO to shoot the starry sky. However, it is not completely invariant for lower ISOs, so I don't do it often. And mostly I just shoot at higher ISOs (1600-6400)
Other settings and nuances
While these are the most important camera settings for astrophotography, there are still things to remember. The most important thing is to shoot RAW, not JPEG. This will give you the highest possible quality in post-processing.
NIKON D800E + 20mm f/1.8 20mm, ISO 1600, 15 seconds, f/1.8
But most importantly, do not forget about the composition, if your shot is technically correct, but the angle is bad, your photo will not be a success. Good luck and I wish you great photos of the starry sky
Take your ff shot taken with a specific lens. From it, it is quite easy to take a picture from a crop in Photoshop by simply cutting out the central part with a coefficient. 1.5, which will correspond to the image on the cropped matrix. Compare both shots at 100% scale. The length of the tracks will be exactly the same. Because it's the same star, the same pixel size and the same focal length. But EFR will be different.
So no one argues. But I'm not talking about looking at 100% crops, but I'm talking about the actual use of real lenses by people. Take two shots taken with the same lens but with 2 different sensors (FF and 1.5 crop), print 20x30 and look at them. A shot that was taken on a cropped carcass will have a 1.5 times smaller viewing angle and 1.5 times more noticeable star tracks. Other things being equal, of course. That is why, when taking a picture on a cropped camera with the same focal length, it is necessary shorten shutter speed by 1.5 times. And that's what I'm talking about in my post. Once again, I'm talking about that, other things being equal, and with an increase in the crop factor, shutter speed should be increased.
In addition, you do not take into account the factor that, as you rightly noted, along with the crop factor, the resolution of the matrix does not decrease. For example, all modern cropped Nikons are produced with 24MP matrices (d5300-5300, d7100, and so on). And what of this?
We have:
2 cameras, crop 1.5 and 1
1 lens, 15mm
Let's take two shots:
iso 800, 30 seconds.
We open 100% increase in both frames, each one is 24mp.
What will we see?
And we will see that the tracks are more noticeable on the crop.
I'm not a sheep to cut something out of my 24MP frames and turn them into 10.5MP, almost no one does this in reality. Everyone squeezes out of their matrices what they are capable of. And your hypothetical example about the cut out fragment is all right, only it has nothing to do with reality. So you will get to the point where you don’t need to buy, say, 135mm at all, but you can shoot everything at 10mm, then crop it, and there will be no difference. Because once at 10 mm the tracks are almost invisible at 30 seconds, then at 135 they will not be visible. And I don't care that if you cut a piece corresponding to 135mm from a 10mm frame, you get as much as some 0.3 mp. Print them on the wall 100x60 and enjoy.
- The basis for the fact that you get longer tracks on crop with the same parameters as on ff is step 2. Manufacturers, as a rule, try to keep the same resolution in cropped cameras as on ff.
Yes, what are you saying? Is it true? Did you just prove yourself wrong? Or it seemed to me, and you just advise people who use cropped cameras to reduce the size of the finished image to avoid blurring? Or maybe print them in a smaller size?
Wouldn't it be better to follow my advice, shorten the shutter speed and get shorter tracks?
And in order to fit the same number of pixels into a smaller matrix, their size has to be reduced. A smaller pixel is more blur.
So who's arguing? I told him about Foma, he told me about Yeryoma! More lubrication - well, we shorten the shutter speed and shoot, what's the problem?
Probably, the problem is that I, as a person who makes a picture, and not measuring pixels, always focuses on appearance finished frame, and not for techno-fetishists who need some mythical numbers. Friend, my advice is for photographers. Those who receive a picture, ready-made, solid, 3x2 format, which will be printed on paper, and will not be looked at in special laboratories under a magnifying glass. And in my case, these tips are much more appropriate than the theory of a small pixel, which is relevant only when looking at a picture at 100% magnification.
For photography stars we're going to dig a lot deeper. We will learn how to use manual camera control, which aperture, shutter speed, ISO, etc. to choose. By the way, for this purpose, be sure to choose mode night shooting. This will give more options when editing the final image. If you still have doubts, let's take a closer look.
Let's start with what we need:
Tripod- We're going to be dealing with exposures of tens of seconds, so this item is more than useful. We need to stabilize the camera.
Camera With manual settings– we will manually set ISO value and shutter speed, which is essential for photographing stars.
Lens With wide diaphragm- we need a lot of light and f / 2.8 aperture will do. It seems to be a fuzzy zone for astrophotography. Combined with an ultra-wide-angle lens, depth of field won't be an issue.
With this set, you can already start. But of course there are still a lot of things that we have to discuss.
Location!
So, it’s not enough just to collect all the equipment, you need to find the right place to successfully photograph the night sky. A serious problem for astrophotography light pollution occurs. If you live in the line big city, you have to drive at least an hour to get away from the light.
As we can see in the image below, even a city of around 30,000 people a few dozen kilometers away can still result in some interfering light pollution.
Let's not forget that we are going to photograph the sky, so for a successful choice of location on earth, we also focus on the position of the stars and constellations in the sky. This has a great effect on the visual perception of the photo. You can use an app called Starwalk from your iPhone to track the celestial bodies. For example, a photograph of the Milky Way can give an amazing visual effect.
basic settings
When photographing these tiny points of light, we need as much light as possible. Therefore, it is important to use a combination high ISO, wide apertures and long excerpts.
For the kayaking under the stars I used ISO 1250 at f/2.8 and a shutter speed of 30 seconds. As you can see, there is some light pollution on the lower right side of the photo from the city, which is about 30 minutes away.
To flatten to minimum light pollution, necessary to find out, where it comes out. To do this, it is best to take several consecutive shots across the horizon, using the highest ISO setting. We simply reduce the time spent on each frame. These pictures will not be used for final stage but they play important role, letting you know which parts of the horizon we have banned.
Concerning time excerpts, then it is better to withstand as little as possible. As much as possible. Otherwise, given the rotation of the planet, the position of the stars will change. For example, if you look closely at a photograph taken with a 30 second exposure, you can see some movement in the stars.
Below we see a somewhat exaggerated photograph of stellar trails.
Photo processing
Processing images of the night sky can be a bit intimidating. Don't expect amazing results from the first try. As we have already noted, use the RAW format in the camera, if it is provided for it, when you are going to shoot the starry sky.
The image above is specially presented in two versions to clearly show the difference before and after processing. LR4 instrument settings used. The experiment continues until you are satisfied with the result.
Interview with photographer Yuri Zvezdny about how to photograph the starry sky. What is needed for this and what obstacles exist.
We continue our series of interviews with interesting people who share their knowledge in various fields. Last time we talked with Sergey Kovtun about how. And today we will talk with a professional photographer who fixed his eyes on the sky. So, the guest of our issue - Yuri Star.
Carina Nebula, NGC 3372 Mikhail Roskin: Good afternoon, Yuri. Tell me something about yourself. Where did the interest in the starry sky and photography come from?
Yuri Star: Hello. Love for the starry sky was born in me a very long time ago. At the age of eight. A lot of time has passed since then, but the memories are alive, as if it were yesterday. It was hot summer weather. I was sitting on a bed in a country house. The sun pierced through the curtains and illuminated the dust flying around the room. Before me lay the book "Earth and Sky" by Alexander Volkov (the same one who wrote "The Magician emerald city”, he also wrote popular science books). This book changed my life. From it, I learned that the world is actually much larger than I had imagined before. It was not limited to my city and country. It turned out that we all live on a stone ball, which rotates at great speed in outer space around a flaming star called the Sun. But the Sun is only one of the countless stars that fill the Cosmos. These stars cluster together and form galaxies, which are more than grains of sand on all the beaches of our planet.
My mind collided with infinity and changed forever. Since then, I have been unusually strongly drawn to the sky, to the stars. By the time I read the book, it was already August. It got cold. I went out of the house, wrapped myself in a fur coat and looked at the stars. Sometimes lingering until dawn. I looked at the stars and now I saw not just twinkling dots, I saw entire worlds. Worlds similar to ours and completely unlike it. I saw inhabitants of other planets. Perhaps even one of them is now looking at our star, just as I look at his star. Maybe he even has a mind? Maybe even much bigger than mine? What is he thinking about? Maybe the same thing as me?
Where are you, brother in mind? Maybe on bright Arcturus? Or at the Diamond Chapel? Or maybe on that completely nondescript star, barely visible to the eye? She doesn't even have her own name. Why not? This could be true...
I fell head over heels in love with the Cosmos. And at an older age, a passion for independent travel and a desire to explore our wonderful planet appeared. This passion was shared by my wife. Therefore, we saved up money, took sleeping bags with a tent and left to wander in South America for 5 months. Love for space and travel are perfectly combined. It's always dark in the wilderness. It is enough to get out of the tent an hour and a half after sunset and you can see something completely new.
For example, the ruins of the ancient city of the Incas in the jungle against the backdrop of the Milky Way
Or a star waterfall in the forests of Patagonia:
It's almost like being on another planet.
The remarkable thing is that modern cameras can see at night much better than our eyes. It is thanks to the sensitivity of their sensors and long exposure that such photographs can be obtained. And there is no big secret and special difficulties in getting such a photo. It is available to everyone.
Dust and reflection nebulae IC 4603 and IC 4604 Mikhail Roskin: Tell me how to photograph the starry sky? How is star photography done? What is needed for this? What technique, what weather? What does a beginner need to do to get the first photos?
Yuri Star: Astrophotography is divided into three areas: night landscape, deep space and the solar system. All three areas differ significantly in approaches to the equipment used, methods of shooting and photo processing.
Astrophotography of deep space and the solar system requires significant material costs, a telescope and astronomical patience to figure it all out. The genre of the night landscape is the simplest and most accessible for beginners. All that is needed for the first photos of the starry sky is a camera, a tripod, a flashlight (so as not to get lost in the dark), as well as a burning desire to take pictures starry sky, which will drive you out of a warm sleeping bag / house on a cold and dark night.
Here simple instructions on how to take the first shots of the starry sky:
First, your camera must be able to take long exposures up to 30 seconds. It is in this shooting mode that it needs to be transferred. Now almost all cameras can do this. ISO values should be set higher, for example 1600 or 3200.
Secondly, it is desirable to use the widest possible lens. For many lenses, this value is on the order of 18mm. The aperture should be as wide as possible to let as much light as possible into the lens. It is very good if the lens allows you to set the aperture value to 2.8 or even 2.0. Now we set the camera on a tripod and adjust the focus, because we need sharp pictures. But autofocus works very poorly at night - it does not have enough light. Therefore, you have to switch the lens to manual mode and adjust the sharpness manually.
You can focus in different ways: by a bright star, by the moon, or by the lights of towers cellular communication. But if there is none of this, and the stars are poorly visible, then you can simply take the included flashlight 30 meters from the camera and focus on it. Now it's time to select a frame and point the camera at the starry sky. More stars will be visible in the southern part of the sky. It is there that the Milky Way is located, which is clearly visible at the end of summer and autumn in our latitudes, and in winter in the south there are some of the most beautiful and bright constellations: Orion, Taurus, Gemini, Charioteer and others.
For planning filming, planetarium programs are well suited, which show a realistic view of the star on any given date from anywhere on the planet. The most famous such program is Stellarium. In addition, it is completely free and available for mobile devices. Then it remains only to point the camera at the selected area of the sky and press the shutter button. You need to press the button carefully and smoothly so that the images of the stars are not blurred from camera shake. Better yet, set the shutter release delay to 2, 10, or whatever number of seconds your camera allows. This will eliminate vibration and get clearer pictures.
And you need to take into account one more thing - the starry sky is moving, because our planet is rotating! Therefore, during the shooting of one frame (about 30 seconds), the stars will stretch into dashes, but this is not scary and almost not noticeable, especially if the picture is reduced. But if the stars still stretch too much into lines in the picture, then this means that the shutter speed needs to be reduced and the stars will again become like dots. This is quite enough to take the first steps in night photography.
Lonely pine tree on the Demerdzhi plateau, Crimea Mikhail Roskin: What are the most common challenges you face while filming? Do people interfere? Or just the weather?
Yuri Star: Difficulties arise, let's say, not a few. Most often, the mood of astrophotographers is spoiled by the weather (although in landscape night photography, clouds can fit very favorably into the frame).
Secondly, it is artificial illumination. Any Big city produces so-called light pollution. Lamps for night lighting of cities emit so much light that they create huge domes of illumination around cities, inside which it is almost impossible to shoot.
For example, from Moscow you need to drive about 200-250 kilometers to see a really dark sky. Although, it is worth saying that lunar-planetary photography is not afraid of flare. The moon and planets are so bright that they are not afraid of any metropolis.
And, of course, at night you need to be as careful as possible. When traveling to a dark place behind the stars, you need to follow safety precautions. First of all, it concerns people. The local population may not be very happy about your presence. Therefore, it is better to choose places that are not visible from the roads and are located away from cities and villages. And of course you need to take into account the factor of wild animals. For many of them, the night is a time of activity, so no one is safe from a chance meeting. I have repeatedly met moose, wild boars, foxes and smaller animals. As a rule, animals avoid such meetings, but a lot depends on you. You should not stop where there are traces of animal activity. For example, pitted earth with many boar tracks. It is very likely that they will return to this place at night and most likely will not be happy with your company.
Mikhail Roskin: What equipment can be used to shoot the starry sky? What is needed for this? Is an ordinary soap dish enough or is it necessary to have a cool SLR?
Yuri Star: With the development of digital technologies, photographing the starry sky is becoming more accessible and popular. Someone even manages to photograph space on a smartphone. Now, even entry-level cameras often have all the features you need to get nice photos night sky.
Of course, the “cooler” the camera, the more opportunities it has, and an advanced DSLR or mirrorless camera will be able to see more than simple “soap dishes”. But this is far from the limit. Enthusiastic astrophotographers use specialized astronomical cameras. These are very heavy, complex and bulky instruments, sometimes costing tens of thousands of dollars. Moreover, when we talk about photographs of deep space and planets, then an ordinary photographic lens is no longer enough. Here you need a full-fledged telescope, special devices - mounts - that smoothly turn the telescope after the stars, and much more. This is a big and complex science. But there is nothing supernatural here. Astrophotography is available to everyone. With due diligence, you can get world-class results even on very modest equipment. The key here is patience and consistency.
Mikhail Roskin: In what programs does the processing take place and what do they do with the pictures? How many shots do you need for one high-quality frame of the starry sky?
Yuri Star A: Again, it depends on the genre of shooting. If we are talking about a night landscape, then one frame is enough. It can be processed in any graphics editor, for example in Photoshop, slightly increasing the contrast and saturation. Although some photographers are fond of processing and from their pen come out completely surreal images that are very distantly related to photography.
Deep space imaging requires more advanced techniques. Here one frame is not enough, because objects in space are very dim and they are very poorly worked out in the pictures, they are simply not visible behind the noise. In addition, the camera sensor during the exposure unfortunately registers a lot of side and unwanted signals and noise. As a result, almost nothing is visible on single frames. Therefore, to obtain one frame with some kind of nebula or galaxy, you have to take dozens of frames of the object and hundreds of so-called calibration frames. These frames are then used in image processing to calculate and eliminate the noise and defects that are present on the original material. All this is done in special programs such as PixInsight, DeepDkyStacker, Iris and others. This process is quite long, especially considering our weather. It can take weeks or even months from the moment you start shooting to the moment you publish your photo.
With lunar-planetary shooting it is easier. Video technology is used to take photographs of the Moon and planets. Simply put, a video camera is attached to the telescope and a video is shot with the planet, for example, with Jupiter. Then the frames of this video are sorted by quality in special programs (for example, such as RegiStax or Autostakkert!). Blurry frames are discarded, while sharp frames remain. From these sharp frames, the final image of the planet is then formed with a large number of details and small details.
Two Universes. Alpine plateau Lago-Naki, not far from Mount Oshten. Mikhail Roskin: Are there any professional secrets of photographing the starry sky in the mountains?
Yuri Star: Yes, but these are not even secrets, but rather an experience. At night, everything is different: the famous path will be lost in the dark, something will be forgotten where it is in the camera menu, the lens cap will fall into the gap between the stones, a strange sound will be heard somewhere behind ... and with all this, fingers and toes will freeze . And you need to focus on shooting.
In general, everything that can be prepared in advance must be prepared in advance: what to shoot, where to shoot, when to shoot. It is better to bring the camera control in the dark to automaticity, so that the hands themselves know where, which buttons. You need to dress warmly, not warmly according to the weather, you can put heating pads in gloves. In the mountains, you should be as careful as possible, not take risks. Health and life are more important than the frame. It is better to go not alone, but in the company of someone. In general, accuracy and maximum advance preparation.
Mikhail Roskin: Were there any unusual, funny or scary cases?
Yuri Star A: Something always happens. In addition to photo frames and the romance of the starry sky, the night gives a lot of memorable events and adrenaline. Once during a night shoot in Chile in the Atacama Desert, I lay down to take a nap. I climbed into the sleeping bag on the street, without a tent, and fell asleep. When I woke up, I found next to me, right in front of my face, a poisonous scorpion. Everything ended well, the scorpion did not show much interest in me, but still my heart skipped a beat.
Another case - I was returning to the tent at night after filming on the ruins of the Inca city of Choquequirao in the mountains of Peru. I walked along a narrow path: a steep cliff on the left, a cliff on the right. Suddenly I hear, or rather feel, that a clatter is approaching me, the earth is shaking. Instinctively, I press myself against the rocks on the left. A herd of horses runs past me to meet me. That's the meeting!
And one day, having pitched a tent at night on the Crimean coast, in the morning my wife and I discovered that we were not far from a military facility - radar station. The military looked with curiosity at our faces poking out of the tent. They must have been as surprised as we are.
In addition, at night you can implement all sorts of strange creative ideas. For example, I have long had a desire to take an astro selfie with a guitar in a snowy field at night under the moonlight. Well, you know, sometimes you want something like this) And most recently I took this photo:
Mikhail Roskin: Can astrophotography make money? And if so, what is the price range?
Yuri Star: There is a fundamental possibility for this. Selling photos, for example spherical panoramas may generate some income. But still, astrophotography is a passion. This is not something that should be done for the sake of money. Rather, on the contrary, astrophotography is usually done by those people who already have money. But now the situation is changing. More and more people are learning about astrophotography and getting to know the Cosmos through it. There is photographic equipment available. There are enthusiasts. Astrophotography is another thread that connects us to the Cosmos. It's great that it is becoming more and more popular and accessible.
Mikhail Roskin: What is your advice to those who are just starting their journey in astrophotography?
Yuri Star: It is difficult to give specific advice to a beginner astrophotographer. Astrophotography takes a lot of skill. It takes a bit of an engineer to build and set up an astrograph, it takes a bit of a physicist to get good sources, and it takes a bit of an artist to process them well. This takes time and patience.
Mikhail Roskin: Thanks a lot! It was very interesting and informative. I even roughly understood how to photograph the starry sky!
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Photographing the night sky may seem like an impossible task and a real challenge for beginners, but I assure you, everything is much easier than you might think. Modern camera settings include incredible ISO settings, allowing photographers to dramatically increase their sensors' sensitivity to light, and capture the light of the stars like never before.
In this vein, I want to talk about the equipment you will need; how to install the camera correctly; I will also talk a little about composition and lighting. If you're ready to level up your shooting for the stars, let's get started!
What equipment will you need
Actually basic level it will be enough for you: cameras (DSLRs, mirrorless cameras, soap dishes) capable of taking pictures in manual mode, a wide-angle lens, and a tripod.
However, most amateur-grade cameras are unable to capture high-quality long exposures and do not have good dynamic range. In order to get amazing photos of the Milky Way, try investing in vehicles by class, which are described below:
Camera selection
The best cameras on the market for photographing the night sky are cameras with full frame sensors. This is because they are able to work at high ISO and at the same time get a result acceptable in terms of noise, which is impossible to achieve when shooting from some primitive device. The higher your ISO, the brighter the night sky will look, and you just need a camera that shoots cleanly without any noise whatsoever.
Good cameras would be:
Nikon: D810A, D750;
These recommendations are top brands, and they are indeed not cheap, but they are not at all mandatory to obtain. beautiful photos. For example, the photo below was taken with the Sony DSC-RX100, which can be purchased for less than $500. To choose a camera, you need to decide what budget you are targeting, and build on this.
Lens selection
Just like with landscape photography, you'll want to have a wide-angle lens that can capture as much of the sky as possible. The faster the lens, that is, the smaller its f / aperture (f / 2.8 or less is excellent), the more light you can let in in a certain period of time to get a good one. Personally, I prefer Tokina 11-16 f/2.8 (for cameras with APS-C sensors); for its cost, its sharpness satisfies me.
Selecting camera settings
You will start to notice that the choice of settings for long exposures at night usually stays the same. This is because the first rule of shooting the night sky is to find a dark place that cancels out the dirty colors and allows the camera to draw the maximum amount of light from the sky; for this, the characteristics of our camera are simply increased to the maximum in order to get the best image. Rule #1: shoot in manual mode!
Aperture selection
Becomes much less visible at night, and in order to take in as much light as possible, make sure your aperture is wide open.
Excerpt
This feature is very important because most lenses begin to pick up star trails after 25 seconds of exposure. I used to shoot with a shutter speed of 30 seconds, but the movement of the stars was noticeable, so the faster the shutter speed, the clearer the stars will look.
ISO
The choice of ISO value depends on what kind of camera you have, or what kind of camera you want to buy. For example, Sony a7S shoots with clean exposure, up to 12000 ISO, while my Canon 6D can shoot up to 6400 ISO with minimal noise, which can then be leveled out in Lightroom.
Focus
One of the biggest challenges people face is focusing images when shooting at night. Many lenses have an "infinity focus" (manual focus), which is a point at an infinite distance at which the lens will focus. It's perfect for night shooting, because it is very difficult to see what you are focusing on in the dark.
Composition and light painting
Once you get the hang of the exposition process, the fun part is creating dynamic compositions and using light painting techniques to bring objects in the foreground to life.
Like landscape photography, you want the audience to feel separate from the picture. When shooting stars, it would be ideal to capture the scenery around you, then the night sky looks even more incredible.
To do this, find a good place to focus on the object in the foreground. Further, using a flashlight or even a smartphone screen, you can “draw” the object that you planned to light in your picture. This only takes a few seconds, as the reflected light is exposed very quickly in the case of night photography.
Tip: If you're using , position it in complete darkness, or take a short exposure to get it clearly. You can always stack 2 exposures one on top of the other and thus mix different ranges of light.
What to do after taking photos
Of course, treat them! Photographs of the night sky change drastically even with small fluctuations in white balance or contrast.
Almost every photo of the night sky I edit twice (once for the sky, once for the foreground) and then blend them. (Some photographers use the remote control to make the exposure much longer than the camera will allow, and use it in the foreground to add shadows.)
In the end, enjoy and develop a style that is unique to your preferences. Returning home with photos of stars, you experience incredible sensations!
