Post by Rinconrolla on Jul 3, 2011 11:27:35 GMT -5
If you live in the city or any area with a lot of light pollution, it can be easy to forget how beautiful the night sky is. But whether you're looking for the International Space Station or watching planets dancing close together, the planets, stars, and moon offer beautiful photographic opportunities if you can get to a dark enough location to see them.
There are definitely some tricks to getting lovely photographs of the night sky, requiring planning and strategy, but the results are worth it!
Choose your timing
The timing of your photographic expedition depends on your goals and your subject. If you're trying to photograph the full moon, aim for when the moon is rising, just as the sun is setting, for the most dramatic pictures. This will give you enough light to illuminate the setting in front of the moon (such as mountains or trees) without overexposing the moon. Websites such as the U.S. Navy's Complete Sun and Moon Data site give the exact times for sun and moon rises and sets.
If you're shooting for the stars, your best bet is a night when the moon is either new or a thin crescent. Since stars are so much dimmer than the moon and require much longer exposure times to photograph, even the slightest sources of light will be bright in your image. Wait until the sky is fully dark, and try to get as far away from sources of light pollution as possible; your best bets are the desert, mountains, or rural area.
Bring the right gear
A tripod is an absolute must for night photography, and photographing the moon and stars is no exception. You'll want to use a telephoto lens with a focal length of at least 200mm (preferably more) for the moon, and you might want to try a wide angle or fisheye lens for shots of the stars. Since any movement of the camera will result in motion blur, either a self-timer or remote control is also essential.
Shoot the moon
It's a gorgeous evening, the moon rising full and lovely on the horizon. You pull out your camera and snap a picture… but to your dismay, that beautiful orb ends up looking like a small white blob in your image.
What's going on? This happens because your camera will automatically use everything except the moon to calculate its optimal exposure, thus overexposing the moon itself. Your eyes perceive a much wider range of light than your camera, which is why what looks beautiful to your eye won't look so great automatically in the camera.
After all, the moon is bright because it's reflecting all of the light of the sun from around the edge of the world. So despite the fact that it might be dark where you are, you can't use that as a basis for gauging your settings to capture all the detail on the moon. Use your camera's manual settings for focus — a low ISO setting of around 100 and a medium aperture of about f/11. Take a shot with a relatively fast shutter speed of about 1/100th of a second, then take a few going either direction, slower and faster. Experiment and see what works for your particular environs. Every shot is different.
Photographing the stars
The stars are much, much farther away than the moon, of course, and their light is much dimmer. You'll need a very long exposure to properly capture their beauty. You'll also need to ask yourself whether you want to embrace or avoid star trails, the paths the stars make across the sky as the earth rotates beneath them.
Depending where you are and how much light pollution you have to shoot through, try shutter speeds ranging from 2 seconds up to a minute or more. If you're lucky enough to be in a truly dark locale, you could even try leaving the shutter open for 5 to 10 minutes or more to see what happens. The longer the shutter speed, the longer your star trails will be. If you want to get a circular pattern around one star, aim your camera north toward Polaris. If you do not want any star trails at all, you'll need to use an equatorial mount that will move your camera to follow the earth's rotation.
Every year, there are fewer and fewer places on the Earth where you can look up and capture the full beauty of a star-filled sky. Despite many communities' beginning to enact light pollution ordinances to combat the problem, humans have encroached on so much of the planet that it's hard to find somewhere dark enough to see the Milky Way the way our ancestors saw it. Still, even in the United States, you can find places for trying your hand at beautiful photos of the night sky.
Source of this story www.tecca.com/column/night-sky-photography-digital-photography-101/
There are definitely some tricks to getting lovely photographs of the night sky, requiring planning and strategy, but the results are worth it!
Choose your timing
The timing of your photographic expedition depends on your goals and your subject. If you're trying to photograph the full moon, aim for when the moon is rising, just as the sun is setting, for the most dramatic pictures. This will give you enough light to illuminate the setting in front of the moon (such as mountains or trees) without overexposing the moon. Websites such as the U.S. Navy's Complete Sun and Moon Data site give the exact times for sun and moon rises and sets.
If you're shooting for the stars, your best bet is a night when the moon is either new or a thin crescent. Since stars are so much dimmer than the moon and require much longer exposure times to photograph, even the slightest sources of light will be bright in your image. Wait until the sky is fully dark, and try to get as far away from sources of light pollution as possible; your best bets are the desert, mountains, or rural area.
Bring the right gear
A tripod is an absolute must for night photography, and photographing the moon and stars is no exception. You'll want to use a telephoto lens with a focal length of at least 200mm (preferably more) for the moon, and you might want to try a wide angle or fisheye lens for shots of the stars. Since any movement of the camera will result in motion blur, either a self-timer or remote control is also essential.
Shoot the moon
It's a gorgeous evening, the moon rising full and lovely on the horizon. You pull out your camera and snap a picture… but to your dismay, that beautiful orb ends up looking like a small white blob in your image.
What's going on? This happens because your camera will automatically use everything except the moon to calculate its optimal exposure, thus overexposing the moon itself. Your eyes perceive a much wider range of light than your camera, which is why what looks beautiful to your eye won't look so great automatically in the camera.
After all, the moon is bright because it's reflecting all of the light of the sun from around the edge of the world. So despite the fact that it might be dark where you are, you can't use that as a basis for gauging your settings to capture all the detail on the moon. Use your camera's manual settings for focus — a low ISO setting of around 100 and a medium aperture of about f/11. Take a shot with a relatively fast shutter speed of about 1/100th of a second, then take a few going either direction, slower and faster. Experiment and see what works for your particular environs. Every shot is different.
Photographing the stars
The stars are much, much farther away than the moon, of course, and their light is much dimmer. You'll need a very long exposure to properly capture their beauty. You'll also need to ask yourself whether you want to embrace or avoid star trails, the paths the stars make across the sky as the earth rotates beneath them.
Depending where you are and how much light pollution you have to shoot through, try shutter speeds ranging from 2 seconds up to a minute or more. If you're lucky enough to be in a truly dark locale, you could even try leaving the shutter open for 5 to 10 minutes or more to see what happens. The longer the shutter speed, the longer your star trails will be. If you want to get a circular pattern around one star, aim your camera north toward Polaris. If you do not want any star trails at all, you'll need to use an equatorial mount that will move your camera to follow the earth's rotation.
Every year, there are fewer and fewer places on the Earth where you can look up and capture the full beauty of a star-filled sky. Despite many communities' beginning to enact light pollution ordinances to combat the problem, humans have encroached on so much of the planet that it's hard to find somewhere dark enough to see the Milky Way the way our ancestors saw it. Still, even in the United States, you can find places for trying your hand at beautiful photos of the night sky.
Source of this story www.tecca.com/column/night-sky-photography-digital-photography-101/