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Darren
Member
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# Posted: 4 Mar 06 20:32
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Hi Everybody
I have tried taking pictures of the stars, moon and such at night several times both in the city and outside of the city where there is very little ambient light. I get very faint shots that are mostly washed out in black. My digital (Powershot A510) has a max exposure time of 15 seconds so I am thinking this is just too short. I talked to another amateur photographer who put his camera up to his telescope lens and got some great shots of the moon and stars. I am wondering if a spotting scope (can't afford a telescope right now.. :) ) would help me get started taking shots of the night sky. Has anybody tried this? As a novice night photographer any tips would be most helpful! I am hoping I can take some good night shots without upgrading my camera right away. ;)
Thanks
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ET images
Member
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# Posted: 6 Mar 06 02:25
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Hi Darren and welcome to Woophy :)
I found the shots I took when it was very dark (58469 for instance, taken with Canon 300D zoom lens) I needed a short exposure or else I ended up with a black square with a detail-less glowing blob in it. When it was set fast, I got the light from the moon giving me the details I wanted, the sky was very deep anyway.
Earlier in the evening, when there's still a bit of light can be better. (see 50557 and 48789, taken with HP 850 Photosmart)
Search for moon or stars on Woophy, and when you see one you really like click on the email link and ask it was achieved ~ I'm sure most Woophy members would be more than happy to discuss.
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Darren
Member
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# Posted: 7 Mar 06 04:00
Reply
hi ET
Thanks for the tips. I will try them out.
Cheers
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Marcos Rowinski
Moderator
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# Posted: 8 Mar 06 01:46
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Yesterday I learned something about this when I was taking pictures of the moon. I saw that when I puted the camera with a normal exposure like 4" (seted by the camera) the moon was very bright so i decided to use manual exposure and I set it on 1/60 or 1/100 and the moon in the picture is very clear. Of course I used a tripod. I didn´t test it yet but taking pictures of the city at nigth is not easy. Sometimes the lights of the street are very disturbing in the picture.
Here is my results:
One of the others problems of taking pictures of the moon is the zoom of the camera. In the picture I used 40x (10x optical + 4x digital) and I had to resize the picture to 640x480 to have a "clerest" picture. hehe : )
Escuse my for my English but I tryed to make it as clear as possible.
Greetings,
Marcos Rowinski.
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leilani
Member
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# Posted: 2 May 06 01:19
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15 secs. is too short unless you jam that iso up but if your powershot only does 15 secs I don't think you'd have a high enough iso setting either. And even at that all the noise would lose detail.
If you could get your hands on another camera (rent?) try going out on a full moon.Set up your tripod, mount your camera, focus on infinity, use a cable release and then do a 3 to 4 minute exposure at around f5.6 100iso depending if you're doing this around a city or out in landscape try a range of 100-400 iso. If you decide to try it with film maybe a 6 to 7 minutes with 100 speed film.
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Darren
Member
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# Posted: 3 May 06 01:31
Reply
Hi guys
Sounds like some new equipment is my best bet. :). Thank you for the tips.
Marcos - very good picture of the moon by the way!
Cheers
Darren
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Marcos Rowinski
Moderator
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# Posted: 3 May 06 01:49
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Thanks Darren ! I hope you saw the comments I wrote in your pictures : )
Greetings !
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Darren
Member
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# Posted: 3 May 06 04:17
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yes I did. thank you for the comments. much appreciated.
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de stilte
Member
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# Posted: 9 May 06 21:01 - Edited by: de stilte
Reply
i read the topic and it helps .:).........thank you......
ruud
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Marcos Rowinski
Moderator
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# Posted: 9 May 06 21:06
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Youre welcome !
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Stephane Possamai
Member
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# Posted: 29 Jun 06 16:13
Reply
Hi all,
another tips is to take many pictures of the subject (e.g. the moon) with the same lense and focus and time of exposure.
Then you put all the pictures in one and only one. So details will appear clearer.
This technique is often used in photo-astronomy (in french we say "Compositage" but I don't know the word in english) : signal of the pictures is enhanced whereas noise is soften.
Here's an example
On the left, only one image, blurred.
In the middle, many pictures added together (better)
On the right, after using an "Unsharp mask".
Stef
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Darren
Member
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# Posted: 9 Jul 06 23:29
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Thank you Stephane
I have heard of this technique done with telescopes. It sounds like just what I need.. Do you know of any freeware or other software that can do this? I don't have photoshop or anything similar myself so I usually look for downloadable software... :)
Thanks for the replies everybody!
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Stephane Possamai
Member
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# Posted: 10 Jul 06 13:39
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Hi Darren,
you can try this software : "The Gimp" (www.gimp.org) which is an open source and free soft and an excellent alternate to Photoshop.
But I think you can also find many astro-freeware searching via google.
Bye
Stephane
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