Astrophotography without a special rig

Hello,

I was wondering if anyone here has had luck doing star shots (not trails) without any special telescoping gear, rotating mechanisms, etc...

Here is a shot from Daniel Bayer that blew me away:
http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=3799192

I would like to try something like this, but don't know if my camera (Canon 10D) is capable of it. Obviously location is important. Independence Pass or probably any other high pass would be a good place to start.

Derek

Derek, that is an impressive photo.

The details on his image indicate:
Canon 5D
ISO 1600
Canon 24mm @ f1.4
Exposure 30 seconds

So, he did not use any special tracking, just wide open, fast lens and high ISO.
Because of the low noise on the 5D sensor, he could get away with this.

For the 10D, I doubt you will want to push it to 1600 ISO for 30 sec, so you probably will need a longer exposure and therefore a bit of tracking gear. But give it a try. Maybe the noise processing will still leave an acceptable image.

This example has certainly encouraged me to experiment. I assumed decent star fields required some kind of tracking device. Thanks for the post.

Bill,

You're welcome. I figured with all the talented folks here someone must have tried there hand at this. But it is still really pushing the envelope without extra gear.

I would like to see what you discover if you give it a go.

I think you are right re. the 10D. I might be able to get away with it with a 20D/30D because the newer sensors have less noise. But the 5D FF would be ideal beacause you can go wider with a similar size prime lens.

One of the other keys you have mentioned is the he shot wide open (1.4) with a wide angle 24mm prime. I have read that the wider the lens, the longer it takes the star trails to be noticed (seconds of course). 20-30 seconds is probably the longest one can get away with, without seeing trails/blurring.

I would really prefer to get it all in one shots verses trying to track with multiple exposures and then messing up foreground objects.

Derek

I found a very interesting discussion by Daniel regarding his process for this image as well as others attempting such images on DPReview:

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1032&thread=15422025&page=1

-Derek

Hmm...that second shot really shows the lens softness/distortion on the corners!
But the 3200 ISO looks fine on the JPEG!

Here's a rule of thumb that I was not aware of:

If you want to minimize star trailing You can divide 600 by the focal length and that gives you the longest possible shutter speed for no streaks. i.e. 600 / 35mm ~ 17 seconds 600 / 24mm ~ 25 seconds

Ok,

I think I would have to include my 10D sensor crop factor into this equation. So for my 12-24 Tokina @12 it would be 600/(12x1.6) = 31 seconds.

Thanks,
Derek

Here's a shot I took like this in February with my 5D:

http://gcollier.com/NightSky.jpg

I shot at 35mm for 90 seconds at F4.5, 1600 ISO, with noise reduction on. I was able to shoot longer since my camera was pointed directly north, where you'll get less star movement than if the camera is pointing east or west. There is quite a bit of noise in the image and I wouldn't print it bigger than 8x10. I'm sure at F1.4 with a shorter exposure, you would get less noise. But there would be noticable noise no matter what.

Grant,

Thanks for the info on shooting in the Northern direction. I didn't even think about shooting toward the poles. But it makes perfect sense. This gives me hope for my 10D.

I like the image you posted. It does look like a bit on the noisey side.

I had heard off folks stacking images as another means to reduce noise. So I tried this with star trail shots and seemed to help. Also I think using a dark frame is another technique many use to subtract the noisey pixels from the frame. I haven't really tried that yet. But I have seen the results from thers which look promising.

Derek

I'm afraid I can't give any great advice on shooting this kind of thing via digital, and I know you are looking mainly for points of stars instead of star trails, but thought I'd pass along this chart that I've always found quite useful. Looking forward to any images like these that you come up with!

Interesting Brent,

This indicates to me that I also need to consider that I am shooting in the northern hemisphere. So shooting in the northern direction as Grant did would provide less movement over time than shooting south.

Thanks,
Derek