When most Photographers give up on shooting because the sun sets, I start to get mine out. One of my favorite things to shoot is the night sky with all the stars. However, night photography is the most difficult and requires its own unique set-up. There are a couple key components to capturing great shots of the stars. First off you need a tripod. You also need a night sky with no moon and somewhat out in the country. (The further away the better). Cities give off massive amounts of light known to photographers as light pollution. Even if you are 40 miles from a major city you will capture its light on the horizon with long shutter speeds as you can see in most of my pictures. So with a dark sky and a tripod how do you set up your camera? There are a couple ways to adjust your settings depending on the desired effect. lets take a look at the first image of the Milky Way.

I captured this shot on February 20, 2011. I was out in the country and shot it about 8:30, a couple hours before the moon came up. To me the Milky way is the hardest thing to capture. Conditions were perfect. As for my camera I had to play with the lighting a few shots. I try to keep my shutter speeds at around 20 seconds, (any longer and the stars will begin to streak across the sky) my ISO was high and f/stop was low. Here are the specs for the Milky Way shot. 15mm, 2.8 f/stop, 4000 ISO, and 25 sec shutter speed. Although this worked pretty well for me conditions may require you to adjust your settings. I took 4 pictures and merged them in photoshop and slightly brought out the colors. Another little tip is to use manual focus since the sky is too dark for the auto focus to adjust properly. Now for the star streak picture.

Star streak pictures are a whole different set-up. Unlike the first picture which was 25 seconds, this picture took roughly 45 minutes. Let me first explain how this works. The world is constantly spinning at fairly fast pace. Even at 30 seconds you notice movement in the stars. The North Star is always constant in the north so it never moves. Thus all the other stars rotate around it. Leaving the shutter open for 45 minutes poses several problems though. Like noise, or grainy dots that distort the image; and how do you hold the shutter open for 45 minutes? The correct way to solve this problem is to get a remote for your camera which allows you to adjust the length of time digitally. But I have not bought one yet. I went the cheap way and took a rubber band and a wad of tissue and fixed it to hold the shutter down. To make sure I did not shake the picture while pressing the shutter down I set it on a ten second timer so I could get away from it and allow it to take a perfectly still image. These are the specs I used for the Star Streak picture. ISO 100, f/stop 3.2, 45 Minute shutter speed, and at 15mm. low ISO will reduce noise and will keep the image from getting too dark. You may end up with a bright image which you will have to fix in photoshop but the colors will be amazing. Some of the stars will turn out orange, some blue, and a few purple and green. Now this isn't the best way to do star streak pictures but it is the easiest. The correct way is to use a remote and take about 80 30 second images and then stack them in photoshop. But like I said, this is the cheap way. And by the way, to get long shutter speeds go to BULB mode which may be marked by a B on your shooting mode wheel or in Manual Mode or M. In manual mode adjust the time to 30 seconds and then go one click past 30 sec and it should read BULB on the screen.

Night photography is a long process and requires a good amount of trial and error. But the results are all worth it! check out some other star pictures I have done.