Just starting out

[b3n]

Hi

I am just starting to get into photography and would like your opinions my photo's. No need to go easy on me though as I have loads to learn ;o)

Here is one I took of the stars. I took loads with different settings. What would you say is the best setting to use to take pictures of stars? I found it hard to focus on the stars as well.

http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/ii60/dad_mum/DSC_0039.jpg

[North Light]

b3n,

Hi, I don't feel qualified to comment here as I have little or no experience of this type of photography, but hopefully Astroman or MPH will be able to give you constructive advice and criticism.

[astroman]

You've started out the same way I did - try various settings and see what gives the best results. That's probably the way to continue, but you'll find some useful tips (& hopefully some inspiration) at weblinks in this post - http://forum.caithness.org/showpost.php?p=612799&postcount=3

The wide field photo you've taken of some prominent winter stars with the constellation of Orion in the middle is a good start. It looks a little out of focus, but as a result of this the stars stand out more in the photo, as do their colours (notice how two of the brighter stars - Betelgeuse and Aldebaran - have an orange/red tinge).
Note that some astrophotographers that can achieve much better results than me, will deliberately use a soft focus filter when photographing scenes like yours to make the brighter stars and their colours stand out more, so you getting a similar effect by being slightly out of focus is not necessarily a "bad thing".

You don't mention what camera you have used, but in my experience manual focussing tends to give the best results. I use Live View on my DSLR and adjust the focus manually until bright stars appear as the smallest points of light I can get. You'd think turning the focus ring as far towards the infinity end would work just as well, but it certainly doesn't on mine :confused, so tweaking may be needed to get good focus.


Generally, for wide field pics the settings I'll use are:

a fairly fast ISO setting (400-800) but not too high that it becomes very noisy,
open the aperture up to 1 stop from fully open (what you're photographing is faint, so you'll want to collect as much light as possible)
use the timer or remote shutter release to avoid vibration when taking the photo
unless you have a tracking mount that follows the movement of the stars, limit the shutter speed on wide angle shots to about 40sec to avoid obvious star trails (of course star trails may be what you're trying to get, in which case 10min+ exposure time is what you'll want)
Hope this helps.

[b3n]

Great advice there thanks. I will take a note of them for next time I go out. I was using a Nikon D3000 and used manual focus.

[Mystical Potato Head]

You should be more than happy with that for having just started out.
Astroman has covered all the bases but i would just add that i think the reason some of the bigger stars are slightly large is due to star trailing as well as being slightly out of focus.Look closely and you see they look slightly elongated which means your exposure time couldnt be any longer for the focal length you were shooting at or the trails would be obvious.If you want startrails you can take exposures of 30 to 45 mins and get something like this.
http://i374.photobucket.com/albums/oo189/sat5_photos/45minstartrailscopy.jpg
As you can see the further you are away from the center(polaris)the further the stars travel,so stars will start trailing quicker if you are pointing low to the south than they would if you were pointing high to the north.

If you took a shot of Polaris using the same exposure time as you did with Orion then i doubt there would be any trailing at all.

The hardest and most important thing is getting the focus spot on and that comes with practice,even after a couple of years i still get oof shots.

Excellent start though and keep at it.