Nightsky Shooting

It's Leonid time. I'll be up on the mountains and out of the Bay Area,
thanks to a week off, and the weather will be very clear here in
Cali'. Anyone have any experience taking night sky photos with digital
cams? I have an Olympus C-755 4Mp. Might it be worth picking up a
cheap tripod at Wal-mart and giving it a go...? Any other advice?
Thanks.

Zach

"zach" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
om...
It's Leonid time. I'll be up on the mountains and out of the Bay Area,
thanks to a week off, and the weather will be very clear here in
Cali'. Anyone have any experience taking night sky photos with digital
cams? I have an Olympus C-755 4Mp. Might it be worth picking up a
cheap tripod at Wal-mart and giving it a go...? Any other advice?
Thanks.

Some cameras have a night modus, you should try that. If not, you should
definitely experiment with exposure offsets. Maybe you can do that
beforehand and check images on your PC so you have some basic data to
carry with you and don't have to spend the whole night figuring the
correct metering. :-)

Kind regards

robert

"Robert Klemme" wrote in message ...
"zach" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
om...
It's Leonid time. I'll be up on the mountains and out of the Bay Area,
thanks to a week off, and the weather will be very clear here in
Cali'. Anyone have any experience taking night sky photos with digital
cams? I have an Olympus C-755 4Mp. Might it be worth picking up a
cheap tripod at Wal-mart and giving it a go...? Any other advice?
Thanks.

Some cameras have a night modus, you should try that. If not, you should
definitely experiment with exposure offsets. Maybe you can do that
beforehand and check images on your PC so you have some basic data to
carry with you and don't have to spend the whole night figuring the
correct metering. :-)

Yer right... I think it does have a night mode. I've only had it a
little over a month and have only had it out in the woods twice taking
pictures. I haven't delved into the manual yet (hate reading manuals),
but I will to figure out to manually change the settings.

"zach" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
om...
"Robert Klemme" wrote in message
...
"zach" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
om...
It's Leonid time. I'll be up on the mountains and out of the Bay
Area,
thanks to a week off, and the weather will be very clear here in
Cali'. Anyone have any experience taking night sky photos with
digital
cams? I have an Olympus C-755 4Mp. Might it be worth picking up a
cheap tripod at Wal-mart and giving it a go...? Any other advice?
Thanks.

Some cameras have a night modus, you should try that. If not, you
should
definitely experiment with exposure offsets. Maybe you can do that
beforehand and check images on your PC so you have some basic data to
carry with you and don't have to spend the whole night figuring the
correct metering. :-)

Yer right... I think it does have a night mode. I've only had it a
little over a month and have only had it out in the woods twice taking
pictures. I haven't delved into the manual yet (hate reading manuals),
but I will to figure out to manually change the settings.

Often cameras have a bracketing feature (my Canon Powershot G5 has it)
where you press the release once and get three pictures with different
exposure. For some models you can even select the exposure difference.

But you should drop your resistance against manual reading - if only to
avoid "RTFM". ;-)

Kind regards

robert

"Robert Klemme" wrote in message
...

"zach" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
om...
It's Leonid time. I'll be up on the mountains and out of the Bay Area,
thanks to a week off, and the weather will be very clear here in
Cali'. Anyone have any experience taking night sky photos with digital
cams? I have an Olympus C-755 4Mp. Might it be worth picking up a
cheap tripod at Wal-mart and giving it a go...? Any other advice?
Thanks.

Some cameras have a night modus, you should try that. If not, you should
definitely experiment with exposure offsets. Maybe you can do that
beforehand and check images on your PC so you have some basic data to
carry with you and don't have to spend the whole night figuring the
correct metering. :-)

Kind regards

robert


Manual focus, long exposures, continuous drive.
You will definitely need a tripod, it won't need to be fancy, just steady
and able to point your camera towards the sky.
Depending on light pollution, angle towards the vertical and ISO rating
you'll probably be looking at exposures of 5" upwards - experiment by
photographing the stars.
Continuous drive, if your camera has it, will allow you to catch some
semblance of action without having to keep manually releasing your shutter,
thus avoiding much camera shake. In fact use a remote control or remote
shutter release or even your camera's timer to take your photos.
Dress appropriately.

regards

Esmond

"Esmond" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
...

Dress appropriately.

I liked that one. :-)

robert

"Esmond" wrote in message ...
"Robert Klemme" wrote in message
...

"zach" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
om...
It's Leonid time. I'll be up on the mountains and out of the Bay Area,
thanks to a week off, and the weather will be very clear here in
Cali'. Anyone have any experience taking night sky photos with digital
cams? I have an Olympus C-755 4Mp. Might it be worth picking up a
cheap tripod at Wal-mart and giving it a go...? Any other advice?
Thanks.

Some cameras have a night modus, you should try that. If not, you should
definitely experiment with exposure offsets. Maybe you can do that
beforehand and check images on your PC so you have some basic data to
carry with you and don't have to spend the whole night figuring the
correct metering. :-)

Kind regards

robert


Manual focus, long exposures, continuous drive.
You will definitely need a tripod, it won't need to be fancy, just steady
and able to point your camera towards the sky.
Depending on light pollution, angle towards the vertical and ISO rating
you'll probably be looking at exposures of 5" upwards - experiment by
photographing the stars.
Continuous drive, if your camera has it, will allow you to catch some
semblance of action without having to keep manually releasing your shutter,
thus avoiding much camera shake. In fact use a remote control or remote
shutter release or even your camera's timer to take your photos.
Dress appropriately.

All right... I'm back. Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate
with me, nor did the moon. I was a bit annoyed, but then thought, "the
stars aren't going anywhere." I had played with the manual setting on
the camera, and set the ISO to the max (400), and then lowered the
aperture, however, my camera only has a max 16" exposure. I got one
decent shot, but when I switch from manual back to other modes, or
turn the camera off, the resolution setting goes back to "HQ" (~2K x
1.7K), so the one good photo I got came out with some of the fainter
stars as single pixels. Curses! Other events, and the rising moon
precluded my trying again. Here, I was setting the camera on a log and
aiming upwards, so I didn't have a choice of sky.

A few days later, a friend of mine went down to Wal-mart and I
requested her to pick up me a tripod (I was staying at their house,
and we are like 18 miles from the nearest real town). She brought it
back as a late b-day present to me. Yay. Now, this was much better. By
this time, however, I had to wait for the moon to set. Monday or
Tuesday night, I think, I went outside around 1AM, and Orion had risen
enough from behind the trees that it looked good to shoot. However,
high clouds were coming in. I took a few shots anyway, just to see how
the brighter starts turned out. They looked good... but most were
obscured by these thin clouds. Curses again! F-stop 2.8, ISO 400, 16"
exposure, the longest my camera has. If I can post something
somewhere, I will... maybe later. What I did find out, except for the
problem described below, is that I should be able to get some nice sky
shots when it turns clear, expecially when it is dark enough that I
can see the Milky Way with the naked eye.

What I did run into, however---- and maybe someone can help me with
this, is a faint reddish area on the images at the upper left hand
corner of the array. Does anyone have an idea what this is? All lights
were shut off, it was pitch black except for starlight and residual
moonlight (turned the LCD off on the screen, etc...). This seems
familiar somehow, but maybe the chip is just bad... hey, just now I
thought of taking a dark image (with the lens cap on) at the same
settings to see if it is there. I will try that later and see.

zach wrote:
[]
What I did run into, however---- and maybe someone can help me with
this, is a faint reddish area on the images at the upper left hand
corner of the array. Does anyone have an idea what this is?
[]

It might be "dark current". Does your camera have a "noise reduction" or
"dark frame subtraction" setting, which doubles the picture taking time?
If so, try it.

Cheers,
David

"David J Taylor" wrote in message ...
zach wrote:
[]
What I did run into, however---- and maybe someone can help me with
this, is a faint reddish area on the images at the upper left hand
corner of the array. Does anyone have an idea what this is?
[]

It might be "dark current". Does your camera have a "noise reduction" or
"dark frame subtraction" setting, which doubles the picture taking time?
If so, try it.

Yeah, I would think dark current would be evenly distributed, but
maybe it is higher near an edge of the chip near where I/Os outside
the pixel array are switching more. The basic manual, which is what I
had with me, didn't have how to take a dark image, but now that I am
back, I will check the manual on the CD and see (and for noise
reduction... or maybe it is the same function). I hope so.