Focusing night shots question

[jedimaster]

Have been playing around a bit and was wondering how people get those shots at night where a near object like a person is in focus as well as the star field? Are these all just stacked images?

[BillM]

Photoshop is a wonderful thing If they are both in focus, I'm willing to bet they are stacked. When I focus for night shots of stars or whatever, I manually focus to infinity and bring it back just a touch.. There's no way you'd get a person in focus using that technique..

[kickingfrog]

Could it have been done with a flash combined with a long exposure?

[BillM]

Could it have been done with a flash combined with a long exposure?

 

You'd still have to use an aperture like f22 to get both of them in focus.. Flash doesn't make much of a difference. Although I guess it really does depend on the pic and how many stars are actually in it.

[kickingfrog]

With synced flash and yes opened right up:

 

 

I "painted" the dock with a flashlight for some shots, but not this one, because the boats moved too much while painting.

[BillM]

For that shot, I'd just light up the boats to grab your focus point, then figure out which shutter speed works the best.. Trial and error. There would be no point in trying to get the stars in focus, they'll look just fine. Run a lower aperture and a increase shutter time to reduce the noise...

Edited April 22, 2014 by BillM

[jedimaster]

I am going out otnight to try and get some shots. I have the followin gear to play with.

t2i - Nifty 50, kit lense, 55-250is, two flashes with remote wireless triggers, several trip pods etc...

My GF just got a new car so I want to try and get a picture of her with the car with the stars behind her. What sort of things should I try as far as lense combinations? I was going to start with a remote flash about halfway in on a 45 from the camera with a diffuser, For the lense I want to try and start with the 50 set between f2.8 and f4 as this seems to be the spot people talk about for astrophotography.

I was thinking of setting up with the flash for a foreground shot then taking a few longer exposure shots to fill in the sky and stack them later. Any thoughts on settings for the actual stacked star shots?

Would you guys say lower. From what I understand I need to use the 500 rule to avoid star trails to set the exposure time. then I guess I just adjust the iso to get as much detail as I can. I have the camera setup with to use the noise reduction feature, shoot in raw and mirror lock up. Any other tips?

[jedimaster]

This is an article I am going to try and follow tonite.

http://www.photographyblogger.net/how-to-photograph-the-milky-way/

[BillM]

Stacking shots will be a lot easier. Make sure you use the tripod and do not move the camera after the first pic, also you can either use the remote shutter or the timer on the camera to make sure there's no camera shake once you've pressed the shutter button. Once you've taken the pic of her with the car, then worry about the stars.

 

You should be able to get a good 'star' shot with the below settings.

 

f1.8, 15s exposure, ISO3200. You'll want the lens on MF and focus out to infinity then back just a wee bit.

 

Your aperture (f number) basically means how much light the lens is letting into the camera sensor,, smaller the number the bigger the hole. You want to use the lowest aperture possible to gather the most amount of light in the shortest time possible. If there aren't enough 'stars' for you, then increase the shutter to say 20s.. But the longer it's open the more chance you'll have of the stars blurring.

Edited April 23, 2014 by BillM

[jedimaster]

Trying to take shots at max exposure while eliminating the star trails, and setting the F to as low as possible to elimante the coma effect. I think I am going to start at about F2.8 to start eliminating coma, I was reading that f4 is the sweet spot. For exposure length I want to avoid star trails and according to a few calculators I need to stay below 12 seconds exposure. From this I just need to set the ISO as low as I can to get the stars in the shot without getting too grainy. Will be trying out a number of setting through but I think my starting point will be.

 

F2.8, @10sec, 400iso and go up in ISO from there

The foreground shot I will play around a bit with the flash and see what I can figure out on the fly.

 

I think I may try and do a panorama and shoot a series of shots verticle in portrait and stack and stich them together. not too sure yet. The Milky way isn't really going to up until 2-5am and I doubt I will make it that far into the night. haha.

[BillM]

The Milky Way is still in the southern hemisphere

 

When I do my Milky Way shots, even with a 30 second exposure I don't get star trails. You might be able to lower the ISO a bit to reduce the noise and increase the shutter speed. Goodluck and let us know how you make out! The coma effect also has a lot more to do with the lens, if you start to get into night photography, check out the Rokinon 8mm fisheye.

Edited April 23, 2014 by BillM

[jedimaster]

Supposed to be up at 3am when sagitarious comes up... Just getting ready to head out shortly, going to get a few shots then have a nap outside and wake up again when the milky way rises. I am going to set the laptop and camera up to timelapse record the milky way rising. I noticed the coma effect a fair bit on my kit lense last fall. I haven't used the 50 f1.8 at night yet, but from what I read as long as you keep at 2.8 or less its not so bad. When its wide open then you get it around the edges apparently. Who knows, only one way to find out. I'll be playing around a bit tonight I have three batteries ready to go and a fair bit of time with no kids and a girl friend that wants to be outside so its a nice change.

[BillM]

Sagitarious is still in the southern hemisphere, we aren't going to see it until at least June (August is the best time).

 

Also you'll need to get away from the city to avoid the light pollution.. I usually have to drive at least an hour north of Barrie to find complete darkness.

 

If you get far enough away from the city with zero light pollution you'll want to look north and try to find Cygnus, that's the only part of the Milky Way that might be visible at this time of year, it will be right above the horizon and not high in the sky.

 

Here is a great free program I use to figure out what's going to be where, when

 

http://www.stellarium.org/

Edited April 24, 2014 by BillM

[jedimaster]

We got some good shots, but was pretty cold and we weren't really dressed for it. I was able to get 40 or so images of the horizon and a few random longer exposure shots. I am going to stack them up this evening and see how it goes.

[BillM]

Right on, looking forward to seeing them.

[jedimaster]

Ok, here is the shot I got last night.

40 images, 12 second exposure, F4.0, iso 800, 50mm F1.8 lense and Rebel T2i, Used the camera hooked up to laptop and used the canon software to interval the shots every 30 seconds.

Here is the first of the 40 images. They all look like this but just the stars move ever so slightly in each frame.

This is a raw image sample. This was used as the base frame, each frame after the stars move slightly.

 

Here is the base frame edited.

 

Here is the 40 frames merged for the trails.

 

This is the final stacked, trailed, and touched up image.

[jedimaster]

The glow on the horizon is barrie.

[BillM]

Very cool!