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Shooting The Stars
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Shooting The Stars



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upload_dateSep, 2015

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Staff Winter Selection 2015
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Behind The Lens

Location

I took took this at Kielder reservoir in Northumberland England, famed for having some of the darkest skies in Europe. It was a day or two after the Perseid meteor shower in August last year. I was only my second foray into deep sky photography, I thought it went pretty well.

Time

Taken around midnight - I can't remember the time precisely.

Lighting

Nothing really to share about the lighting - all natural light.

Equipment

Canon 5D Mark 3 with a Canon 17-40 1:4 L USM lens and tripod. 17mm f4.5 30sec exposure ISO 6400

Inspiration

I'd been looking at a lot of amazing shots of the night sky at the time and thought "It can't be that hard". Turns out it is pretty tricky - the complex relationship between the focal length and shutter speed and the wiggle room you have before the stars start blurring from the turning of the planet.

Editing

All post processing in Adobe Lightroom. Started with playing around with the Basic settings to pull the detail out of the stars - boosting clarity, contrast and vibrance. A bit of trail and error to get it looking right. I didn't actually need to alter the exposure at all, also boosting it only really increased the noise and didn't add much to the sky. Lifted the highlights a little with the tone curve and added some split toning to get some definition in the colour of the sky. With a bit of noise reduction and a little vignette, that's pretty much it.

In my camera bag

The kit I carry really depends on the situation. When shooting the night sky I generally only carry the previously mentioned kit. Canon 5D Mark 3 with a Canon 17-40 1:4 L USM lens and tripod. Since taking this photo I've bought a Triggertrap that plugs into my iPhone. It's pretty good when doing time-lapse and long exposures etc, but it does rather chew up the phone battery at a rate of knots. When out and about more generally I use my Canon EF 24-105 1:4 L IS USM Lens as the main lens, purely for it's versatility and have the wide-angle as a secondary one. I am looking to transfer to the faster lenses in the future when finances permits.

Feedback

First find the darkest skies - generally as far away from civilisation as you can. Have a poke around on the net, there'll be plenty of places that can help you. Local stargazing groups etc. Look up the 500 rule to help gauge the right settings for your camera. There's a lot of useful stuff out there on the net. I found this site pretty helpful. http://www.davemorrowphotography.com/p/tutorial-shooting-night-sky.html#exposure Most of all just get out there and have a blast.

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