Popular Post Frederic Posted May 5, 2021 Popular Post Report Share Posted May 5, 2021 Operating a Digital Camera sometimes feels like controlling a spacecraft, and on top of that, thinks like aperture, shutter speed, ISO, and many other technical descriptions seem very confusing, which leads to 90% of DSLR users to choose their AUTO modes and fear of ever using anything else. This is perfectly normal, but with some basic guidelines and understanding you can quickly overcome this hurdle and start shooting stunning photos. Like every hobby, it needs a bit of patience and research, but the advantage of shooting digital is that you won't have to waste any money in developing "mistaken" photos that were part of the learning experience. If you took a wrong photo, just delete it and move on For Astrophotography, you will need to select "MANUAL MODE" on the rotary dial of your camera so you can set the shutter speed, aperture, and ISO yourself. There are many misconceptions about photography, and one of them being that you need to spend thousands of dirhams to get professional looking photos, but that is simply not true. With any decent brand (Nikon, Canon, Sony, Fujifilm, etc..) digital camera you will be able to take amazing photos as long as you practice and learn to understand how the camera works and how you should be using light, composition, etc.. to accentuate the end result. Our club has focused so far on night photography only, which is in some kind of way no too very difficult because you are not taking portraits of living/moving things, don't have to worry about shadows, and have enough time to experiment with your settings while your camera is mounted on a tripod. Having said that, it will need a bit of practice in setting up your camera and understanding of the different settings, and learning about the 3 main things your camera has to deal with: 1) APERTURE Aperture means how much will the lens be opened to capture the photo you will take. Just like your own eyes which will open more in a dark environment, a lens has an aperture setting that you can control to open or close the lens more in order to achieve a photo that is not over-exposed nor under-exposed. As you can see above, the lower you set your aperture value, the more light that will enter the lens, which is what we need for night photography. You will find the aperture specifications on your lens, for example a prime lens of 28mm / f1.8, or a kit lens of 50mm with f4.0. On top of that, the aperture will also control your DOF, or depth of field. Now if you like to take a nice portrait that has that beautiful blurry background, you will need to use a low aperture setting like f/1.4 or up to f/2.8. For night photography this is not an issue 2) SHUTTER SPEED Now, it is one thing to open your lens, but the second thing is to tell the camera how long the lens should remain open before closing again. The longer it will remain open, the more light that will be captured, which is what we want for night photography. While for action shots of your kids playing football you will need a very short shutter speed to avoid the picture from getting blurry, for night photography and capturing the stars you'll want to keep the shutter open for as long as possible. This will be somewhere between 15 and 30 seconds based on your lens, camera, and other factors. 3) ISO ISO is the level of sensitivity of your camera to light. The lower the ISO number, the less sensitive it is to the light. The higher the ISO number, the more sensitive it is to the light. For night photography you can increase the ISO level up to 3200 and more, depending on your camera and lens capabilities. Understanding and experimenting with these 3 above-mentioned things here will get you already on the way to make stunning photos of stars. A few other things to look into are: RAW vs JPEG JPEG is the typical compressed file format that delivers nice images for sharing, just like MP3 for music. However it creates certain limitations as well. Due to the fact the file is being compressed, it cannot be altered properly afterwards. Hence if you want to optimize your night shots afterwards in with software like Adobe Lightroom or others, you will need to shoot in RAW mode. This is the mode that creates a large file that is uncompressed and which will allow you to make a lot of changes later on. Most cameras have a setting called JPEG+RAW, this means every time you click a photo it will save a RAW file and a JPEG file on your memory card. White Balance Setting You can keep it on AUTO MODE, or experiment with different white balance presets, like Tungsten which might work better at night. If you are planning to optimize the photo in Lightroom afterwards, then the AUTO setting should be fine. https://astrobackyard.com/white-balance-astrophotography/ To get used to your camera and its different settings and functionalities, you can head over to Youtube where you'll find thousands of tutorials: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=richard+bradbury+500d LENSES Last but not least, every photo being taken is passing through a lens, and there are many different lenses on the market, from the "general use" kit lens that came with your camera, to the professional tele-lenses that have a massive zoom. We will just describe the most common lenses below: 1) Kit Lens: This is an economic lens that came with your DSLR, has a fair bit of zoom, for example 55-105mm, with a standard aperture of f/4.0. They can be used for many purposes and is a good allrounder. 2) Prime Lens: A prime lens has a fixed focal length, for example 50mm, so you cannot zoom with it. The good thing is due to the fact that these lenses do not have the magnifying components inside, they are cheap and most have very good aperture, for example a typical Canon 50mm / f1.8 lens is very cheap to get and will deliver fantastic portraits with nice blurry background (also called bokeh). You will generally find them in 28mm, 35mm, 50mm. 3) Tele-lens: These are the lenses you'll see on sport events from where professional photographers need to zoom in a lot, while keeping a stable image. These are expensive, big, heavy lenses that will have O.I.S (Optimal Image Stabilization) on board to make sure the image remains stable when zooming in that much. 4) Wide-Angle Lens: This is a lens often used in astrophotography, as it gives a very nice wide angle view on the night sky and is able to capture a lot of information. A typical wide-angle lens would be anything from 14mm to 28mm, with an aperture of f/2.8 or even lower. They are also popular amongst people who take photos in real-estate business and will make a tiny hotel pool look like a massive olympic swimming pool Finally, it is important to understand the balance and correlation between aperture, shutter speed, and ISO, as they are interconnected as you can see in below triangle: I have attached a full collection of Snap Cards, a Photography for beginners tutorial, and some specific cheat sheet for astrophotography. Good luck ! Specific settings for astrophotography (courtesy of Mikhail Lukichev): select RAW mode decrease brightness of the screen to minimum disable long exposure noise reduction disable high ISO noise reduction select manual focus mode turn on live-view zoom in the picture in the live view mode select manual shooting mode (M) disable auto ISO set ISO to 3200 set shutter speed to 15sec set aperture to minimum (f1.8 - F3.5) set manual white balance to 3200-3500K 1905255335_Snap_Cards_Full_Collection(4).pdf Photography for Beginners (3).pdf night-sky-cheat-sheet-new (2).pdf 5 4 2 "Go as far as you can see; once you get there, you'll be able to see further." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Varghese Posted May 5, 2021 Report Share Posted May 5, 2021 @Frederic are we going to use the shutter speeds preset in the camera or going into bulb mode for astrophotography? If bulb mode then the photographer needs a remote shutter release also. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frederic Posted May 5, 2021 Author Report Share Posted May 5, 2021 12 minutes ago, Thomas Varghese said: @Frederic are we going to use the shutter speeds preset in the camera or going into bulb mode for astrophotography? If bulb mode then the photographer needs a remote shutter release also. As many people don't have a remote shutter release, i would recommend using the shutter speed presets. Furthermore i think not every camera has the "B" Bulb setting. On top of that, if you exceed 30 seconds shutter speed, you will start to have some trailing effects, which is great if you want to experiment with that. 1 "Go as far as you can see; once you get there, you'll be able to see further." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Varghese Posted May 5, 2021 Report Share Posted May 5, 2021 1 minute ago, Frederic said: As many people don't have a remote shutter release, i would recommend using the shutter speed presets. Furthermore i think not every camera has the "B" Bulb setting. The min speed which could be set is then 30sec and I hope that will be enough. Anyways I have bulb mode in the camera but hasn't experimented with it yet. Any canon users can upload a firmware called magic lantern which I have tried in my cameras and have found to be safe. This software firmware upgrade enhances the usability of most canon cameras than stock. The link to magic lantern is posted below. The authors claim no responsibility for any crashes but I have been using them since 4 or 5 years and they are safe for me whether its the nightly build or the stable build. This is a very useful software for canon users who still cling to the older models as it brings out the power hidden in the sensor. Sort of like ECU remapping for our cars. Magic Lantern | Home 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frederic Posted May 5, 2021 Author Report Share Posted May 5, 2021 3 minutes ago, Thomas Varghese said: The min speed which could be set is then 30sec and I hope that will be enough. Anyways I have bulb mode in the camera but hasn't experimented with it yet. Any canon users can upload a firmware called magic lantern which I have tried in my cameras and have found to be safe. This software firmware upgrade enhances the usability of most canon cameras than stock. The link to magic lantern is posted below. The authors claim no responsibility for any crashes but I have been using them since 4 or 5 years and they are safe for me whether its the nightly build or the stable build. This is a very useful software for canon users who still cling to the older models as it brings out the power hidden in the sensor. Sort of like ECU remapping for our cars. Magic Lantern | Home So far with my 5D Mark2 and Samyang 14mm i got the best results around 25 seconds shutter speed. You can use the 500 rule to determine which is your recommended shutter speed and we will have plenty time to experiment with the settings. 2 "Go as far as you can see; once you get there, you'll be able to see further." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mario Cornejo Posted May 5, 2021 Report Share Posted May 5, 2021 2 hours ago, Thomas Varghese said: This software firmware upgrade enhances the usability of most canon cameras than stock. Mods for cameras! I want a diff-lock button in mine On a serious note, apart from the usual settings of speed, aperture and ISO, from memory these will vary depending on the sensor of your camera, I remember when I switched from CMOS to Full Frame I did not have to play with speed and ISO that much, otherwise I would start picking up light from the city/roads nearby. A question to all: has anyone here tried a Bahtinov mask (to help focusing on stars) or a light pollution filter? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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