Mikhail Lukichev

@Frederic I guess it was not far away from the city. Lot's of light pollution, stars are not that bright. It should be better in the desert! Also, I would lower the horizon line, as you said. And use portrait orientation to capture more sky and less ground 😃

Excellent!

Olympus looks good! 👍

Wooooow! Awesome photos! I'm sure you know all the basics very well. So you can help others! Great camera! True, small brush is handy at times! Awesome! You should get great pics! True! Now I feel myself as a beginner among the pro photographers with their beasts 😃 However, we all know that camera is not the most important element but the person behind the camera!

Kindly bring a headlamp with red light, it will help to reduce the stress for your eyes. No camera flash needed!

Great set! Awesome! Would be interesting to see what iPhone can do!

@Niki Patel Your camera gear is good for us! @Frederic @Mario Cornejo @sertac @Veedooshee @varunmehndiratta @Goutam @AlexPol @Mahmoud Hamzawy, when you have time, kindly advise what camera you are planning to bring with you. Thanks!

Samyang 14mm F2.8 is a great option! By the way, autofocus is not needed. We will focus manually and tape the focus ring after 😃

You can expect to get pictures similar to this one! By the way, it was my first off-road trip on a rented Pajero which convinced me to buy my own 4x4 😃

@Frederic is with us, no worries! And we are not going far away from the paved road. Our aims is to practice astrophotography basics so later you can do the same on your own in so many lovely places in the UAE 😃 So, location for the first time does not matter much.

Hello everyone! Thanks for joining us! Since we are going to take some stars photos, we need to have some basic equipment with us. If you do not have something, probably, you will not be able to get desired result. However, equipment list is very basic: 1) tripod suitable for your camera. There is no need to have an expensive tripod, however, if your camera and lens is heavy, sturdy tripod would be handy 2) DSLR or mirrorless camera able to shoot in raw with exposure time up to 20 seconds. If you do not have one, you can try to shoot with a simple point and shoot camera or phone, but lack of settings could be an issue. If you have a camera but not sure if it is suitable or not, feel free to ask here! 3) wide angle lens. Actually, any kit lens should work fine. Do not bring your telephoto lens or a portrait lens this time, we will not use it. Again, if your are not sure what to bring with you, feel free to ask! 4) a bit of adhesive tape would be handy but not mandatory 5) fully charged battery for your camera 6) red light headlamp. Red light helps a lot operating your camera and not overstressing your eyes That's it! Kindly let us know what camera and lens you are planning to bring so we can check if it is suitable beforehand. Thanks!

So cool to see so many people interested in the star photography. I checked the moon cycles and found out that evening and night on 12-13 Feb 21 is going to be excellent for the night photography! We will have almost new moon which will hide below the horizon right after the sunset. The best place for astrophotography is Abu Dhabi. but there are some very nice places not too far away from Dubai too! So, 12 Feb 21, 7pm - 9pm, place to be advised a bit later (hopefully, within 1 hour of driving from Dubai). Should we create a separate topic for it? Thanks!

@Pancho, @Rahimdad and the whole convoy, thanks a lot for the wonderful drive! It was my first drive from the Fossil Rock to Faya and I found it absolutely stunning! Gorgeous dunes complemented by beautiful rock formations made this a bit technical drive absolutely stunning! @Pancho @Hennie Schoeman @Abdul Rahman Abdul Kader @AlexPol @Federico De Chirico @Federico Galbieri @Joe Biju Joseph @Danish Mohammad @Niki Patel @Rahimdad you can find some photos in the gallery. Just in case you would like to have the high resolution photos without watermark, you can download them following the link: https://yadi.sk/d/A2GNvk9Vn0mW_Q It will be active for a couple of weeks. Thanks!

Nice to know! Unfortunately, flash cannot help in outdoors 😃 By the way, I took some photos during our last drive. I used 700-300mm lens with a crop camera (1.5x). Most of the photos were taken at 200-300mm focal length. So, some of the photos were blurry, mainly @Pancho red Wrangler and @Hennie Schoeman gray Wrangler, while others were ok! Hence, the problem is not the photographer, but Jeeps =))) Seriously, I had some issues with my 3D following autofocus with the Wranglers. Not sure why. Probably, it's just me 😃