Town Blackout

[ir_cow]

So what if you wanted to do something like have the tree stand perfectly still (not blurry) and wanted the sky to move without being discolored from the over exposure. 

 

Disclaimer: I know very little about photography. I have a canon rebel Xsi and I simply like to play around with it, so I do not actually know much about how to use the more advanced features when I need to take a pic of the night sky. 

Sorry Tj, i did see this post until now.

 

Well the Rebel Xsi is a nice camera and have a lot of features / fuctions but just missing a few megapixels (ya know the thing everyone really wants lol). So getting a photo the way you discribed without any post work is a bit hard. If you don't have acess to any RAW editing program it's a fight to get that image in camera prefectly.

 

Heres some quick settings you should do and as long as their is no direct light (like a street lamp you should be okay).

 

1. set up a tri-pod (this is a must for night and it can be super cheap one).

2. For blurry stars and a still background kinda like this http://www.flickr.com/photos/95880642@N04/9303589165/ you will need to do a few things

 

A) need to set your ISO to the lowest the camera can do. Most likely 100ISO

B) Depending on long long you want the exposure for (30secs to hours) you can try something like an wide open apature aka F-stop  (1.4-4 F-stop you will find. Really good ones go to 1.4 . Mine only goes to 1.8 but 2.8 is sharper).

C) Set the camera to Bulb (usally it will say B right next to the M (manual) option on the top wheel.

D) Either be Super steady (like no movement while pressing the button for 5 minutes) or get a release cable. usually the knock offs are a few dollars on ebay. real ones are 20-30$. I use the knock offs.

E) Set the time. That picture was 126 seconds. So anything after 30 is bulb and you will have to count.

 

--- For Sharp Stars

1. Same

2.  http://www.flickr.com/photos/95880642@N04/9165122958/

3. To have sharp stars you need to do some basic math. Divide your Focal Length by 600 and that is the max amount of time before the stars blur. Im using a 85mm lens so 85/600 is about 7ish seconds (7.0588). My camera only does 6 or 8, unless it's on bulb so I just do 6.

4. Set your ISO really high since you do not have more than a few seconds to get a picture. I found for 6 seconds 3200iso works great. It's different per camera. Just play around with it.

5. Set your F-Stop. once again Wide open lets the most amount of light in and you'll need it. Sometimrd i'll Set my camera to F1.8 and Iso 1600. Depends on the Moon, etc.

 

I do suggest taking all the photos in raw and editing them post. It really makes the photos look better. In fact most of my Raws look awfaul and throw aways before I color correct, etc.

[DanTheGamer11]

No more blackouts?

[ir_cow]

No more blackouts?

This isn't north korea lol. Im guess is some drunk driver ran into the poll that night.

[Tjj226_Angel]

Cool. 

 

We live out in the sticks, but it rains often. I will give it a try the next time we have a clear night. 

[Mara]

 

So what if you wanted to do something like have the tree stand perfectly still (not blurry) and wanted the sky to move without being discolored from the over exposure. 

 

Disclaimer: I know very little about photography. I have a canon rebel Xsi and I simply like to play around with it, so I do not actually know much about how to use the more advanced features when I need to take a pic of the night sky. 

Sorry Tj, i did see this post until now.

 

Well the Rebel Xsi is a nice camera and have a lot of features / fuctions but just missing a few megapixels (ya know the thing everyone really wants lol). So getting a photo the way you discribed without any post work is a bit hard. If you don't have acess to any RAW editing program it's a fight to get that image in camera prefectly.

 

Heres some quick settings you should do and as long as their is no direct light (like a street lamp you should be okay).

 

1. set up a tri-pod (this is a must for night and it can be super cheap one).

2. For blurry stars and a still background kinda like this http://www.flickr.com/photos/95880642@N04/9303589165/ you will need to do a few things

 

A) need to set your ISO to the lowest the camera can do. Most likely 100ISO

B) Depending on long long you want the exposure for (30secs to hours) you can try something like an wide open apature aka F-stop  (1.4-4 F-stop you will find. Really good ones go to 1.4 . Mine only goes to 1.8 but 2.8 is sharper).

C) Set the camera to Bulb (usally it will say B right next to the M (manual) option on the top wheel.

D) Either be Super steady (like no movement while pressing the button for 5 minutes) or get a release cable. usually the knock offs are a few dollars on ebay. real ones are 20-30$. I use the knock offs.

E) Set the time. That picture was 126 seconds. So anything after 30 is bulb and you will have to count.

 

One thing you could try is having magic lantern on your camera,it's a custom firmware made for pretty much every single "higher-end" Canon DSLR there is, it's got some cool functions like intervalometer capability - in a nutshell, a fully customizable auto-shoot mode. Just set the amount of photos you wanna take and the interval between shots with the exposure settings preset manually.

 

I've used it to get long timelapses of the night sky, to customize fps when recording videos, and to get a better idea of the lighting conditions with the different meters it's got.

 

http://magiclantern.wikia.com/wiki/Magic_Lantern_Firmware_Wiki

 

By the way, those are some awesome photos you got there... I feel jealous

I've only got a measly pos DSLR... a sort of european version of Rebel Ti

 

Edit. spelling

Edited July 19, 2013 by Mara

[ir_cow]

I've used Magic Latern for the T2i but I won't try it on a expensive camera like Mark 2. Really 99% of the fuctions are for video and I couldn't see a difference on the T2i

 

edit: I also keep reading your camera is basically bircked unless you use Flash cards with the custom firmware flag on. If you put a different card in, you get a error. Basically If your card goes bad or you have more than 1 like me, It's a bad idea.