14 thoughts on “Looking Up”

  2. Scundered

    Here’s the 500 Rule:

    500 Divided By the Focal Length of Your Lens = The Longest Exposure (in Seconds) Before Stars Start to “Trail”

    For example; let’s say you’re taking a shot with a 24mm lens on a full frame camera. 500 / 24 = 21 seconds, which you can round to 20 seconds.

    1. David J

      I’ve taken 15 second exposures of the night sky with a 200mm lens and not seen the stars streaking. Anything above 15 seconds and I see streaks. This doesn’t fit with your formula….

      1. Rob Hurson

        Just looked over my old astro photos, and for the wide angle shots it’s pretty accurate. The formula’s just a rule of thumb – it doesn’t account for the declination (point it north, and there’s less movement, natch, whereas if you point the camera at the celestial equator…).

  3. Rob_G

    The stars look nice, but I would have just added your man in post; that way he wouldn’t have had to stand there for so long, and he wouldn’t be all blurry.

    1. Rob Hurson

      I’d go somewhere darker, expose the sky for longer (that way, you’ll actually see the stars’ colours), and light up yer man with an external flash on low power, if you want to do the whole thing in one shot. Still like the shot though.

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