Month: August 2015

How To Shoot The Milky Way And Night Sky With A DSLR Camera

The Milky Way over Westport, Ontario
The Milky Way over Westport, Ontario

(Blog updated November 2016)

Shooting the night sky for the first time can be a daunting process that can be a challenge even for an experienced photographer doing it for the first time. You’re operating under a completely different set of rules than you would shooting more typical targets in either natural or artificial light. So I figured I would put together this brief guide outlining what equipment is needed and the technique to get the best results out of your time under the stars. Continue reading “How To Shoot The Milky Way And Night Sky With A DSLR Camera”

When The Stars Align

So it’s been a while since my last writeup. I guess I could and SHOULD have written some stuff, because I’ve been quite busy on the astro-front this summer. Anyone who’s following my Facebook page, the different Facebook groups I’m a member of, or my Flickr page will see I’ve been quite busy with photography!

Not only have I been taking pics of the sky, but I’ve been branching out a bit learning to use my camera on stuff that isn’t in space for a change! So far, it’s been mostly landscape, cityscape and night photography. I’ve also been dabbling in time lapse photography, which I’ve really been enjoying. As a result, I didn’t want my wonderful Nikon D7000 to be permanently attached to my scope. And I like this camera specifically because the 16 MP sensor in the D7000 has the best low light performance of any other Nikon or Canon crop sensor. So I decided that rather than buying another expensive camera, I would get myself a used Nikon D5100, which shares the same sensor and processor as the D7000. This camera is lighter on features, so it would become my main astro-camera (to be full spectrum modded in the future) while my D7000 would be used to shoot other stuff. And I’ve been getting a lot of use out of both! For the $325 I paid for my D5100, it was a brilliant purchase! Continue reading “When The Stars Align”