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How long on a tripod without trails


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Hi all.

Im off to a dark sky area at weekend and am able to take camera and tripod.

What would be a rough exposure time with a nifty 50 without getting trails?

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It is a matter of trial and error, I normally take a shot and use the preview to check on screen. By pressing the + mag button twice you get 10x magnification and can easily check the roundness of stars. It will probably only be a few seconds with a 50mm lens in cropped format depending on were your pointing. Having established shutter speed then adjust ISO and aperture until your satisfied with result. Don't forget a remote control. 

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As a rough rule of thumb... for APS-C which the 600d is.... 400/fl... so you're looking at approx 8 seconds for the 50mm on a static tripod. Whilst you may be tempted to shoot wide open, the edges will have horrendous star shapes due to coma. You're really looking at f/3.5 to f/4 to remove that... try it and see.

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I read somewhere yrs ago that to image on a tripod without any guidance etc that you can get up to about 4 mins. This is using the camera on the widest setting of the lens. If you use a narrower lens setting then you magnify the image and trails become more obvious.

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Thanks all. Trial and error seems order of the day. Im hoping to get a wider lens but just keep missing out on fleabay.

Thought a trip to northumberland for a wedding was to good an opportunity to miss after my yellow skies.

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Well I've just started using a nifty 50 with the canon for widefield on tripod I'd suggest around 8 - 10 secs exposure before I get trails that's with lense stopped down to around F3 ish.... And iso1600 maybe less depending on LP as I tried this in lanzarote amazingly clear sky one nite

Regards

John

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funny i should read this - just finishing having another play in GIMP with my lyra and hercules widefield using a 50mm lense on a tripod. Camera is an APS-C sensor.

see attached Lyra widefield, its a stack of 20 second exposures with my 50mm lens at F1.7. Zoom in and you will see there are slight trails and also significant "angel wings" from leaving it wide open.

see attached Hercules widefield, its a stack of 10 second exposures with my 50mm lens at F1.7. Trailing is signifanctly less - but still got lots of "angel wings" due to leaving the lens wide open.

if you dont zoom in - even 20 seconds is ok i reckon - not horribly noticeable. But next time I am out I will be reshooting these and stopping the lens down to F2.6-F4 and see what improvment I get in the star shapes to get rid of those bingo wings. Both of these objects were due south, so probably the fastest area of the sky for movement. So if you are doing towards north, maybe you can stretch that to 30 seconds without significant trailing.

post-26554-0-47636100-1406036567_thumb.j

post-26554-0-35490900-1406036594_thumb.j

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n

Reminder to self not to do maths in the early hours. Of course the correct answer is 6 seconds. Don't know where the 16 appeared from.

500 divided by (lens x crop ). :D

some use 600 but I think 500 is safer

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I've read it's 600 for full frame, and 400 (600/1.5) for APS-C crop sensors... well actually Nikon APS-C crop sensors.. Canon would be 600/1.6 or 375.. but I've used 400 and the values work.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I've just bought a Samyang 14mm F2.8, can't wait to give it a try. Might be a cloud gap tonight after 9pm.

I'm going to start on 20 seconds, F4, 1600iso and see what happens.

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I've just bought a Samyang 14mm F2.8, can't wait to give it a try. Might be a cloud gap tonight after 9pm.

I'm going to start on 20 seconds, F4, 1600iso and see what happens.

I got one of those too last week. Not really had a chance to use it, but it feels like a nice piece of kit!

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I have the samyang. Dont bother stopping it down, it really is excellent wide open. Just be sure to download a lens profile to deal with the tricky moustache distortion.

Not really sure how to do that, is it for the camera or for photoshop?

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Not really sure how to do that, is it for the camera or for photoshop?

I would be interested too i know that the canon ones are stored on the camera and the 18-55mm IS one allows me to shoot wide open with no distortion.

Alan

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