milky way with standard canon 18-55mm lens?

[Gerhard]

hi all!

while deciding on my first scope to buy, I was wondering if it would be worthwile to attempt a nice photo of the milky way with my very standard canon 500D with  18-55mm lens...

what I read on the lonely speck is "get a better wide angle lens", basically...

my question is, should I bother to try with my 18mm? or are they correct, and would that standard lens never result in any good images?

ISO only goes up to 3200...

thanks in advance!!

Gerhard.

[Scott]

You'll get a fine image of the milky way with the kit lens. of course there are better lenses but how much more will it cost? A descent short lens will cost many times more than your camera .

get your camera out and give it a crack. no need to go as high as iso3200 either. try 800 or 1600 and stack about 50X20sec subs.

[Skipper Billy]

Its always worth a go !!!  What have you to lose ??  Even if you don't get any images at all you will have had practise at handling your camera in the dark etc.

You don't need a desperately high ISO - it just gets noisy.

What you DO need is a decent tripod, a remote shutter release and a bag of enthusiasm.

Get your self somewhere with dark skies, manual focus at infinity, lens wide open (f3.5?), ISO 800 and try a 30 second exposure - its its under exposed up the ISO - if its over exposed the drop the ISO and or exposure time.

This image is 30 seconds at ISO 800 at f3.5 - granted it was taken with a 14mm Samyang but the result would have been very comparable with the standard kit lens.

The important thing is to get out, try things and have fun!! Don't get despondent if your first images don't reduce Olly Penrice to tears.

[Singlin]

I took this image with that exact lens on my Canon 600-

[Atreta]

I think is perfectly possible to take good pictures of the milky way with the kit lens(good by my beginner standards).

It is woth to try since you already have it.

in the 30 minute challenge i made a post of one of my shots. 

http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/200510-the-30-minute-challange/?view=findpost&p=2451677

it was made with an alt az mount and 20s exposure. with an equatorial mount you can go much longer.

[knobby]

Don't forget you'll get better results if you take several shots and stack them with DSS (deep sky stacker)

[davkt]

Sure splashing out on a fast L series lens will get you better results (and have you hankering after an EOS 1D!) but the kit lens is perfectly capable of some good results with a bit of care.

[RichM63]

The main thing is 'to attack', if you don't try, you will never learn.

[Gerhard]

thanks guys for the advice and encouragement! I wouldn't have asked if I had a good dark place for shooting at a comfortable distance from home, but it's a good hour's drive, so before going that distance I wanted to make sure it would be worth it...

obviously seeing the milky way with my own eyes is already a very good thing, but being a photographer enthousiast, "you want that on photo"... :-)

I wouldn't have thought that also milky way photos were material for stacking, but then again I only know about stacking since maybe three weeks, when I went to the astronomy afternoon and made the sun photograph of my avatar.

50 20s exposures? (what are "subs" anyway, forgive the ignorance, but I prefer to ask, instead of guessing)

is stacking in any way similar to the HDR process in photography in taking the best parts of over-, under-, and normal exposed photos and put them together in one photo?

[Gerhard]

I don't know if it was clear from the first post, but I do not own a telescope tripod yet, let alone a motorized one...

Can stacking be done with static photos?

[Skipper Billy]

Subs are 'photos' - each image you take is referred to as a 'sub' - to a terrestrial photographer subs = frames.

If you take lots of subs you can stack them to improve the quality and lower the noise.

From a static non-moving tripod if you stack them you will get star trails.

From a tracking mount you can stack the stars which will blur anything thats not moving (land etc) but the stars will be sharp.

See attached - first is a single sub - the second is stacked images from a fixed tripod - the land based stuff is sharp but the stars are trailed.

This was stacked is StarStax another free programme.

Get yourself up into the hills above Turin and have some fun !!!

[davkt]

Yep, standard lens on a good stable camera tripod and http://www.wheretowillie.com/photography-tutorials/the-night-sky-stars-without-star-trails/ tells you how long exposure you can get away with without getting star trails. Take loads of photos then stack them with whatever software you have.

[Gerhard]

thanks! will check that out!! :-)

if this weekend shows good weather, I'm probably going to try that site out! disturb some "recreationists"... ehehehe...

[Knight of Clear Skies]

As others have said, the kit lens is well worth giving a go. They are a bit limited though, light transmittance is quite low so even at the same f-number as a prime less light will hit the sensor. You probably want to use it wide open for single exposures but you might want to stop it down a bit if you are taking multiple shots and stacking them, otherwise bright stars tend to get bloated and the coma can be quite bad. It's a bit of a trade-off between light gathering and sharpness.

[Gerhard]

but, not having a tracking tripod, the only thing I can do is take single shots, no?

or are stacking softwares able to align various shots taken with small positional variations between them?

if I take only a single shot, I'm guessing wide open is my best chance...

if stacking however, I can limit that a bit to avoid the star brilliance you describe, no?

[Knight of Clear Skies]

You can stack images taken from a fixed tripod as long as the exposure time is short enough to avoid trailing, DSS can detect and compensate for field rotation.

[Gerhard]

okay, excellent!! 

As I gather, 20secs is about the max one can do, with wide field to avoid trails?

the initial response talked about 50 20s exposures. I really need my remote... :-D although 20 secs is still possible without remote: max is 30secs.

but I'll risk moving the camera... will have to be verycareful...

[davkt]

Good point about stopping the lenses down a stop or two, I do have a camera bag full of stupid expensive L series glass and even with those there is only the good old  80-200 L f2.8 magic drainpipe I'd use wide open.

[davkt]

And on max exposure it depends on the focal length you are shooting at, take a look at the link I posted at about 11pm yesterday as it gives you a table of max exposure v focal length.

[Gerhard]

Reading a bit more about lights, darks, flats and bias, I was wondering: for milky way photographing do I need all those? Particularly flats will be kind of a problem, as I will not be able to take those at the same location I will be doing the lights (and darks and bias)...

[Knight of Clear Skies]

Personally, I'm not bothering with flats or darks at the moment, but I do take 30 dark bias. As I understand it, darks will only help with longer exposures than I'm taking (150 seconds max). Flats would probably help a bit but any vignetting from my lenses isn't that obvious. This is a 20 minute Milky Way (2 minute subs) using my kit lens without any darks or flats applied:

If you're shooting from a fixed tripod and stacking the final image quality will probably be limited by read noise. Lots of short subs aren't as good as few longer ones, because every time the camera reads from the sensor it introduces some extra noise.

[hjw]

Reading a bit more about lights, darks, flats and bias, I was wondering: for milky way photographing do I need all those? Particularly flats will be kind of a problem, as I will not be able to take those at the same location I will be doing the lights (and darks and bias)...

Dark frames and flats help but you can get away without. It's just not the "perfect" image. The one attached is four frames (1x30sec and 3x10 sec ISO800) with a kit Pentax camera. No darks, bias or flats... You can see the vignetting in the corners, but hey its is not totally bad. Just give it a go and you will be surprised about what can be done. By the way, that's how I started a few month back. Had a new camera, and pointed it to the night sky. Wow, that was interesting... Now I want some decent gear! Good luck!

[Gerhard]

Good! because, as I said, flats would be kind of a problem from where I will be shooting. 

Do all you guys have custom made flats filters? cut out lens caps with white cloth / paper across it?

@Knight: I'm guessing you have a motorized mount for those long exposures? I will not be going over 20 - 30 secs for a sub... otherwise trail-fest...

[Willisamus]

Just the thread I needed. I'm with you on this one Gerhard. Only I am using a sony a6000 with it's 18-55mm, kit lens.
Yesterday I tried for the first time but with a 55-210 kit lens having no idea what I was doing, my shots were all fudge Looking as if it was just white spots on a black paper. I was using 30s exposure, 3200 or 6400 ISO and HDR (for some reason I thought it was gonna be better), and 4,5 aperture. 

[Gerhard]

exactly what I got when I tried a week ago. one exposure of 30 secs up at the sky.... blackness with here and there a star...but the sky wasn't very dark...

tomorrow I am hoping for better results, and will try with some darks and bias as well, onenever knows...

will let you know if I went, and what the results were... :-)