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Greetings from an armchair photographer

Skylark

By Skylark
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Skylark

Skylark

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Greetings! I feel like a bit if a fraud joining this forum as I am very much a beginner who is interested in photographing night skies and the posts I have read so far are quite advanced and technical. Until now I have used my Canon eos 6ood pretty much as a point and shoot and have just begun delving beyond the automatic settings. But I have an opportunity to go northern light hunting and now the pressure is on to seriously get to grips with the capabilities of my camera! I hope to find kind people here who will guide me and assist me wirh making the most of my 'low end' camera and current lack of knowledge and skills.

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Knight of Clear Skies

Knight of Clear Skies

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Welcome to the forum, you'll find it caters to astronomers of all capabilities and interests. You might find this guide I put together on shooting the Milky Way with a kit lens useful as a starting point. If you have an specific questions feel free to post in the "Getting Started with Imaging" section, we're a friendly bunch and we all had to start somewhere.

Hope you enjoy the 600D, it's a good astro-cam, slightly better than the one I have. I beleive it produces a little less noise than other models and the flip out screen can be handy when it's pointing at the sky.

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carastro

carastro

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It's best to take a tripod and a remote cable so you don't need to press the camera shutter to take a shot.

You'll need to learn to focus on infinity, that's the worst hurdle to overcome and autofocus doesn't work in the dark.  I know how to do this with a laptop attached, but I guess you won't want to be using a laptop in a cold remote place.  I was told to focus on a bright star or something like Jupiter (but that's an early morning object at the moment), and get the star as pinpoint as possible (aided with the LCD screen zoomed in).  Might be a good idea to practice this before you go.  

Turn off flash.

Use approx F4, approx 800 iso.

Experiment with length of exposures, but don't go more than about 15 - 20secs or you'll start to get star trailing (the night sky rotates).  

If you want to do a "movie", take lots of 15 sec exposures in succession and you can animate them when you get back home.

Carole 

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bluenotetim

bluenotetim

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Hi Skylark and welcome to the forums. I went to Tromso in Norway a few years ago and was lucky enough to see the Northern Lights as part of an organised night trip and if this is the route you are going down then you will find that the guides on these tours are very good at helping you with your camera etc etc We had about a two hour bus journey from Tromso which gave the guides the opportunity to show everyone the best camera settings for their own cameras. I on the other hand hadn't really thought about photographing one of the greatest sights I will ever see in my life and took a point and shoot camera which caused much amusement on the bus journey....oh well one day I will go back with a dslr.

Cheers Tim.

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Jimtom

Jimtom

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Welcome to SGL. Your 600D is a great tool for AP, just add a remote or even better, an intervalometer and you're ready to roll! The EOS software is good and there are some other programs available, one of the best is APT, Astro pPhotography Tool.

If you are feeling brave you may want to try Magic Lantern firmware in your 600D :smiley:

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Skylark

Skylark

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Thank you everyone for such a warm friendly welcome. Where advise has been given I will certainly incorporate it. It seems that a trip to Tromso in 3 weeks time is on the cards. Time to get very serious about my preparation. I'm sure I will be asking lots of questions :)

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