Cannon 7D best settings or astro tips?

[cobra84]

Hi All

I've recently got a cannon 7D and wanted to know if anyone has any starting tips or settings to get started with astrophotography?

What do people recommend in:

ISO?

AWB?

Shutter speed?

or any other settings?

Regards

Mark

[Leveye]

Shoot in RAW so wb does not matter. ISO 800 works well in most cases when doing guided long exposures. If you use a program like BYEOS or APT you'll set the camera to bulb mode. If using a camera lens in most cases you'll be shooting in bulb and under 25 seconds wide open aperture at ISO 2500 works pretty well. Experiment  and have fun!

[cjdawson]

For my 70D, these are the setting that I tend to use.

1. Mirror lock enabled.

2. White Balance set to K 6500

3. ISO tends to be 800 or lower

4. Picture style faithful

5. Auto rotate off

6. Turn on the 2 second self timer.

I use an intervalometer to take my shots.  Normally multiple shots, here's the settings that I use for this...

1. Timer 10 seconds (gives me time to put the timer down and step away from the scope and for the vibrations to stop.

2. 10 seconds between shots - gives the camera time to write the image, and cool off a little between shots.

3. Famecount - number of frames I want in that sequence, normally 20 or more.

4. Exposure time + 2 seconds (to allow for the 2 second timer in the camera)

As for the exposure time, this is very subjective, I normally take a series of shots before I start an imaging sequence to dial that in by trial and error.  The idea is to make sure that the histogram in the photo is somewhere between 25% and 30% for the bulk of the data.

As I use my auto-guider for long exposures, this can easily mean 3, 5 or 10 minute subs.  So far, I'm tending to stick with ISO 800 and increase the number of sub frames in preference to lowering the ISO and increasing the exposure time.  I may consider lowering the ISO further once I'm happy that I can capture high quality data without optical problems.