Imaging time with a Sony mirrorless camera

[jeffmar]

I live in a fairly light polluted neighborhood. I do not get out to dark sites very often so I try to make do where I am. I have a mild light pollution filter that helps but gives all my photos a strong blue tint. The tint is not a big problem because I can clean up the colors in Lightroom. One of the questions I have had for a long time is how long should I make my exposures? Even with the filter I can get blown out photos with 60 second exposures. I am aware that a monochromatic camera is better for light polluted areas but I am not interested in spending the extra time, effort, and money to get all of the different color exposures with filters I would need to do. I want to keep it as simple as possible. Can I get decent images with many 15 to 30 second exposures or do I need to get a really narrow band filter and go a lot longer with my exposures? I would really appreciate some input from some of you experts out there!

[Allinthehead]

Hi Jeff. I would say it's target specific. You should expose as long as you can without clipping the highlights. Experiment with different exposure lengths and different iso settings as your imaging conditions and setup are specific to you and there's no right answer to your question. You could try iso 800 for 60 seconds and go from there. You can get wonderful images with short exposures but that data does really start to mount up.

[happy-kat]

After reading numerous posts I let my histogram drive the iso and exposure length. Maybe 60 seconds is fine for you, aim to keep the histogram peak clear of the left edge and be roughly placing the peak before the middle.