Focus - I found focusing extremely hard with this camera kit lens (Nikon D7000), since the manual focus ring is very loose. I used the widest aperture, so dof is out of the equation I guess.
Any tips for this situation?
Are the stars from the ooc jpeg below suffering from bad focus, star trailing, bad lens, or all of them?
Exposure - When trying to follow the 500 rule, I understood that I’m left with ISO to set the correct exposure.
Does it make any sense trying to tweak ISO for the best exposure, or should I stick with fixed values like 3200, no matter what the result looks like to my taste?
If I should tweak ISO, what kind of histogram should I aim for? A centered one? Below the same image as above and its histogram.
Noise reduction - I used both High ISO noise reduction and Long exposure noise reduction. The latter seems to do dark frame subtraction, since the mirror goes down and the camera waits the same amount of time as the shutter speed setting, before it finishes the picture.
Should I disable both, since these settings only apply to the ooc jpeg?
Is camera dark frame subtraction better than manually doing it in post? In other words, is it better to stack ooc jpegs, provided dark frame subtraction is turned on?
Use live view, zoom to 100%, turn on IS while focusing. Also use color shifts (due to lens aberrations) as guide. If you want a fun toy look at a bahtinov mask:
Neither will help with the lens though.
Are the stars from the ooc jpeg below suffering from bad focus, star trailing, bad lens, or all of them?
Looks like a combination. Judging from the streak the satellite or whatever it was focus can’t be that far off.
Does it make any sense trying to tweak ISO for the best exposure, or should I stick with fixed values like 3200, no matter what the result looks like to my taste?
If your camera is not iso invariant you generally want to select a higher iso, but not so high that you are clipping information. If it is ISO invariant just set it high enough so you can recognize your shot on the LCD. From a quick google it looks like the D700 is not iso invariant but you might want to test this yourself. Take a picture at say iso 1600 and one at 400. Boost the exposure of the iso 400 shot to match the iso 1600 one, and compare the results.
Should I disable both, since these settings only apply to the ooc jpeg?
Is camera dark frame subtraction better than manually doing it in post? In other words, is it better to stack ooc jpegs, provided dark frame subtraction is turned on?
This might depend on the camera but in general, just turn off the in camera process. Take an entire stack of light and dark frames and stack them for the best results.
You probably already know this but just in case:
In the sample shot you have considerable flare from the lens. Make sure that you don’t have any unnecessary bright light sources in the frame or hitting the lens. If necessary shield it with and object like your hand.
Use a dof calculator, you will be amazed how big the dof is because you are focusing on things very far away. If it happens to have something bright very far away, you can try autofocusing on that and than change to manual focus. Also, follow the tips above from Jonas.
Depending on what you do with your photos, the 500 rule might be to much or to less Look also for the NPF exposure calculator, this will take in consideration all the elements in the equation (sensor size, focal length, aperture, etc) . If you plan to print large or crop a lot, the 500 rule will leave visible star trails with most modern sensors.
For this and the next point (Noise reduction) with your camera I strongly recommend stacking. It does add some extra work, both when capturing and when processing, but the results will also be a lot better.
If you are doing stacking you get some extra perks:
noise reduction
adding more data as the exposure time is going to cumulate
you can also try stacking for trails (this means of course to take a lot of exposures )
you can also do a time lapse
Important is to have fun, try the suggestions you get, as much as possible one by one to understand what helps and what not.
The dynamic range of the night sky is huge. You should strive to get colour in the stars but it might not be possible to achieve it for all the stars. Try to have some colour in the stars that are the subject of your photo (milky way or whatever other sky object you are photographing). If you also want to have some foreground in your photo you also have to account for that.
You should be able to find a graph in internet showing the ISO/DR performance for your camera. It might give you a good starting point about what ISOs you want to try. After this just take some test exposure with various shutter speeds and see how much can you push them without losing colours in the sky.
Once you found the sweet spot, see if you are happy with what you get from single exposures or want to try stacking.
Once you are happy with the sky, it’s time to think about what you want to do about the foreground (if you have any). Here the possibilities are again huge : light painting, low level lighting, separate longer exposure and blending or even various combinations from all of the above.
As always, start slow, try one or two things, see what works for you.
Thanks, @Daniel_Catalina!
I’ll re-read your advice and try to make some progress on the DR side (not forgetting about fun, of course! )
Before reading your post, I made an attempt last night to capture Jupiter’s moons - in my naiveness, I was hoping to also see Saturn’s rings . With high ISO, that wasn’t working at all, and all I got was a bright, clipped spot, although the settings were working to reveal dimmer objects, like open clusters (I think I captured M7!!)
So I radically reduced ISO from 5,000 to 100, and also reduced exposure from 5" to 2".
I got a very dark image where only Jupiter and Saturn were showing.
I stacked 48 frames in Siril (also with darks), but registration suffered, and only 6 images were taken into account (maybe I should have gone manual, but I’m lazy and anxious to get some result).
So… I can see Jupiter’s moons:
One thing you mentioned you’re using your kit lens, which I’m assuming is the 24-120mm f/3.5-5.6. With point light sources, brightness isn’t determined by the f value of the aperture (which is a ratio of focal length to aperture), but by the physical size of the aperture (which is why telescope apertures are listed in cm or inches, rather than f-numbers.) Because stars are point light sources you will get brighter stars by using the longer focal length (120mm) at f/5.6.
With the 24-120mm at 24mm, the widest aperture size is 6.8mm (24/3.5=6.8). With a focal length of 120mm the widest aperture is 21.4mm (more than 3 times as large.)
High ISO NR is only applied to OOC jpeg, long exposure NR to raw data also.
Nikon D700 base ISO is 200. Iso 100 is extended i.e. taken ISO 200 and then processed by camera to look like an ISO 100 shot. No reason to go that low.
Happy shooting! Should try by myself star photography some day too.
Yeah, you’re right, I probably should have raised it and lowered shutter speed. (But why, since my goal there was only to get detail from the very bright Jupiter, in the hope to capture some of its moons?)
Look also for the NPF exposure calculator, this will take in consideration all the elements in the equation (sensor size, focal length, aperture, etc) . If you plan to print large or crop a lot, the 500 rule will leave visible star trails with most modern sensors.
: light painting, low level lighting, separate longer exposure and blending or even various combinations from all of the above.
)
. With high ISO, that wasn’t working at all, and all I got was a bright, clipped spot, although the settings were working to reveal dimmer objects, like open clusters (I think I captured M7!!)
