Just realized my Milky Way shots were all wrong after a guy at a star party pointed it out

I was at a local star party up near Joshua Tree last month, and some guy with a Dobsonian scope walked over and said, 'Why are your stars all trailing?' I was like, what? I thought my tripod was solid. He told me my shutter speed was way too long for my 50mm lens. I had been using 30 seconds like a lot of tutorials say, but he said for that focal length I should stick to 13 seconds max. Next clear night I tried it and the stars were actually sharp for the first time. Has anyone else gotten bad advice from tutorials that messed up their early astro photos?

2 comments

2 Comments

victor_carr2521d ago

That "30 seconds for everything" advice got me too (I was shooting with a 24mm on a crop sensor, which makes it even worse). I found the same thing you did, I use the 500 rule but rounded down a bit for safety, so for a 50mm on full frame I do 10 seconds instead of 13 just to be sure my corners aren't soft. Actually what helped me the most was stacking multiple shorter exposures instead of trying to squeeze every bit of light out of one long shot, way cleaner results and you don't have to trash half your images from wind or accidental nudges.

kelly.daniel21d ago

Yeah stacking shorter exposures saved my milky way shots too, game changer.