Astrophotography

This is my first attempt at Photographing stars.  I was amazed that in complete darkness that the camera can pick up on light that even the human eye cannot really see.  I wish the sky was clearer but I could not even really tell that there was all the white clouds.  I could only see the lower darker clouds.  I was really amazed to see the outcome because it looks like a sunset or sunrise shot with stars in the sky.  I cannot wait for another chance to try this.  In the photographs you can clearly see the constellation Orion.  I found out after I took the shots that the milky way galaxy was actually behind me and I wish I would have known, because from photographs I have seen it looks really cool in photos.  

In order to take photographs like this you need to set your camera to full manual mode.  Then change your lens to manual focus.  You need to focus your lens to infinity.  Your camera settings need to be:  A high ISO, as high as you can go without a ton of noise.  I used 6400.  Your aperture needs to be as wide open as possible.  I believe mine was about an f4.  Also you need to have a long shutter speed.  I used between 20 and 30 seconds.  The rule to find out what shutter speed setting you should use is called the rule of 600.

The rule of 600:

The rule is that you take 600 and divide it by the focal length of the lens.  For example I used a 20mm lens.  So you take 600 and divide by 20 and you would get 30.  The 30 is the number that you set your shutter speed to, in seconds.  If you go by this rule you should be fine.  If you go beyond these settings you will start to get streaks of stars because of the rotation of the earth.  Which can give your shots a cool effect.  But your camera must be able to have longer than 30 second shutter speeds in order to do that.