Thread: My first post ,therefor my first photo effort

Originally Posted by DiscoDave

That's a nice dark sky you've got in your first photo - that gives you room to experiment with exposure times and ASA values. My suggestions are 1. Expose for 30 seconds or more - you will get star trails but with an 18mm lens they're not going to be long! 2.

Leave the aperture wide open - you need all the light you can suck in there.

(there is no depth of field issue when you're phtographing the sky, only when you photograph nearby things against the sky) 3. If you can't turn off the lights around you use something to mask them out, light a sight screen at the cricket. 4. If you want a photo of the Southern Cross rather than the whole southern hemisphere start thinking about zoom lenses rather than wide angles. 5. If you want really good images you're going to have to start tracking - welcome to the world of Astrophotography. :-)

funny I was told this was not important......its the time you have it open is what was important I have tripod pictures before sunrise and got much better results from f8's and f11's....than I did the 4's and 5's as that is what everyone set there cameras to think it was important to have it really wide....

Not saying your wrong just saying that it just goes to show as not everyone gets taught the same.

as for depth of Field is not important on a sky, depending on what you want I would personally think it was important as stars go on forever and I would want to see the depth in the sky its black but it's defiantly not flat