I know you're all dead set keen on your DSLR's and I well appreciate why, but I happen to have a curious little compact camera - a Panasonic LX3 - which runs to a 60 second exposure and has an f/2 Leica lens, and while I know well its no match for a "proper" camera I was curious to see whether it can actually capture much.
Anyway the weather gods finally obliged tonight and I took a few wide shots with this little beastie. They don't seem much until you download them as when downsized most of the stars vanish, however it did a lot better than I expected considering these are single 60 second shots - no darks, no stacking. All I did was shoot at ISO 400 (they looked noisy in camera) and drop the exposure a stop afterwards using SilkyPix which removed a lot of the noise. Tolerably.
http://web.me.com/nicholas.loveday/S...ophotos.html#0
http://web.me.com/nicholas.loveday/S...ophotos.html#1