Hi Jedd, from a fellow newbie
You may already know much of this, so please excuse the length of it!
Your idea of starting with pictures of the milky way without a telescope sounds good. You can begin with very basic equipment and still get pleasing results. Pretty much anything can take pictures of the milky way, apparently even using an app on a phone.
The main requirement is to be able hold a camera absolutely steady for long enough for the camera to gather enough light. Using a remote shutter release will help reduce vibration too. You can take basic wide shots with pretty much any tripod, but it may help to hang some weight under it to improve stability. It is probably worth budgeting to buy a decent tripod though. A good quality solid one should last you pretty much indefinitely, and not need upgrading later.
The essential things to get right are stability and settings. In my experience so far, learning how to choose the optimum ISO, aperture, and exposure times, plus getting the manual focus spot on, were initially much more important than how much I’d paid for the gear. For example, the sweet spot for focus isn’t necessarily found by simply cranking the focus ring right round to the infinity end - it’s often best when turned back a little. Of course, I’m talking about taking beginner star pics here, not shooting a supermodel for the front cover of Vogue.
(I mostly use a basic old Canon 600D with a kit lens for astro shots but I do also have some higher end gear to compare it with).
My experience is with Canon cameras, but there would be other good options on the market. Entry level Canon DSLRs often come with an inexpensive 18-55 mm zoom “kit” lens. These seem fine to get started with, and will allow you to test out a range of focal lengths without buying several much more expensive lenses. Camera geeks who have just spent a few grand on fancy lenses may look down on kit lenses, but I’ve found my Canon ones to work just fine and be good value for a variety of photography. (You can tell who the geeks are - they talk about their “good glass” whilst the rest of us just call them lenses).
Google can find you some perfectly good astro images taken with the Canon kit zoom lenses, including some that were used on tracking mounts..
As you zoom the lens towards 55mm you will get closer views but the trade off is that you will get less time to take the picture before the stars start to go out of shape. It’s a double whammy - the longer the lens the less effective it is at gathering light quickly, plus the closer that the view becomes the more it exaggerates the speed of movement of the stars across the viewing area.
There doesn’t seem to be a good reason not to start with affordable lenses and delay buying expensive ones until I know exactly what extra benefit I would be getting for the money. I.e I won’t waste money on a Ferrari just to go to the shops. I’ll wait until I know exactly when, where and why I can use it. They say that the most important part of a good photographer’s equipment sits between their ears, not in the gear bag, so I feel there’s a lot to learn yet before I need to use more expensive eqiupment. And I don’t want to waste money through inexperience at this type of photography.
The newly released Canon 200D apparently comes in a version with the 18-55mm lens for about $900 all up, so that might be worth checking out.
https://www.camerahouse.com.au/canon...tal-slr-camera
There is also the 750D at an OK price including the kit lens for only $100 more than just the body alone. Those are handy lenses for a variety of photography so, at that price, it’s not exactly a big or risky investment!
https://www.camerahouse.com.au/canon...tal-slr-camera
Both appear to have better ISO range than my 600D.
All the best with your choice.
Cheers,
Chris
Shot taken at 18mm, using the old Canon 600D with the kit zoom lens. Reduced to a measly 140k size to post. Solid Manfrotto tripod, remote cable release, Image Stabilisation turned off and manual focus used. Exposed for 15 seconds at !SO 1600 and then further lightened on the computer in the photo storing software (one simple movement of a slider, no stacking or fancy post-processing). A few minutes later the cloud at the right rolled in and blanked it all out!
With the basic shots that I take there’s a fair margin for error. Just newbie stuff, nothing flash. i usually take darker shots (less stars, and only the brighter ones prominent) that I can use to crop out particular constellations to help me learn the patterns and identify areas of interest to observe later with a telescope. You can alter quite a lot on the computer. However, what I can’t fix effectively is bad focus or out of shape stars because I got the settings wrong.