Although it was too windy to do prime focus work, took some piggyback shots of the glorious Southern Milky Way.
Location was Terrick Terrick National Park 220kms NNW of Melbourne. A fire in the area the day before shows up as some light coloured haze on the horizon.
All shots taken with a Canon 400D, Sigma 17-70mm DCMacro lens and up to 5 minutes exposure.
The compression for Web does not do the images real justice, really happy with the lens especially when steped up to a high f ratio.
Lovely shots John, I took some similar ones with my 350D + 17-70 at SPSP, but the transparency was ordinary. They're still on the camera but i'll get to them this week I hope.
Great shots John, that Sigma 17-70mm lens sure works well.
Sometimes I think sigma makes much better optics than the Nikon Or Canon main brands, but doesn't include the "features" or waterproofing as the Canon "L" series lenses.
I love my Sigma 24-70 F2.8 and I would never spend $1400 for the Nikon version. I paid I think $350 for the Sigma.
Was wondering did you mount this camera on some tracking machine? I mount mine a tripod and getting some star trails at 6 minutes at iso800...
Yep, for these shots the 400D rode on top of my 12.5" reflector, so you will need a tracking platform, however I have been suprised by the amount of stars that can be captured at ISO1600 in just 45 seconds. Perhaps you can try 5 to 10 stacks of 45 second shots and stack these in Registax or deep sky stacker?
