Last night I finally managed to experiment with taking sky shots using the Canon 550d.
Attached is a very early attempt - nothing fancy, but it shows what a beginner can do with just a camera on a tripod in Sydney. The images are straight from the camera without any post processing.
I have also shown the corresponding Stellarium screens for comparison.
There are 2 images attached - both from the same photo, but showing different zoom levels. You can see stars down to approx magnitude 8.8.
Image details:
Camera: Canon 550d
ISO: 400
Aperature: f/5
Shutter Speed: 20 seconds
Post processing: none
Location: Sydney
Date Time: 10/9/2011 6:35PM
Appreciate if anyone has advice on good settings for the EOS 550d and/or sky images which were taken without a telescope.
Your settings are good, to get the best bang for ya buck and make the images pop ya need to take lots of these shots in a sitting and then stack them together. Using a program like Deep Sky Stacker which is free and easy to use will do the job nicely.
For a bit of an instant wow! factor shot, just crank the iso up to highest setting and take a 20-30 sec shot. You will get lots of noise and bit of star trailing but you will also get s shot with lots of stuff you normal cant see.
Have a look around the forum for lots of example of DSLR wide shots and how they were taken.
