Chat - Monthly Competition - November: 'Astro-Photography'
 

I was inspired by a talk by an astro-photographer a few weeks ago which motivated me to see an exhibition at the Royal Observatory. Consequently, this month's theme is 'Astro-Photography'. Maybe the title should be 'Basic Astro-photography' as you don't need all the technical gubbins like telescopes for the work I want to see, indeed I've seen superb naked eye photos taken with a basic dslr and 18-55mm lens. Initially it can appear quite difficult and unobtainable due to equipment, cloud cover, light pollution etc but that's the challenge, you have a few weeks for that clear night.

As to post-production you may remove noise, dust, light pollution etc but no computer manipulated star-trails or cloned in stars.

Oh my word.......sounds very difficult!

won't be possible for me, hard to see stars in the sky over here. In summer this is possible, but in the winter it is hard. To bad for me...
I'll look at the sky every night, you never know.

BTW, wanted to do star trail for the long exposure challenge, but had no stars in that month.

Think a few may try this but it just depends on the cloud cover and if you are based in a city or not. Got a star on the front of a Mercedes, will that do?

Do you have a link to some example shots? I know you can google it but it sounds like your after something specific.

I thought this topic would be a challenge. It was slighly inspired by October's theme. I haven't put any links in on purpose as I didn't want anything specific. As an example I took these 3 shots tonight about 2300h on my Canon 60d, Sigma 17-70mm lens and a tripod. I was in the back garden for about 25 minutes in total and took 22 shots. I can even make out The Pleiades in 2 of them and a plane. I live a 10 minute walk from the city centre. They're not brilliant and need some post work but hopefully can help with some ideas.

[IMG]http://media.digitalcameraworld.com/forum/gallery/files/1/5/0/1/5/3/night_sky_1.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://media.digitalcameraworld.com/forum/gallery/files/1/5/0/1/5/3/night_sky_3.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://media.digitalcameraworld.com/forum/gallery/files/1/5/0/1/5/3/night_sky_2.jpg[/IMG]

Whats the brown object in the middle image?

How to vote on this one? Stars at the sky are stars at the sky. Or am I wrong.

The 'brown' object in the middle one is an aeroplane's lights DD, it turned brown after uploading, it should be red and yellow. (nice new portrait by the way).

It depends how you look at it Sabrina, these are examples. You can do technically correct record shots if you want or use your imagination and experiment with pictorial images. It is supposed to be a challenge after all isn't it, a topic that not all of us do all the time. We are all subject to cloud cover and light pollution to varying levels, I live in a city and don't have a car.

Its certainly different but I'm looking forward to a challenge. Should be interesting.