Thanks guys!
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Could someone like me with zero experience do this and how, what do I need to obtain good results in order to capture the night sky ?
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It's a bit fiddly, but if you've got suitable gear it's not too difficult. Mount your camera on a sturdy tripod, set your exposure for 8 - 20 seconds
depending on your night sky. Set ISO 800 - 3200 depending on how noisy the camera sensor is. Set your lens to wide open and least zoom (anywhere
from 8mm to 50mm can give good results). Unless your tripod is rock solid, use the 2 second delay shutter release and let rip.
Obviously, an SLR will give the most flexibility (I used a Pentax K50) but my little compact panasonic also has a night sky feature that you can set
for 5 - 30 seconds. My K50 has an interval shooting feature so I can set it to take ie: 450 shots at 22 second intervals (assuming a 20 second
exposure). You can also buy 3rd party intervalometers to plug into most SLR's and control the shutter release. Compact cameras could be more
problematic for interval shooting - some may have programs for it.
Then take your 400 odd photos and load them into something like Panolapse to make your time lapse movie. I set mine up for 25fps so it plays well
with my video editor and eventually youtube to give reasonably smooth results.
I also make a lot of adjustments to my photos in Adobe Lightroom before I import them into Panolapse - but that's not necessary.
These days, DSLR's are coming way down in price and you should be able to pick up something suitable for not much more than a compact digital camera
if you don't already own one.
What I love most are the Aurora time lapses - one day I might even take a trip way up north to see and photograph them. I occasionally see the
southern aurora down here but it's usually just a pale glow on the horizon - I think I've only ever really seen it once properly here about 20 years
ago. If only I'd had a digital camera then!
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