As per Rick's suggestion I will start a thread on how I approach an out of the ordinary aspect of photography.

One of my favorite pastimes is imaging at night. It is not a very complicated procedure and, for me, it is a welcome change from the chaos of daily life. The following Milky Way image was taken in August, 2014 with my 5Dmklll Canon and 16-35mm f2.8 Canon lens. My manual settings are 16mm, f2.8, 15sec exposure and ISO 3200, this is a good starting point but don't be afraid to experiment. You will also have to use manual focus but that can be done by picking a distant street light or radio tower to obtain focus and put a piece of tape over the focus ring so it doesn't creep during the session.
Two of the most important accessories are a sturdy tripod and a red flashlight to see what you are doing without impacting your vision. Basic location requirements are, a dark location with very little ambient light from town or recreation areas and a clear view (in my area) of the SSW sky down to the horizon. Having an interesting foreground also helps make the image more interesting. The best time to start is about 2 hours or more after Sunset until 2 hours before dawn.
While an adequate Milky Way image can be had straight out of the camera, there is a tutorial I use on YouTube that teaches how to make your image come to life by highlighting the lights and darkening the dark areas. (How to edit the Milky Way, Photoshop Tutorial; by Kenneth Branden). I run this video on my iPad a few minutes at a time then pause and try to create what he has posted then return to the video and the watch the next step. The editing process can be as much fun and as rewarding as taking the actual picture.
Give night time imaging a try, the night sky is full of wondrous things.
As my image shows, I am in an old cemetery on private land and I do have permission to be there at night. The residents there are very friendly and I have never had a problem or argument with any of them.

Thanks and have fun; Jerry

 

Excellent, work! Thank you for sharing your knowledge!

 

Since it's a long exposure, does it matter how you activate the shutter? Do you do it manually, with a remote, or use the timer?

 

This might be a dumb question but if you expose for 15 seconds, the stars don't get smudged? I know when photographing planets and the moon it would occur.

 

My camera will do shutter actuations up to 30 seconds. Anything longer than that I will use bulb mode and an intervalometer.

 

Not a dumb question at all. The rule of thumb is to divide your lens size into 300 and that will give you the longest time, in seconds, the shutter can stay open and not get star smearing or star trails. In my case with a 16mm lens I can have a shutter setting of 18.75 seconds and still get a clean picture. I hope this formula helps.


On the other hand this Moon image was shot at 600mm, 1/1600sec, f7.1 and ISO 320. The moon and some planets are so bright you have to use a fast shutter to get any detail.

 

This is good to know, I am going to have to try this soon, never knew about this rule of thumb

 

I use the bulb setting and a remote.





those were taken with an equatorial mount



early work with using a flashlight to illuminate the woods, and a very long set of exposures stacked for the swirl effect





just messing with brightness and contrast

 

now note on the wide angles, it looks like the stars are moving, but it's more an effect of the wide angle lens. the one thing you need more than anything else is a really dark sky