TECHNIQUE ASSESSMENT

Chris showed Steve how to use the Manual mode to take full control

STARTING SETTINGS

Chris suggested that Steve start out in Manual mode so that he could take total control over his exposures. Chris recommended starting with a shutter speed of 30 secs for pin-sharp stars when using his equatorial mount. He also suggested that Steve increase his ISO to 3200 to make the sensor much more sensitive to light, and open the aperture on his lens as wide as it could go to suck in as much light as possible.

MANUAL FOCUSING

Focusing at night can be tricky, and Chris explained that you have two options: focus on the foreground, or focus on the stars, depending on which you’d prefer to be sharp. To focus on the foreground he shone a bright torch on the church so that Steve’s camera could lock autofocus, and then switched to MF to lock it off. He also showed Steve how to focus on the stars by going into live view, and pressing the magnifying glass button to zoom in so that he could see the stars clearly enough to manually focus on them until they were sharp pin-pricks of light.

PRO TIP SHOOT RAW+JPEG

Raw files are larger than JPEGs and capture much more tonal information, which is very handy when shooting in low light. However, Chris also likes to have JPEG images to work with, as these smaller files can be more manageable when loading a big batch of star trail photos into software such as the free Startrails program. A good idea is to use a high-capacity memory card, and shoot both raw+JPEG so that you have both file types for editing if needed.

PRO TIP PROFESSIONAL TRIPOD

To support the weight of equatorial mounts and heavy telephoto lenses, Chris uses a Charles 2.0 pro tripod from Three Legged

Thing – its magnesium alloy construction can handle loads of up to a whopping 40kg. He also uses a 3LT Airhed Pro ball head for fast adjustments, which can be mounted directly to the tripod or equatorial mount. The ball head has an Arca-Swiss mount that works with his L-bracket, so he can quickly switch between portrait- and landscape-orientation shooting.

EXPERT INSIGHT CHECK THE WEATHER

Crisp winter nights free from clouds are perfect for astro shoots, so check as close to your chosen night as possible for the most accurate forecast. In the UK, sites like metoffice.gov.uk and bbc.

co.uk/weather will give you a good indication of cloud cover in the area you wish to shoot. An app like Clear Outside is even better, as it shows you the low, medium and high cloud coverage in more detail.