Master The Lens | Sea to Sky Photography

First Attempt At Astrophotography

I have always enjoyed looking up at the stars and moon on a clear night but didn’t know anything about taking photos of it.
I stumbled on a video about Landscape Astrophotography and straight away knew that it was what I wanted to do.

As I had a holiday to the Big Island of Hawaii planned, I thought this would be the perfect time to try astrophotography. I watched a few videos on YouTube looking for tips on what to do. The four main things I remember were; long shutter speed, increase the ISO and use manual focus and a fast lens. I thought it sounded straight forward so it would be easy.

One late afternoon, I headed off to the Visitor Information Station on Mauna Kea and once there I found a place to set up my Nikon D5300 with my new Tokina 11-20mm f/2.8, which I got for the trip to Hawaii. When night fell and the stars were coming out I could already see so much with the naked eye, stars were everywhere.

As I took focus and remembered the tips I saw on the videos – I set the shutter to 30 seconds and upped my ISO all the way, which was 12800 for the Nikon D5300, and took my shot and all I can say was I was disappointed (see the image below). I tried a few different settings but still nothing was coming out like I saw on the videos.

Tips

Now a couple of years later I can share some tips, and this is just the basics.

 

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