Technique
NIGHT SKY
Stars in their eyes To kick off our low-light special issue we focus on the biggest challenge of all – astrophotography. Peter Dench asked three winners of Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2021 to share practical advice on shooting the night sky Jeff Lovelace
Jeff is an award-winning photographer from California, USA. He has telescopes running at a remote observatory in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Each scope includes a specially designed digital camera cooled to -25°C to help capture images of extremely faint objects, some over a billion light years away. www.jklovelacephotography.com WHEN I was a child I always wanted to be an astronaut, fascinated by space. I grew up during the period when Star Trek first came out and watched the moon landings. I didn’t do a lot of photography in my teens; I had this rivalry with my brother who really got into photography, which meant in my mind, I couldn’t. What kept me from launching into it was I thought it would be difficult – but I kept seeing this one telescope in the store I thought would be really cool, then I saw a photograph taken through a telescope of Jupiter and I thought, you can do that! That was that, and it’s been a big part of my life ever since.
Nightscape
Wideangle photography, after dark with a normal camera and lens, typically with a landscape in the foreground, it’s fairly easy with just a few key settings, some very obvious. Typical exposure times will be from 10-30 seconds, sometimes up to a couple of minutes, so you’re going to need a tripod. A wideangle lens is good, a very fast lens is good, it can be a zoom if it’s a high-quality zoom, F2.8 or faster. You have to know your camera settings and be a reasonably proficient photographer and not have everything on automatic or shutter priority; everything is manual including focusing.
Approach
When I go out to do nightscape photography I have two approaches. One is to go to an interesting area, see what I can find and create in the moment. ‘Luna Dunes’ was the other kind. I had planned in advance, I’d been to those dunes before. I had researched the phase of the moon and weather. I’d even sketched out the image that I wanted.
Apps
I quite often use various apps to find exactly the right spot and time, what angle the moon is going to be at relative to the landscape. The apps that I use are The Photographer’s Ephemeris and The Photographer’s Ephemeris 3D. Together they’re a wonderful tool for planning shots. I might also use PhotoPills and Planets Pro. You can get a star tracker to track the stars as the Earth rotates, or if you’re more analogue you can still use charts!
Rule of 500
Have your lens wide open, and aim it at the Milky Way. There is the rule of 500, which is an old rule anyone can look up – basically you divide the focal point of your lens into 500, and that gives you your exposure time. So, if your full-frame equivalent focal length is 20mm, the 500 rule would suggest that you use a shutter speed of 500 ÷ 20 = 25 seconds. I use a Sony camera with smaller pixels, so I go with the rule of 250 which is the same thing. The rule of 500 is to avoid exposures that are so long the stars turn into little streaks. You want your stars to be pin-point or close to it, so you don’t want to go beyond the rule of 500 (or 250). Where Beginnings End – a focus-stacked timelapse comprising 57 images.
Sony A7R IV, 16mm lens, 30 secs at f/4, ISO 6400
14 www.amateurphotographer.co.uk
14-19 AstroPhotography Feb15 JP GH latest.indd 14
08/02/2022 12:04
