So, most of the regulars have met me. Most of the regulars know that I enjoy science and stuff. I may actually be in the IT industry, 
, but we may never know.
I was out star gazing tonight, and let me tell you guys, it was awesome. If anything tonight was a great night to be out under the heavens. I saw so many things, and you guys know what I realized? We are pretty small and insignificant, I am talking microns compared to Mount Everest. Obviously that comparo isn's even close to the real scale, as the one I mentioned is tiny and something our minds can understand.
I challenge you guys to think 'outside' the box, and challenge what is given, and figure out the unknown.
I've gotten pretty into night sky time-lapse photography over the last few months. Mostly of the Milky Way but also of the moon and stuff. The best part is driving out to some pitch black place and sitting in a lawn chair looking up at the stars for a couple of hours while the camera does its thing. I will agree that it's a good place to do some deep thinking.
How do you learn to do this? We just bought a nice Canon DSLR and I want to learn how to do this.
Sorry Emo, I didn't see this back then. Have you figured it out yet? Most DSLRs have an built-in intervalometer that will take pics at any given interval. For night sky photography or timelapses you'll set a long exposure (between 15 and 30 seconds depending on the conditions). I usually try to let it take at least 96 pictures which would be a 4 second timelapse at 24 FPS. Twice that is ideal but I don't always have that much time. Long exposure timelapses take the most time because you can only take a couple pictures every minute. It's pretty amazing what you can see with a 30 second exposure on a moonless night. Maybe the most important thing is that you have software that can color correct and create a video from your hi-res photos. I use Adobe Lightroom for color correction and After Effects to create the video.
Here were my first attempts sometime last fall.
I'm using a Canon T6s with the 18-135 lens. Anyway these are just single pictures but that's more what I need to get better at first. I think these exposures were in that 20 to 30 second range. I'm pretty sure I just set it to manual and I can manipulate the exposure and the ISO. I don't really understand the difference between aperture priority and manual.
Unfortunately my rough ridin' camera doesn't have a time-lapse feature but my dad bought me this Vello Shutterboss thing and I can do it through there.
So you basically just take a few pics adjusting the exposure length and ISO until you get what you like and then just take a bunch of pictures in a row (96 or more)?
How do you prefer the moon phase to be?
How far do you try to get away from town? I'm not sure where you live. Should I make sure even small towns are not in the frame?
I also would love to see some videos you have done. I'm considering filming and submitting some short videos for some contests in a year or two and want to spend some time getting like filler stuff this fall/winter that I can use.
