h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

First of all Snockerty, congratulations on a very interesting article

I'm just thinking of experimenting with night and low light photography, and what I'd like to try out first is to take some photos of the stars and the moon. I'm not sure what sort of exposure time I should be looking at for each though.

Also, would you recommend going out into the countryside to remove most light pollution from street lights, or is it possible to get good shots from within towns?

Cheers!

MBS

Apologies for being so long in replying Mr BlueSky.
Yes I'd recommend getting out into the countryside away from some of the light-pollution if you want to see the stars, but it is possible to get good shots in town too.
Stars are easy, anything longer than about 30 seconds and they show up as lines rather than points of light. Open the aperture wide, release the shutter and wait. Do a series of exposures with differing aperture size ( not sure if depth of field is worth worrying too much about over these sorts of distances )but if you want *stars* rather than little white lines keep the exp. time at 25 - 30 seconds. You can of course make use of the apparent motion of the stars by using longer times, try pointing the camera north and do a series of exposures of say 1 minute, 5 minutes and as long as you can be bothered to wait. You'll end up with shots that show the stars moving in a circular fashion around the pole. Looks good if you can include a bit of foreground interest too like a building against the sky.
The moon........should maybe have an entry of its own. Moonlit photography can be interesting with very long exposure times of perhaps an hour rather than fractions of seconds, but the moon itself would need a very short exp. time, I'll try to dig out some info for times/apertures etc and get back to you on that.


TSF