I had a shed load of fun outdoors in the dark last night photographing the night sky from my garden. It was still warm(ish) considering it’s October and the cloudless sky was as clear as a bell. I’m not an evening person and hate being cold so have only ever attempted astrophotography once before, but I’d learned enough to know what camera settings to use and how to go about taking pictures in the dark. So I thought I’d share my tips and settings with you in case you fancy having a go.

Stellarium

My first tip is to use the free Stellarium app, either on your phone, tablet or laptop. You have to allow it location access or, if like me you have this switched off on your devices, in the box at the bottom of the screen which says ‘Unknown’ you can type in your post code. Also make sure the correct time of day is showing in the box on the right hand side.

I then ensure Atmosphere and Landscape from the icons on the bottom of the screen are checked on. The landscape won’t be your exact landscape, but it will show you where the horizon is. This is the Stellarium simulation of the view from my back garden at 10pm last night, which enabled me to see where the Milky Way was in the sky only parts of which were faintly visible with the naked eye.

Camera Settings

You need a sturdy tripod and a wide angle lens (mine is 12-40mm on a micro 4/3rds camera). Set your camera to Manual with manual focus.

NOISE REDUCTION
Go into your Camera’s settings and switch on the long exposure Noise Reduction.

IMAGE STABILISATION
Go into your Camera’s settings and switch off Image Stabilisation.

APERTURE
Open your lens up as wide as it will go (mine is F/2.8).

ISO
An ISO of 1600 works well for me but your camera may differ. The higher the ISO the more noise you’ll have to deal with in post editing but if it’s too low each photo will take ages.

SHUTTER SPEED
This is where it gets a little more technical. We need to know our focal length before we can determine what shutter speed to use.

The focal length is how zoomed in or out we are, and we can see what focal length we’re using by the numbers on our lens. Here, for example, you can see by the red line on my lens that my focal length is 25mm.

Your shutter speed is determined by the following equation:
Focal length x 2 = Y
500/Y = shutter speed

For example, with a focal length of 25mm my shutter speed would be:
25 x 2 = 50
500/50 = 10
so I’d use a shutter speed of 10″ (ie 10 seconds).

If, however, you feel your resulting image is too light or dark you can increase or decrease your shutter speed accordingly.

If you zoom in or out while you’re taking pictures, thereby changing your focal length, you will have to re-calculate your shutter speed.

CAMERA SHAKE
To avoid camera shake, and therefore blurry photos, use a remote shutter release or the built-in timer on your camera with a delay of 2 or 3 seconds.

FOCUSING
The reason we turn off auto focusing is that stars are too numerous and far away for our camera to be able to properly focus. Instead, use the Infinity setting on your lens which looks like a sideways figure of 8 and here is shown underneath the red vertical line:

Other Kit

We tend to photograph the night sky in winter, as it gets dark early and the cold makes the stars clearer to see. So wrap up! Even though it was still fairly mild for October last night I still had on a balaclava to keep my neck, head and ears warm and gloves with removable fingers so my hands were warm but I could still operate my camera. Luckily for me I was at home, so could have lots of warm drinks but if you’re out on location take a flask with you.

You will need a torch – I just used the one on my phone.

Spare batteries. Taking photographs in cold weather drains your camera battery much more quickly than taking photographs in warm weather. Make sure you have at least one, preferably two, spare camera batteries.

Be patient. It takes a while to find the settings which work for you and with noise reduction switched on each photograph will take twice as long to take.

Editing

You will need to edit your photos to make them usable (I use Photoshop). Firstly to reduce noise, including colour noise (some of the stars will look bright blue for example), and secondly to bring out the details. I mostly change:

• Noise (using Topaz DeNoise as a filter accessed through Photoshop)
• Sharpness (using Adobe Camera RAW within Photoshop)
• Colour, clarity, whites, blacks & highlights

This is only my second go at starry sky photography but I did manage to capture the Milky Way from my garden using an (almost) fish eye lens. Here is the resulting image.