Top products from r/LandscapeAstro

I'm a pretty simple person meaning that I buy a lot of my gear from Amazon. I love my Manfrotto and Gitzo tripods but they are just way too expensive! I recently started dwelling into vloggin with my camera and iPhone so I have been using my lightweight tripods way more often now and just leaving them in my car.

My favourite is this tripod I picked up from Amazon for an amazing deal! I picked this over the others because it comes with a smartphone adapter, carrying case, and waterproof bag. Here are the measurements:

• Recommended max load weight is 7 lbs (3.2kg) for best performance.
  
• Weighs 1.9 lbs; extends from 18.9 inches to 56 inches when center post is fully extended (48 cm to 148 cm).
  
  It's a great good beginner tripod but as other have mentioned Benro, Manfrotto, RRS, etc are great options too. You might want to look into ZoMei and Gitzo if you budget permits it.

Yeah sure. I used the kit lens for my EOS 1100D (17-55mm), 30 second exposures iirc, 35 seconds interval (I tried 30s interval but because the exposure was 30s I had to allow time to save the images to the storage).

I live on the edge of a small town so it wasn't necessary to go out to the middle of nowhere to avoid light pollution, although I suspect it would yield better results to do so. I simply set up my camera pointing out through an open skylight and connected it to my laptop on which I have installed camera control software which has options for timelapse.

The use of a laptop was purely personally choice though, it's honestly easier to use something like this.

Not the first guy but this lens is pretty much the standard for any of the a6XXX series cameras.

https://www.amazon.com/Sigma-16mm-DC-DN-Contemporary/dp/B077BWD2BB

I personally have the a6000 with this lens which I just recently started trying my hand at astro and I think it works great. You typically want a wide angle lens with less than 24mm focal length (for APSC) and 35mm (for full frame) and like moto_robo mentioned with an F stop of 2.8 or lower.

This site does a great overview for astro in general if you haven't seen it already.

https://petapixel.com/2014/01/29/picking-great-lens-milky-way-photography/

It wasn't as bad as I thought, a single shot and some editing is all it took. I picked up a headlamp (link below) from Amazon and used it in this shot. This particular one allowed me to adjust the width of the light, narrow or wide, and I went with the narrowest setting here. The light was really blue in the original image, I had to edit the beam to make it slightly lighter...and it's still very blue. Overall the shot was taken the same way as other astrophotography images. The night was cool and we had very little humidity, you could do something similar on a clear night. The sharpness and defined look was most certainly a result of a friend keeping their head steady for 23 seconds :)

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00NIOCZIK/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Seems like the Kamlan would fit. Is 50mm the best lens for you? Most of the photos on here are with a wide-ish angle lens.

I can recommend the Samyang/Rokinon 12mm F2.0

https://www.amazon.com/Rokinon-Ultra-Angle-Mount-RK12M/dp/B00JD4TAWI

Relatively cheap and it lets in so much more light compared to the F3.5 kit lens. I like a wide angle shot though. My Fuji is APS-C.

I had that same issue! I bought a cheap remote on Amazon and it is amazing, fixed all of the issues, and honestly, I prefer it. It’s wireless and has a physical shutter button instead of a display with no feedback, plus it doesn’t make any changes to your settings because it basically acts like a normal trigger

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B017GY5KWA

I would compare used against Amazon new and refurb models. Used may not always win, people get hung up on how much they paid for it a couple of years ago. Here's a Canon T5 refurb for $350. If you are willing to buy a couple of revisions behind, right as a model is fading, you can get new or nearly new cameras for great prices.

Your low budget may put you solidly in the used category. Unfortunately, sensor quality declines especially fast for low light shots, so a good body is a smart initial investment.

Lens is important too, the Canon kit 18-55 is reasonably good as a starter. Eventually, you will spend more on lenses than camera bodies, and they stick around. A bad lens will be bad on a good body.

Tripod, memory card, and maybe a memory card reader should be in your budget. A remote trigger is nice, but the self-timer is free. Don't shake the camera while shooting to prevent blur.

Hey awesome! I actually swapped the dec bracket that comes with the kit (mounted to the dovetail mount) with a Z tilt bracket. I then put a ballhead on that. It allows to me to have a level working platform which helps ALOT for doing panorama work. This specfic one if you're wondering

For your lens kit I would recommend the following kit:

• Canon 70-200 f2.8
  
• Sigma 18-35 f1.8
  
• Panasonic 8-18 f2.8-4
  
  Depending on the weight of the 70-200 f2.8 you might want to bring the f4.
  
  ​
  
  I frequent JTree VERY often (about 1x a month in the winter months) there is SO MUCH to do in that park, I highly recommend this book for things to do and look at. Let me know if you have any questions about things to check out and or see.

I currently use the Manfrotto MT055prox3 for the majority of my non-backpacking imaging, it's a good solid tripod with a 20lb payload capacity.

https://www.amazon.com/Manfrotto-MT055XPRO3-Aluminium-3-Section-Horizontal/dp/B00IQ7PT50/ref=dp_ob_title_ce

Yea, I was thinking this shutter remote, and I already have a nice tripod. Are there any other scope illuminators that can be bought? I don't have easy access to a 3D printer. Also, do I need to get a ball head? I typically shoot film, so I just have this video tripod head. Any ball head's you would recommend?

I use a Bonfoto that I bought from Amazon. It's lightweight, has a ball head and folds down pretty small. I believe it's a Chinese knockoff of a different tripod (not sure which one), but it's served me well so far. It also has a hook underneath to hang a heavy bag from to give it extra stability without having to carry around a heavier tripod. The biggest downside is that the max height is less than 5 feet.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B072NZL11B/

Get the a7s! You'll be manual focussing and shooting wide open anyways, so you can adapt your nice and very fast 24 f/1.4 lens to the sony with a cheap dumb adapter like this one. The sony is wonderful for night photography not only because of the incredible low light performance, but also because since you've got an EVF, the viewfinder can auto-gain the scene so that you can actually compose your frame.

here is for the cheap adapters. this does not allow any use of auto focus or in lens stabilization. Thisone does support all the lens features. although the auto focus doesn't always work depending on the lens.

I'm afraid you might have yourself a little problem there. Here's the go-to graphic from this useful article.

Your 50mm lens is gonna require you to expose for 10 seconds or less in order to not get star trails/streaking.... but 400 speed film is not going to pick much up in 10 seconds, even at you widest aperture 1.8.

Here are some ideas:

--Find a really wide angle lens for your model of Canon. I'm not sure exactly what mount it is but maybe there's a second-hand 20mm lens out there for not much.

--See if you can't get a hold of some faster film.

--Look into "barn door trackers" (google it)-- a budget method for getting your camera to move with the stars (but blurring your landscape/horizon).

--Go for some intentional star trail shots. Find a nice foreground (tree/mountain/etc.) in the darkest direction of sky, and leave the shutter ope for a while (experiment... try 15 min, 30, 1hr, 3hrs...) and learn from the results.