USA Outer Banks North Carolina

These are the outer Banks of North Carolina, USA where you have a nice view over the atlantic without any light pollution. It is one of the best spots at the whole east coast to spot the milky way.

A follower asked me yesterday, how i did the milky way shots. So i´ve written down a checklist you can use.
(German: Wer diese Liste auf Deutsch will, soll mir bitte ne Nachricht schreiben)

If you want to shoot stars you have to take care of a lot of things. You can use this as a personal checklist

1. You have to wait for a night where the moon is barely visible. If the moon is visible like a full moon, you won´t see any stars because the moon will give you light pollution. You can use this website to check out the right nights: http://www.moonconnection.com/moon_phases_calendar.phtml
For May for example a good time is between 15th and 20th of may.

2. Clear night without clouds/fog.

3. Spot - you need a spot as most far away as possible from ANY city. Check out this website an have a view on the massive light pollution on earth
www.lightpollutionmap.info
Any lights in the area will have an effect on the picture.

4. Time - you need to wait til the milky way rises. Thats about 12am to 4am(depending on northern/southern hemisphere)

If you can match every of this checkpoints, you have good chance to catch the milky way

5 . Camera Settings

5.1 Tripod - you need to have tripod to keep the camera steady.

5.2 Focus, go into manual focus and try to focus at the stars. you can set the focus during the day on infinity and check if its right. leave it on manual! In the night, the camera won´t be able to find a focus on autofocus

5.3 Lens - try to get a wideangle lens (16-20mm) or set your lens at the lowest mm to get the widest angle

5.4 Camera MODE on M for Manual ! This is very important

5.5 ISO 3200-6400 if you have a fullframe camera. you can go higher with your ISO. If you have an APSC (Crop) Camera, try to keep it on 3200 or lower if possible

5.6 Exposure time - 25 seconds. Everything above 25 seconds will give you a blurry picture, cause of the earth rotation. The stars will be a litttttle bit on a different position after 25 seconds which will give you a blurry effect. If you can, keep it lower like 20 seconds.

5.7 Aperture - F4 or lower. That factor depends on the lens you got. I bought a lens extra for astro-photography with a low Aperture Number. Mine is F2.8. As lower as the F Number is, the more light can enter the camera sensor. This means you get more light, more stars, more milky way in the same exposure time like a higher F number. So try to get the lowest F number your lens gives you.

5.8 if you have, try to use a remote control because when you hit the shutter button your finger will vibrate the camera and give you a MINIMAL blurry effect. You can get wired remote controls for 15$ on amazon. I always use them on long exposures.

I hope that helps you out!
If you can catch some star pictures, send them to me and we can talk about them and i can give you more tips if you need them! Have fun
„wink“-Emoticon

Jonas

Go by car, you can park right within the highway at the beach