That is, to determine your shutter speed, you will need to divide 500 by the focal length of the lens you’re using to determine the maximum shutter speed you can have before you will start to get star trails. That said, if you have one lens that is significantly wider than your other, faster lenses, you may be better off sacrificing lens speed for a wider focal length. I would say that a maximum aperture of f/2.8 would be ideal but I have had success in using lenses stopped down or with a maximum aperture of f/4. The lens matters a bit less for digital cameras but a good lens can take your photos from good to great. You will want to prioritize the widest, fastest lens you have. Once you’ve identified a good night for photographing the Milky Way, you need to decide what gear to take out with you. To check and see whether the evening will have promising weather conditions, I look to Clear Sky Chart. Even on a clear evening, you may not have good conditions to observe faint objects such as the Milky Way or other galaxies/nebulae due to a high amount of water vapor in the air. Lastly, keep in mind that even if you’re in a dark area and it’s a new moon, the weather may not agree with you. If you’ve got a choice of dark places, I would choose the location with the least amount of light pollution to the south/south-east, depending on what the app indicates for the direction of the Milk Way. Keep in mind that depending on the time of year and time of night you intend to be out photographing, the Milky Way’s position in the night’s sky changes so I would use whatever app you’re using to track the stars and I would change the date/time to a day when you intend to go out to get a sense of what direction you need to look in to see the Milky Way. There are a couple places you can look for this but I prefer Dark Sky Finder. Secondly, you’ll need to find a properly dark area, as devoid of light pollution as possible. For this, check the area you intend to photograph on Time and Date. First and foremost, you want to check the phase of the moon and know the moonrise and moonset as there is no bigger source of light in the night sky than the moon. Prior to getting out with your camera, you’ll need to do some research first. Further, if you are shooting with a film camera, film is (obviously) required as well and suggestions for which film to use will come later. Some additional gear that could really make a difference in your experience include: an intervalometer, a headlamp with a red light (the flashlight on your phone would do in a pinch) and an app (I use Star Walk) to point out constellations (I most often use this if I’m photographing the night sky sans Milky Way). Most simply, to do astrophotography you really only need three pieces of equipment: a camera, a tripod, and a remote trigger (though, for a digital camera, you can also use a self timer/shutter cable release (film camera). In addition, I am not covering editing your Milky Way photos - just the process of taking the photo. There are, of course, several thousand-dollar lenses that will do the best job but they are far from required to get photographs you can still be proud of. Before I begin, this is a short guide on shooting the Milky Way without a tracker using gear that you may already have or can get without a great deal of investment.
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