Here's a shot taken last night, as far I could go away from the city lights.
It's a 5 minutes exposure with the K10D and the DA 16-45mm.
To avoid the earth's movement, I mounted the camera on a home-made equatorial mount ("barndoor mount"), which allowed me to "follow" the stars.
That was my first try and it's pretty exciting, I want to go back and do longer exposure and do some "deeper" deep sky photography!



ISO200 at F/4.

C&C welcome!

[Denis]

I have done some of night photos with film a while back. I did tried with K10D with 16-45 but it is not ideal. Best results were with a 50mm at f1.7 for 25 sec, no tracking. I captured 3 times more stars than your above image.

Long exposures with DSLR causes noise in the image, keep it short by using very fast lenses.

[little laker]

Personally I like it, and wish that I could have a 5 min exposure with the K100.
I'm sure glad that you left the poll in the picture.

[mikerigel]

I have done some of night photos with film a while back. I did tried with K10D with 16-45 but it is not ideal. Best results were with a 50mm at f1.7 for 25 sec, no tracking. I captured 3 times more stars than your above image.

Long exposures with DSLR causes noise in the image, keep it short by using very fast lenses.

Well, I agree the DA16-45 is just too slow for this, but I doubt you got 3 times more stars with a 25 sec exposure.
The resized version doesn't do it justice, there are thousands of stars on that shot well visible on the full size version.
I'm very happy with it but I do want to find a wide angle lens that is faster, at least f/2.8. I have the 50mm f1.7 too but it's just too long for my taste.
The DA14 would be great I guess.... ah more LBA...

[little laker]

He may have Mike, depending upon where he was. If he was further away from lights than you were it wold make a difference.

I lived in 1 place in the country for a while where you literally couldn't see 10 feet in front of you at night, but the night sky was beautiful. I wish that I still lived there, and might move back some time soon.

[mikerigel]

He may have Mike, depending upon where he was. If he was further away from lights than you were it wold make a difference.

I lived in 1 place in the country for a while where you literally couldn't see 10 feet in front of you at night, but the night sky was beautiful. I wish that I still lived there, and might move back some time soon.

Yeah, that's true. I remember when I was on vacation in Tennessee 2 years ago, on top of the mountains... the sky was amazing, just by naked eyes!
I was just saying that you can't really see the amount of stars on this web sized sample here, the original is totally different.
Thanks for your comment by the way..

[ericc]

That is a very nice shot. Where I live, we have fairly dark skies, but the OKC metro area is about 60 miles east of us. So, the horizon is fairly lit up. This coming weekend, I'm going here....

N36 55.923 W102 59.866 - Google Maps

with a fellow Pentaxian. Should be plenty dark to take photos like that. I'm looking forward to the trip.

[db2]

There is an article here....Digital Light & Color - Technical Articles..... about astro photography, if its anything like the author's other stuff it will be good.

[Denis]

Well, I agree the DA16-45 is just too slow for this, but I doubt you got 3 times more stars with a 25 sec exposure.
The resized version doesn't do it justice, there are thousands of stars on that shot well visible on the full size version.
I'm very happy with it but I do want to find a wide angle lens that is faster, at least f/2.8. I have the 50mm f1.7 too but it's just too long for my taste.
The DA14 would be great I guess.... ah more LBA...

Here one done with 50mm F1.7 untracked for 13 sec at 800 iso.