[manishved]

I have never shot meteor showers. Will appreciate any tips and tricks. I have a K1-II and a 645Z with a good collection of lenses.

[Aaron28]

go wide! f2.8-4.....have a solid 'infinity focus' ....as many 30 second exposures as ya like.......stack 'em and have a great star trail......weed out the meteors for a nice composite

[FozzFoster]

good collection of lenses.

wide and fast!

[robgski]

If you have done long exposure night photos, the same techniques apply.
Personally, I use a very wide lens to get as much of the nightsky as possible, with just enough landscape below for perspective. Use a tripod of course, bring a chair and something to drink and relax.
Give yourself time to set up, preferably before it is dark. Choose an area with as little ambient city light as possible.
With the K-1, I start at ISO 1600, and f8, 2 second delay with a 25 second exposure , look at a few test shots, and adjust for a a wider or narrower aperture depending on if the starfield shows up. Slighly overexposed is fine, you can darken in post. If you feel there is far too much light, use f11, If you shortn the exposure, you risk missing a meteor from start to finish. If you images are too dark, try ISO 3200, or even 6400, the K-1 will jot produce too much noise easily fixed in post.
You could use a cable release, or the K-1s intervalometer.
Keep those settings, and set up an interval shooting schedule 30 seconds. This gives your 25 second exposure time to process between shots.

You could try multiple exposure compositing in camera as well, but practice first.

[Aaron28]

side note: have not used the on board interval on the K-1 but have on others......the shortest time between shots is 2 seconds......if you expose for 30 seconds the interval time is 32

if shooting jpeg (which i do) turn off any and all noise reduction or other aids as they add to the exposure time.....if worried about dark frames for hot pixels etc...take your own dark frames after your set interval session with the lens cap on and equal exposure settings

[gifthorse]

Go someplace dark. The darker, the better. dress warm. It gets cold in the early morning hours. Take a comfortable chair or a sleeping bag. It's much easier on the neck if you can lay back instead of craning your neck to watch the sky. I prefer a fast lens somewhere from 24mm to 50mm. Wider than 24 and smaller meteors can be too small to show up. Wider than 50mm and a lot of the sky isn't covered. My two favorites are the Vivitar 28mm f2 'close focusing' and the Pentax A50 1.4 on a K5ii and a Kr. Mount the camera on a tripod. You can add some stability to the tripod by setting a gallon jug of water under the tripod and use a bungee cord or heavy twine tying the tripod to the bottle of water. If you are shooting the Perseids this week, aim the camera somewhere between North and East. I like some foreground for context. Turn off both the high iso and the long exposure noise reduction. I use the 600 rule to determine exposure length. Once I've determined iso/aperture/shutter speed, I use the intervalometer and let it shoot for several hours (don't forget extra batteries) while I lean back, drink coffee and enjoy the show. Meteors are random so don't be surprised if you only get two or three for a night's shooting.






You can also shoot star trails but it helps to have an external timer for that technique.


Good luck. Post some of your results for us.

[manishved]

Thanks for all the pointers. I plan to use the FA 31/1.8 on the K1-II and the 28-45 with the 645z. I am in the greater Sacramento area and plan to shoot either near the Auburn state park/ recreation area or on the hill near Iron Point in the Folsom area

---------- Post added 08-09-20 at 09:28 PM ----------

Go someplace dark. The darker, the better. dress warm. It gets cold in the early morning hours. Take a comfortable chair or a sleeping bag. It's much easier on the neck if you can lay back instead of craning your neck to watch the sky. I prefer a fast lens somewhere from 24mm to 50mm. Wider than 24 and smaller meteors can be too small to show up. Wider than 50mm and a lot of the sky isn't covered. My two favorites are the Vivitar 28mm f2 'close focusing' and the Pentax A50 1.4 on a K5ii and a Kr. Mount the camera on a tripod. You can add some stability to the tripod by setting a gallon jug of water under the tripod and use a bungee cord or heavy twine tying the tripod to the bottle of water. If you are shooting the Perseids this week, aim the camera somewhere between North and East. I like some foreground for context. Turn off both the high iso and the long exposure noise reduction. I use the 600 rule to determine exposure length. Once I've determined iso/aperture/shutter speed, I use the intervalometer and let it shoot for several hours (don't forget extra batteries) while I lean back, drink coffee and enjoy the show. Meteors are random so don't be surprised if you only get two or three for a night's shooting.






You can also shoot star trails but it helps to have an external timer for that technique.


Good luck. Post some of your results for us.

Thanks

---------- Post added 08-09-20 at 09:30 PM ----------

side note: have not used the on board interval on the K-1 but have on others......the shortest time between shots is 2 seconds......if you expose for 30 seconds the interval time is 32

if shooting jpeg (which i do) turn off any and all noise reduction or other aids as they add to the exposure time.....if worried about dark frames for hot pixels etc...take your own dark frames after your set interval session with the lens cap on and equal exposure settings

Thank you

---------- Post added 08-09-20 at 09:31 PM ----------

If you have done long exposure night photos, the same techniques apply.
Personally, I use a very wide lens to get as much of the nightsky as possible, with just enough landscape below for perspective. Use a tripod of course, bring a chair and something to drink and relax.
Give yourself time to set up, preferably before it is dark. Choose an area with as little ambient city light as possible.
With the K-1, I start at ISO 1600, and f8, 2 second delay with a 25 second exposure , look at a few test shots, and adjust for a a wider or narrower aperture depending on if the starfield shows up. Slighly overexposed is fine, you can darken in post. If you feel there is far too much light, use f11, If you shortn the exposure, you risk missing a meteor from start to finish. If you images are too dark, try ISO 3200, or even 6400, the K-1 will jot produce too much noise easily fixed in post.
You could use a cable release, or the K-1s intervalometer.
Keep those settings, and set up an interval shooting schedule 30 seconds. This gives your 25 second exposure time to process between shots.

You could try multiple exposure compositing in camera as well, but practice first.

Thanks

[MossyRocks]

side note: have not used the on board interval on the K-1 but have on others......the shortest time between shots is 2 seconds......if you expose for 30 seconds the interval time is 32

I don't bother with the interval shooting option. Instead I put the camera into the high continuous shooting mode and with my release cable I just flip a switch and let it shoot until I am sick of being out. There is less of a delay between shots doing it this way and you don't have to worry about going and resetting things or interrupting the interval shooting process. At this point you would need to figure out if you want trails or no trails and adjust your times from there. I usually prefer to have each shot capture no trails so I will have my shutter speed at 200/(focal length) as that will give the most options for combining things in post processing. Fast lenses are key and the suggestion of shooting at f/8 is one I would advise against as you likely won't need the depth of field offered since apart from the foreground object everything else will be at infinity. So with even with a 50mm lens everything will very likely already be basically at infinity or very close. However I do suggest stopping down some to clean up various chromatic aberrations and color fringing. Most of the Pentax 50/1.4 lenses do really well with astro if you stop them down to somewhere between f/2 and f/2.8, the SMC A 50/1.2 you can run at f/1.8 for pretty good results but at f/2 it is outstanding for astro. For things wider than that I have the S-M-C 28/3.5 Takumar which needs to be run at the half stop click between f/4 and f/5.6 to be usable for astro. I also have the DA AL 35/2.4 which is pretty good wide open but does bloat stars a lot there so you would want to stop it down 1 to 1.5 stops to clean it up. It isn't bad at f/3.5 which is what I captured this at and I really didn't know what I was doing at that point. Going wider still I have the S-M-C 17mm f/4 fisheye Takumar which is unusable for astrophotography, and the Laowa 12mm f/2.8 which really good wide open but it does have some slight coma that doesn't go away until you hit f/4 but at f/4 it is great.

I see the subject of dark frames has come up and the advise was to take you own at the end. This is good and you will get better results by doing dark frame subtraction form each light frame with a master dark created from the session, instead of using the in camera dark frame subtraction.

Also capture as raw, photons are sparse when doing astro so the last thing you want to do is throw away close to half of your usable bits right away by shooting jpg.

[Aaron28]

I don't bother with the interval shooting option. Instead I put the camera into the high continuous shooting mode and with my release cable I just flip a switch and let it shoot until I am sick of being out. There is less of a delay between shots doing it this way and you don't have to worry about going and resetting things or interrupting the interval shooting process. At this point you would need to figure out if you want trails or no trails and adjust your times from there

the on board intervalometer was a good selling point when i got the K-50 a few years back......the 2 seconds doesn't seem to cause much trouble when stacking with starstax....not even noticeable when using gap filling or comet trail.......generally take a few shots when setting up....first i take care of whatever i can do for a decent foreground shot and sometimes stop down to f5.6 but not often.......then take a few to set the exposure that will run the duration of the interval session.....usually around an hour or so (120-150 frames) depending how long i'll hang around....cap the lens and get 10-20 darks....been a long long time since i've done any over 35mm........typically 14, 15, 21, 28, or 35

[Aaron28]

I plan to use the FA 31/1.8 on the K1-II

not meteors but first go with the 31 on the K-1.....f4 on the foreground believe f2.8 for the sky........

[MossyRocks]

not meteors but first go with the 31 on the K-1.....f4 on the foreground believe f2.8 for the sky.......

Those are some quality skies there. I have to drive a long ways to get close to that.

[Aaron28]

Those are some quality skies there. I have to drive a long ways to get close to that.

the light pollution has been getting worse every year but it's nice the get out on a work night around 30 minutes one way....private property which they have given me permission to shoot

[slr_neophyte]

Is it advisable to turn off the camera's LCD displays (and is it possible on the K3 ii)? I find it incredibly annoying as it's so bright and distracting when trying to get a good look at the night skies.

[MossyRocks]

the light pollution has been getting worse every year but it's nice the get out on a work night around 30 minutes one way....private property which they have given me permission to shoot

It is here too but thankfully the local "dark" area is in a county park and surrounded by some favoriable geography to keep it dark however the glow from the cities is still large and it pushes out more each year.

Is it advisable to turn off the camera's LCD displays (and is it possible on the K3 ii)? I find it incredibly annoying as it's so bright and distracting when trying to get a good look at the night skies.

I turn it off on my camera because I don't like it destroying my night visions. Yes you can turn it off on the K-3ii and K-3. It is in the custom menu but I forget what menu option it is as I turned it off when I got the camera and haven't touched it since.

[robgski]

You can also set the LCD on the K-1 to a night setting with a subdued red light.

It is best to set up a User Mode for night shooting, then everything is ready at the turn of the knob.