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How to take pictures of the night sky
This was something I'd nearly always wanted to be able to do because the sky is just so amazing to me. It was pretty frustrating to point my camera up at the sky and only come up with a blurry blob! So if you're trying to avoid that, you've come to the right place.

Posted by Juli T. • Published 7th September 2014 • See Juli T.'s 7 projects »

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Step 1
Set up your camera onto a tripod and point it up toward the sky
Step 2
Put your camera on manual focus, so that it doesn't try to re-focus while you're trying to take your photos.
Step 3
Once in manual mode, set your shutter speed between 4 and 30 seconds. You can experiment and see what turns out best for where you are.
Set your aperture (aka f/stop) as wide as it will go. Mine goes to around 3.5 to 5, but if you can go wider, than certainly do!
Step 4
Set your ISO as high as you can go without adding too much grain to your image. I like to keep mine between 800-3400, maybe a bit more. Again, if you can go higher than that, go right ahead.
Step 5
As for white balance you can leave it on auto, or play around with other settings, they can give off a cool vibe to your images.
Step 6
Once it's dark you can snap away! It's best to go out when the moon is small or not there. The darker it is can be the better.
Try to avoid clouds, and find an open area (if you can) with no light pollution, i.e street and city lights. Oh and shooting the milky way turns out so beautifully!