When shooting deep sky objects such as Andromeda or the Orion nebula, I find that I'm between a rock and a hard place. I can get passable results by running 3600 ISO and four second exposure. Any longer exposures will show star trails that wont work in DeepSkyStacker. I'm pretty sure my focusing is as tight as can be. I'd like to get more detail and stars but without a motor drive for my equatorial mount, I'm not sure it's doable. Also I find that using a barlow lens really makes the star trails much more noticeable. With just telescope and no barlow the star trails are still there but less apparent.  Any ideas on how I can get nice crisp photos? Maybe many short exposures stacked will yield the same result? Even though the short exposures have much fewer stars and details, will they still work in DeepSkyStacker? Are there other editing programs that might work a bit better for me?
65015
I want to take pictures of  or  or , but I don't have an equatorial tracking mount, and don't want to spend that much money on one.  How can I get clear, low-noise shots of things in the night sky without noticeable motion blur, without spending too much money? Is it possible to build a DIY tracking mount? Are there other techniques or devices that could help?
49199
I was wondering what are the alternative macro techniques people use instead of buying expensive macro optics. I know about single lens reverse macro technique; what other alternative techniques allow you to do quality macro within a budget? If yes:   What is it called? What equipment do you need and (if any) where to buy them? Does it support AF/Aperture dial? What are the risks associated with it? What are the disadvantages of the technique? What are the Advantages in your opinion?   Feel free to add your own comments if you want, following the points.  This is a community wiki post, so please put one answer per post, and feel free to improve an item originally posted by someone else.
121935
On the weekend I attended a wedding and took my camera along.  I was not the official photographer -- just a guest.    My camera is a Canon 5D Mark III, and I was using an EF 50mm f/1.4 USM lens.  At the evening reception, which was a dark room with disco lights etc, I was going round taking lots of photographs of all the party people and in order that I didn't have to worry about my camera settings, I shot in Aperture Priority mode, with auto-ISO, and f/number of mostly around f/2 - f/4.  I used AI Servo mode so that it would track people dancing etc.  Of course, I also shot in RAW.  It is a testament to the 5D Mark III that it was able to find focus in such challenging conditions!!  However in my stupidity, I didn't change the maximum auto-ISO setting, and most of the shots were taken at a whopping ISO 25,600 -- the camera seeming to prefer to increase the ISO rather than slow the shutter speed to get an exposure.  The shutter speed in most shots is probably faster than it really needed to be - around 1/125-1/250th...  For a 50mm lens I probably only really needed 1/80th-1/125th to freeze the action?  This has resulted in some incredibly noisy and grainy shots, lacking in the detail I'm used to.  Note that I don't think it's a focus issue - the focus is fine, and the shots aren't blurry either.  Just noisy.  I imported all the photos into Lightroom 4, and have been playing with the Noise Reduction and Sharpening sliders, but in order to really get the noise levels to a normal or acceptable level, I've had to push that NR slider all the way up to 80 (choke!!).  Normally I'd only apply at most about 40, even in a low-light photo!  This much NR has meant that the detail in peoples faces is overly softened, and skin tones are looking almost plasticky.    So my question is, what would you say is the best way to "recover" these photos and balance noise reduction against sharpening, or to reduce the noise in another way?  I do also have Photoshop Elements 11 at my disposal, though I'm not the best with it.  However, if there is another way in which I could use that to achieve the same thing, I'd also appreciate some pointers.
61859
This is something I just realised I don't entirely know the answer to, so I'm going to ask it here as I think it's interesting.  In most non-scientific writing on depth of field, diagrams generally show camera and subjects as being perfectly parallel, e.g.    However, is this a more accurate representation of the focal plane?    Are there ways to optically alter the shape of the focal plane?  Note: Obviously these diagrams are two dimensional, but I'm assuming in the second diagram the shape would be spherical with the sensor at the center.
63001
I need to take 30 1s exposure shots in raw at night. The image becomes ALMOST black... Is it possible to take this tiny amount of light/information and sum them all toghether and get as a result a single image that equals a longer expoaure? I am not talking about brightening an image, I am talking about summing the single light information of the pictures together. Would that be possible in photoshop? Would the result be any good?
112995
When dealing with camera motion, its very sensitive to any movement discontinuities. Is there a way to easily achieve natural looking motion when dealing with complicated motion paths and timings?  Follow path animation feels too robotic unless I adjust all the keyframe easings carefully and this has to be re-done everytime the animation changes (the automatic bezier type just doesn't work).
97070
This weekend is a "Supermoon" (the largest full moon of the year, in perigee, the closest to Earth). Would someone please advise how I could make the most out of my Canon PowerShot to photograph this phenomenon?    What settings should I use?    What times are the best with respect to the exact times of moonrise and moonset provided by the U.S. Naval Observatory? In other words, is it better 30 min before it crosses the horizon? Or just at the crossing? Are there any tips and tricks for a beginner to benefit from?  Are moonrises or moonsets generally better/easier to capture? Are there different techniques for different phases of the moon?   I read that full moon tends to come out flat, but I also want to benefit from the perigee.
9416
A friend has been kind enough to lend me a DSLR for a few months.  It's my first foray into DSLR photography, or indeed any kind of photography beyond simply aiming my Canon IXUS at something and clicking the button.    Over the last few weeks, I've been busy studying, practising and trying to learn as much as possible ahead of a planned trip to Norway where I hope to see, and get some photos of, the Aurora Borealis.  I currently have:   Canon Rebel Xsi (450D) Canon 50mm f/1.4 L  Canon 18-55m kit lens Aluminium full height tripod with ball head Cable release Spare battery &amp; memory cards   I'm prepared to spend the night wrapped up outdoors, in the hope that they will make an appearance. I'd like some advice on how to get the most out of this kit for the trip:   How should I go about setting up to get pics of the Aurora?  How might I achieve optimum focus? From what I've read, I'll need to use the tripod and cable release, with IS turned off, on continuous shooting mode with long exposure times. But I'd like some more specific tips in terms of which aperture and ISO settings might work best? Should I use one of the lenses above, or would it be worthwhile renting a better, wide angle lens; if so, which would you recommend?
91451
This is a follow-up to a .  I've been comparing cycle times (or shot to shot times in single shot mode) of mirrorless cameras with interchangeable lenses with traditional DSLRs and all of them, even the highest end ones (like the Olympus OM-D EM-5 or Panasonic GH3) are slower than even entry level DSLRs.  How's that possible? The electronics should be the same and they don't have the burden of a mirror going up and down between each shot. I think that there must be a technical reason for that (maybe some cpu time is going to feed the live-view before the image is encoded?), because from a commercial point of view it does not make sense.  I've seen the cycle times under the performance tab in the reviews pages of .  The average CSC has cycle times around 0.7~1.2s, the flagship ones around 0.5s. The average DSLR has cycle times around 0.4s and the flagships around 0.25s.
78250
I am trying to take pictures of large rugs. The rug size is about 10mx5m, and I'm  planning to purchase , and Canon 7D Mark II with Canon EF 50MM F/1.2L USM lens, since we need high quality images.  We want to set up a studio to take giga-pixel quality images of the large rugs for museum conservation purposes  Could you please suggest the best way for mounting the camera to the ceiling, and any other recommendations for my camera/lens setup, and required lighting? It will be  an indoor shoot. Just we want to setup a studio to shoot the large rugs.
12648
I've bought a  to use with my EOS 200D and while I love the wide aperture, it appears to be quite difficult to achieve sharp focus on people's faces when shooting at f/1.8. I've tried both using Dual Pixel focus in Live View and using the center focusing point in the viewfinder, but it doesn't get me perfect results.  Is this simply a characteristic of cheap wide-aperture lenses? Or is it impossible to get sharp focus with a fully open aperture?  When I'm at at home using a tripod and focusing on a still subject I do get good focus (so it's not a camera or lens issue). But it's hard to do with people who are slightly moving between shots.
7813
I have recently tried to take pictures of stars using my wife's D7000, but I couldn't get it to expose for more than 30 sec. In my old D70 I used the wired remote to do long exposures, but now I have only the wireless one. How can I get it to work?
90570
I'm trying to see how  correlates with practice. That answer basically says I need to let enough light into the camera and then use the highest ISO value and I'll get the lowest noise then.  So I make two shots with the same camera. Camera has aperture set to a specific value, fully manual mode, camera is on a tripod and focused onto a specific faraway object. Shooting is done around midnight, so it's rather dark. The scene is a large industrial building standing faraway across a field from the camera. The field has no light sources, all lights are on the industrial building.  I dunno if it's important but images are written as JPEG inside camera - no shooting to raw and external post-processing. Maybe that's why I see my unexpected result.  Camera highest ISO value is 3200 (not using extended ISO values).  So I first shoot with ISO 1600 and shutter speed set to 1/125 second and then I shoot with ISO 3200 and shutter speed set to 1/250 second. The amount of light should be identical and indeed both shots look properly exposed and exposed the same way.  When I open the pictures in an image viewer and zoom in to one hundred percent  I see that ISO 1600 shot is much cleaner than one with ISO 3200. I checked that several times and I'm sure - it's not the other way around.  Why is this? Is this because of post-processing difference?
74558
This is the Milky Way above Kakadu National Park, Australia, and my first try at astrophotography.    Thirty second exposure, f/4.0 at 17mm with ISO 12800 (!!) which in hindsight probably was way too high and resulted in a lot of noise. I also used Picasa to increase contrast, but I probably went a bit overboard there as well.  , I am looking for input on how to better postprocess this picture to reduce noise.
73539
I'd really like to stop blowing out the sky and/or underexposing the ground in my pictures. The traditional solution would be to use graduated ND filters, but taking multiple exposures and applying HDR postprocessing would also work (and some point-and-shoot cameras can even do that in-camera).  When should I use graduated ND filters, and when would HDR be a better bet? Or is it just a matter of personal preference?
45303
What is the best way to get tack sharp portraits with shallow depth of field when lacking an auto focus point where I want to focus. I don't want to crop and "focus and recompose" is not an option since the shallow depth of field will throw the person out of focus. Of course a precise measurement of the distance is possible, but also very cumbersome and to do manual focus is a bit of a guessing game. Any ideas or do I have to relax my requisites?
123509
I have spent some time photographing landscapes with blue sky and white clouds, but the clouds always come out overexposed.  I have tried different settings and still have the same result. What should I do to get correct exposure?