topic Re: Received a t3i in EOS DSLR & Mirrorless Cameras

Received a t3i

Basic — Mon, 27 Sep 2021 22:29:18 GMT

My daughter in law gave me a t3i camera that belonged to her grandpa. He only took 5 pictures total before putting it away. I have been taking pictures with it and so far seems to be working good. I put a better SD card in it and got some extra batteries for it. I also bought a Canon 50mm macro lens and rokinon 14mm wide angle lens. My main two interests are taking pictures of the homemade soap and cosmetics that we sell and shooting the stars.

Would anyone recommend that I take it to a camera shop to have someone look it over and make sure everything is correct? I also thought about cleaning the sensor lens. I would love to hear someone else's thoughts.

Re: Received a t3i

jrhoffman75 — Mon, 27 Sep 2021 22:59:57 GMT

@Basic wrote:
My daughter in law gave me a t3i camera that belonged to her grandpa. He only took 5 pictures total before putting it away. I have been taking pictures with it and so far seems to be working good. I put a better SD card in it and got some extra batteries for it. I also bought a Canon 50mm macro lens and rokinon 14mm wide angle lens. My main two interests are taking pictures of the homemade soap and cosmetics that we sell and shooting the stars.

Would anyone recommend that I take it to a camera shop to have someone look it over and make sure everything is correct? I also thought about cleaning the sensor lens. I would love to hear someone else's thoughts.

The camera is a ten year old model. If there any lenses that came with the camera there is the possibility of fungus, depending on how it was stored and the climate you live in.

You bought two new lenses, so that isn't an issue with them.

The battery may be an issue since it would be 10 years old, even though it apparently hasn't been used much. So i would invest in one or two new batteries.

If the camera was stored well, with the body cap on, I wouldn't worry about any sensor dust. You could check this by setting the aperture to f/16 and going outside and taking a photograph of a clear blue sky. Any sensor dust would show up.

Take some general "snapshot" tike photos of things around your property.

If all looks well I wouldn't spend the money on a service call.

Re: Received a t3i

Basic — Mon, 27 Sep 2021 23:20:04 GMT

Thanks. There's no fungus on the lenses. It was stored very well, with all the caps on both ends of one of the lenses and the one on the camera had the cap on. I bought 4 new batteries 2 where actual Canon brand and 2 were generic.

I have been snapping a lot of pictures to make sure everything works well. I have taken pictures on every scene setting that it had. I have successfully downloaded pictures. I read a couple small books on landscape and astrophotography and familiarized myself with manual settings and took what I considered some successful pictures of the moon but tonight I'm going to try some star pictures. I got a remote with a cable and I have my settings, camera, remote and tripod ready. I'm going to start with a shot of jupiter and saturn. Then the big dipper and maybe the milky way. The milky way is not very bright where I'm at in North Central Indiana so I going to start with a 10 second exposure and work my way up. Here is a photo I took the other day and yes I know that you can't see the eagle lol.

Re: Received a t3i

jrhoffman75 — Mon, 27 Sep 2021 23:45:59 GMT

For Milky Way photography it is very important to have point stars.

For your camera (an APS-C sensor) you should use the 300 rule - max shutter speed is 300 divided by the focal length of the lens. Using your 14mm Rokinon you should set a shutter speed of 20 seconds (max).

Start with f/2.8 and ISO 3200. It's better to be a little brighter than you want and reduce exposure a bit rather than be under and have to add exposure.

I typically take ten images 1 second apart and use Sequator to combine them.

Don't turn on any lens corrections in the software (I use Lightroom).

Re: Received a t3i

jrhoffman75 — Mon, 27 Sep 2021 23:53:45 GMT

I'm not seeing any dust bunnies.

Re: Received a t3i

Basic — Mon, 27 Sep 2021 23:58:57 GMT

I have everything set just like you suggested. Plus I have all image corrections off. I have another 1.5 hours left before dark. Can't wait.

Re: Received a t3i

Basic — Tue, 28 Sep 2021 00:03:54 GMT

There is some light pollution at the horizon for the milky way and so I'm going to aim higher to avoid the light pollution.

Re: Received a t3i

jrhoffman75 — Tue, 28 Sep 2021 00:05:28 GMT

Are you familiar with the app PhotoPills

Re: Received a t3i

Basic — Tue, 28 Sep 2021 00:10:59 GMT

Yes,

Re: Received a t3i

Basic — Tue, 28 Sep 2021 01:26:54 GMT

Didn't have much luck. Some clouds moved in and the lights from Indianapolis bounced off them and made things brighter. I learned some things tonight and I will post a one of the better shots that I got tomorrow.

Re: Received a t3i

jrhoffman75 — Tue, 28 Sep 2021 01:31:00 GMT

Have you considered star trails as well?

Re: Received a t3i

Basic — Tue, 28 Sep 2021 01:37:26 GMT

I did a 5 minute exposure and picked up a few stars that I couldn't see with the naked eye. I'm going to try some star trails tomorrow night if I don't have any clouds.

Re: Received a t3i

jrhoffman75 — Tue, 28 Sep 2021 01:48:54 GMT

You need about an hour total exposure.

20 3 minute shots at ISO 800.

Re: Received a t3i

Basic — Tue, 28 Sep 2021 01:52:38 GMT

Thanks I will try that tomorrow night. I may drive about 50 miles NW of my house this weekend where there are darker sky's.

Re: Received a t3i

jrhoffman75 — Tue, 28 Sep 2021 10:23:36 GMT

This was an early try. Combined a foreground interest image with star stacked trails.

Free software Sequator.

Sequator (google.com)

Re: Received a t3i

Basic — Tue, 28 Sep 2021 12:32:34 GMT

Thanks for the info. I'm going to download my pictures and see what I have. I live in the country side but I have 4 neighbors and they all have outdoor lights. I had to go above 40 degrees to get any pictures of west or north west facing stars, otherwise I got their house lights in the shot.

Re: Received a t3i

Basic — Wed, 29 Sep 2021 16:59:20 GMT

Here's my first try last night. I did something wrong because I got 2 images for each shot. So I am going to try it again tonight and adjust my timer settings. I thought that they were set for 10 pictures with 15 second exposure, with a delay of 16 seconds between photos.

If you can give me some tips for getting star trails, like exposuretime or anything else you can think ,would be appreciated a lot.

Re: Received a t3i

jrhoffman75 — Wed, 29 Sep 2021 17:04:02 GMT

Hi.

No image attached.

Which timer do you have; I can check the PDF manual.

There are two types of systems. One includes the shutter speed in the setting and one has it separate.

For the first kind, if you want a 15 second exposure with a 1 second gap you would program a16 second interval.

The second kind you would program 15 seconds and 1 second.

Re: Received a t3i

Basic — Wed, 29 Sep 2021 17:12:30 GMT

I have a photoolex and the manual is very user unfriendly. As soon as I figure out how to compress the photo, I will post the picture I got last night after processing it with sequator.

Re: Received a t3i

jrhoffman75 — Wed, 29 Sep 2021 17:44:56 GMT

Delay is just for the first shot; choose 5 or 10 as arbitrary start.

15 second exposure, 1 second delay and 10 shots.

Try this and see if it works this time.

You can just take a screenshot of the image on your display and post it.