Nightscape photography - What am I doing wrong?

[limvo05]

Hello Experts,

My first night in Zion National Park was a disaster. I tried to take photos of the night sky but to no success. Despited the fact that I thought I did everything right to get a decent photo of the stars, the photo came out BLACK!

Below are the settings:

1. Manual settings.

2. Focal length was 24mm

3. Applied the 500 rule, i.e. 500/24 = roughly my shutter speed (21 seconds).

4. ISO 2000

5. Aperture 2.8

6. Manual focused on the distant star.

7. Steady tripod.

There was no wind, or cloud of any kind. Granted there was no milkway to been seen, that said, I was expecting to have at least captured all the stars when looking with my naked eyes.

Please let me know what I am doing wrong? I am heading over to Bryce Canyon tomorrow morningm hopefully, I'll figured out what I am doing wrong by then.

Thank you,

LV

[TCampbell]

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@limvo05 wrote:

@This is what I taken the following night @24mm, f2.8, ISO 1200 @25 seconds. Minor adjustment was done to remove the pesky lazer beams shown by unconsiderate folks LOL!

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Unfortunately the image didn't upload correctly so we can't see your example.

[limvo05]

Here it is again, thanks 

[limvo05]

For some reason, i am not able to upload photos to this post. Not sure what is going on.

[TCampbell]

There’s a size limit.  I typically resize my images so they are about 1000 pixels along the “long” edge.  I think I’ve done 1500 pixels and it was fine.

From time to time, it’s helpful to see a full image (especially if it’s a RAW image) and in those cases, best to post it somewhere else (e.g. Dropbox, etc.) and then post a link to the download.

[Waddizzle]

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@limvo05 wrote:

For some reason, i am not able to upload photos to this post. Not sure what is going on.

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You seem to have successfully posted photos in the past.

[limvo05]

I know. Not quite sure what is going this time around. Basically, I am getting error stating that image size cannot exceed 5000KB.

Thanks,
LV

[RobertTheFat]

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@limvo05 wrote:

I know. Not quite sure what is going this time around. Basically, I am getting error stating that image size cannot exceed 5000KB.

Thanks,
LV

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On the face of it, that appears self-explanatory. Have you tried shrinking the picture?

[ebiggs1]

"I am getting error stating that image size cannot exceed 5000KB"

Well, make it smaller!

[limvo05]

Believe it or not, i've tried and it still doesnt work.

[RobertTheFat]

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@limvo05 wrote:

Believe it or not, i've tried and it still doesnt work.

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Is it possible that you just didn't shrink it enough? 5MB isn't very large when you're using a 50-megapixel camera.