@wrk4no1 wrote:
I am located in Virginia Beach area I usly go n out of the ocean front lights to an area with less light pollution.
TCampbell is the real expert astro-imaging around here, not me. Heed his advice with regard to using a wide angle lens. It will make a difference in how much light you can gather. I use a Rokinon 14mm T3.1 cinema lens, which is roughly equivalent to the Rokinon 14mm f/2.8 photo lens.
Using a good, professional grade tripod and head will make a world of difference in your shots, too. To reduce camera shake from pushing the shutter button by hand, I use the 10 second timer in the camera, instead of a remote. My best starscape images have started off looking like overexposed messes.
Just be aware that Virginia Beach, and its' surrounding area, is pretty well drenched in light pollution. If you have never been to a genuine dark site before, then it is hard to appreciate the difference. Being in the middle of the ocean, or at least a 50-100 miles from any shore, on a cruise ship is a good example of a dark site. Check out the web site I linked.
My first experience with a dark site occurred when I was a young pup in upstate New York, in the center of Adirondack Park, where there wasn't a town with more than a thousand people in it for at least 75 miles in every direction. The nights were so dark that you could look up in the sky and actually see the dense band of stars, and gas clouds, that make up the Milky Way. The sky looked like photos you see of the Milky Way. It was almost mid-August, just in time for the annual Pleaides Meteor Shower. I was profoundly impressed by the sight of the night sky.
Like I said, I'm guessing that you may wind up combining two processed images into one final result: one being a beauty shot of the pier, and whatever surrounding landscape; the second would be a beauty shot of the sky, which could be created from a series of stacked images. These shots would have be taken from the identical camera position, so that they can be precisely aligned on separate layers in Photoshop, and later combined into one final image.
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