Canon R50 not shooting

[RomMarks]

I tryed to take photos of the night sky but it does not shoot since it does not have nothing to focus on. Canon R50 with original Canon lens 18-45mm withour AF/MF button. What can I do? Thanks

[shadowsports]

Greetings,

Without something to focus on, the camera may struggle in low light / night sky.  In this case, MF might help or work best.  

[Tronhard]

Hi and welcome to the forum:

Cameras need some kind of contrast to allow them to autofocus.  Obviously, the night sky is dark, so your best bet is to set the camera to manual mode through the menu system (refer your manual at the following link to download the PDF: c011.pdf (start.canon) and set the focus to infinity. 

you won't get great shots in a city area with lights - too much light pollution.  So you need to get into the country and as you need to see what you are doing, a red LED light will let you see the controls and yet keep your night vision.

There are lots of You Tube videos on how to do shoot the night sky, but you will need a tripod, and have some understanding of the three controls of exposure: ISO, shutter speed and aperture.

some videos to watch:

This uses the same camera body as you and it gets interesting at timestamp 3:00.

[RomMarks]

Thanks for your reply. Prior to coming here, I've read about it first, in fact I had watched the second vídeo you shared and I was using the settings he shares later on: High ISO 3200, shutter and speed he listed aswell, I was also using a tripod and I live outside the city. I also read about setting focus to infinity but as I mentioned my lens does not have AF/MF button on it nor manual setting for distance focusing, so I do not understand what to do to make it happen to be honest. Could you please could be more specific about what to do on the camera to be able to do it? I also did not managed to ser WB to 4000k, only to white light or tungsten was available.

Thanks again

I screen captured this from the second video and it is the settings I was using:

 

[Tronhard · Accepted solution]

Typing in the search box of the PDF the words "Manual Focus"  came up with P444 of the manual in the PDF I sent you, which are the instructions you are looking for.

Similarly, typing in the search box the word "Kelvin" brings you to P218, which shows you the settings and values. you might observe that you can get 4000K by selecting White Fluorescent, or set the K value manually using either Custom or Color Temperature options.

Please check these references and see if they resolve your questions.

[RomMarks]

Thanks again, very helpful and I will try them out tonight. Also, first video was also very helpfull to some extent.

Take care

[RomMarks]

One more question not Canon related but in the first video he seems to know exactly where the Milky Way will appear in the sky, how can I know that exactly? Is there un app for that? Thanks again

[Tronhard]

I am not an astro photographer, but the milky way is huge, and pretty obvious as long as you are looking on a moonless night (the moon itself is a very bright object), away from terrestrial light sources, and there is no cloud.

By the way, the setting the second video offers should be taken as a starting point. They will vary by the conditions of the time of year - warm, humid nights put more moisture in the atmosphere, cool should be clearer, but very cold can hold ice crystals at high levels (not quite cloud per se).  So, expect to do a series of experimental shots to fine tune your images.   Try to negotiate down you shutter speed to 10sec or so to avoid start trails, when the earth's rotation causes the stars to appear to move and no longer be points of light.

There is a free app, "The Photographers Ephemeris": Photo Ephemeris: Map you can use to locate various bodies, when they rise and set relative to your location.