Received a t3i

[Basic]

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. 

[jrhoffman75]

Have you considered star trails as well?

[Basic]

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.

[jrhoffman75]

You need about an hour total exposure.

20 3 minute shots at ISO 800.

[Basic]

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.

[jrhoffman75]

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

Free software Sequator.

Sequator (google.com)

[Basic]

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.

[jrhoffman75]

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.

[Basic]

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.

[Basic]

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.

[jrhoffman75]

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.