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]

If you are interested in night photography other than star trails a 30 second shutter speed is going to be too long.

I suggest you set a shutter speed of 20 seconds and adjust ISO as necessary for exposure. That will give point stars.

[Basic]

20 seconds got it. I'm hoping on the next good night I can experiment with several different exposure times. I'm think I will do a test shot at an ISO 1600 for 20 seconds

I'm a huge astronomy and physics fan and taking pictures of the night sky has been one of my dreams for a long time. I'm hoping to get some pictures of lightning too. I just want to thank you again for helping me achieve that dream. The last shots weren't great but I know I can take good ones now.

[jrhoffman75]

Glad to be of help.

Several of the folks in my camera club have been getting into night sky photography and we are all learning as we go.

[Basic]

There is more to it than I originally thought. I thought it would be as simple as point and click. Then when I started reading about how to do it, I was quickly overwhelmed. Now that I'm getting more comfortable with my camera, lenses and settings it's getting easier. Or at least I'm making fewer mistakes and when I do make a mistake, I have enough knowledge to figure it out. Not all the way there yet but I can see it getting easier in the next few months.

[Basic]

Do you know of any compression software for the finished stacked pictures? I'm trying to get the picture to my phone but it is to large to send.

[jrhoffman75]

The output from Sequator is a TIFF.

I think you should be able to open the TIFF in your regular image processing software and export a JPEG.

[Basic]

I had a short window last night, just 2 hours. I took 60-30 second shots @ISO 1600 and all but 6 shots had to much cloud cover to use. This is definitely an improvement. Thursday is supposed to be better, with Friday being excellent. 

[Basic]

Here's the link to the some of the processed & unprocessed pictures I took last night, if you want to see them.

[Basic]

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/zy1bic9n9eel2t0/AABEgKBfSGyQQvRLcm1qA0d5a?dl=0 

[Basic]

In the link that I posted, picture inpixio 2 jpg is one that I adjusted the exposure and hue.