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]

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@Basic wrote:

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. 

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The camera is a ten year old model.  If there any lenses that came with the camera there is the possibility of fungus, depending on how it was stored and the climate you live in.

You bought two new lenses, so that isn't an issue with them.

The battery may be an issue since it would be 10 years old, even though it apparently hasn't been used much. So i would invest in one or two new batteries.

If the camera was stored well, with the body cap on, I wouldn't worry about any sensor dust. You could check this by setting the aperture to f/16 and going outside and taking a photograph of a clear blue sky. Any sensor dust would show up.

Take some general "snapshot" tike photos of things around your property.

If all looks well I wouldn't spend the money on a service call.

[Basic]

Thanks. There's no fungus on the lenses. It was stored very well, with all the caps on both ends of one of the lenses and the one on the camera had the cap on. I bought 4 new batteries 2 where actual Canon brand and 2 were generic.

I have been snapping a lot of pictures to make sure everything works well. I have taken pictures on every scene setting that it had. I have successfully downloaded pictures. I read a couple small books on landscape and astrophotography and familiarized myself with manual settings and took what I considered some successful pictures of the moon but tonight I'm going to try some star pictures. I got a remote with a cable and I have my settings, camera, remote and tripod ready. I'm going to start with a shot of jupiter and saturn. Then the big dipper and maybe the milky way. The milky way is not very bright where I'm at in North Central Indiana so I going to start with a 10 second exposure and work my way up. Here is a photo I took the other day and yes I know that you can't see the eagle lol. 

[jrhoffman75]

For Milky Way photography it is very important to have point stars.

For your camera (an APS-C sensor) you should use the 300 rule - max shutter speed is 300 divided by the focal length of the lens. Using your 14mm Rokinon you should set a shutter speed of 20 seconds (max).

Start with f/2.8 and ISO 3200. It's better to be a little brighter than you want and reduce exposure a bit rather than be under and have to add exposure.

I typically take ten images 1 second apart and use Sequator to combine them.

Don't turn on any lens corrections in the software (I use Lightroom).

[jrhoffman75]

I'm not seeing any dust bunnies.

[Basic]

I have everything set just like you suggested. Plus I have all image corrections off. I have another 1.5 hours left before dark. Can't wait.

[Basic]

There is some light pollution at the horizon for the milky way and so I'm going to aim higher to avoid the light pollution.

[jrhoffman75]

Are you familiar with the app PhotoPills

[Basic]

Yes,

[Basic]

Didn't have much luck. Some clouds moved in and the lights from Indianapolis bounced off them and made things brighter. I learned some things tonight and I will post a one of the better shots that I got tomorrow.