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THEAPPRENTICE
ACHIEVE PRECISE FOCUS
FOCUSING at night is no easy
feat, but Chris has developed a
clever and simple way to get
sharp focus in seconds. He goes
into Live View mode and then
boosts the ISO as far as it will go
to reveal the detail in his shadowy
foreground, which he can then clearly focus on manually.
He then just has to remember to lower the ISO again with
the focus set to avoid getting excessively noisy images
when he actually takes the picture!TOP GEAR #
Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer ProSHUTTER speeds of around 20 seconds and
longer will turn your stars from pin-points of light
into longer trails as you begin to record the
Earth’s rotation. But an equatorial mount like this
Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer Pro can be lined up
with the North Star to then turn at the same rate
as the Earth. This allows you to shoot exposures
several minutes long and still achieve those
pin-sharp star shots.TECHNIQUE
ASSESSMENT
Chris dials in some key settings on Colin’s
camera to take amazing astro images
BULB MODE
IN MODES like Manual and
Aperture or Shutter Priority,
the max shutter speed you
can shoot at is 30 seconds.
We’ll use Bulb mode, which
allows you to use a remote shutter release to keep
the shutter open for as long as needed – several
minutes for astro work. We also pushed Colin’s ISO
to 1000 on his EOS R and opened the aperture to
f/2.8 to let in as much light as possible.
RAW POWER
WE WENT into the settings
of Colin’s EOS R and set it to
shoot CR3 Raw files, as these
will contain loads more
exposure information than
simple JPEGs, and you need as much data as
possible to play with when shooting in poorly lit
conditions. We also switched off any image
stabilization on his lenses to be safe – these can
introduce blur when shooting on a locked off tripod.