The Canon Magazine 13
SHOOT WITH A PRO
CHRIS’S COMMENT
I set up my
Canon EOS
70D to shoot a stream
of 30 sec exposures
and left it running so
Colin and I could go and shoot some
other astro images with his camera.
When we came back to my camera later
to stop it, it’d taken 87 images and been
running for about 44 minutes. You’ll
want to capture at least half an hour
to get a good star trail effect, but the
longer you leave it the better. I process
and convert my Raw files to JPEGs, then
use the free Startrails software to merge
all the images together to turn the stars
into trails. It’s worth carrying plenty of
spare fully charged batteries for your
Canon – multiple long exposures on
cold nights will drain them
surprisingly quickly.DIM THE LIGHTS
A BRIGHT screen will impede your night
vision and drain your batteries faster,
especially if you’re using a mirrorless
camera, like Colin’s EOS R or the Ra.
Luckily, you can go into the settings menu
of your Canon camera where you’ll find
the Display Brightness option. You can
then dial in a much lower setting to stop
the screen from being so bright and make
your battery last longer.EXPERT INSIGHT
ASTRO APPS
CHRIS USES a whole host
of apps on his phone to help
him take astro images, in
fact he’s created a folder
on his phone to keep them
all organized. His favourite
two apps currently are
Stellarium Mobile Sky Map
(£2.99 iOS / £2.59 Android),
which is useful for locating
the Milky Way in the sky. He
also uses PhotoPills ( £9.
iOS / £9.99 Android), which
has loads of handy features
for shooting at night –
including a Star Trails and
Spot Stars mode as well as
Night Augmented Reality,
Time Lapse and Meteor
Showers modes.