Astrophotography - starlink

markyboy81 wrote:

Barple wrote:

markyboy81 wrote:

TuVuVu wrote:

markyboy81 wrote:

As an update I used the NX1 plus 16-50 s.

Turned the OIS and focused to infinity but the resulting stars were blurry? Realised that I made the schoolboy error of pressing the shutter button rather than using a self - timer so perhaps that was why.

Also, maybe the tripod wasn't stable enough.

Also also I didn't see the starlink so all in all it was a bit of a waste of time. Maybe astrophotography isn't for me.

When shooting on tripod one must disable OIS.

"Image Stabilization (and vibration reduction) lenses look for vibrations in your camera in order to reduce it – however if they don’t find any (like when you are using a Tripod) they actually can cause it – and as a result actually cause camera shake."
Source: https://digital-photography-school.com/image-stabilization-on-tripods/

One of many 'Sources' regarding OIS with Tripod.

Sorry, I meant to put that I turned it off.

When you say "focused to infinity" do you mean that you focused the lens all the way to the right on the camera focus distance scale?

Yes, all the way to the infinity symbol. Is that right?

That'll explain why your photos were blurry.  They were actually out of focus!  The Samsung 16-50mm S, pretty like much all focus by wire lenses, can focus PAST infinity.  Even the lovely Samyang 12mm does that and that's a manual focus lens.

Infinity focus is actually around about 1 bar away from the right (hard to explain) and it's a matter of trial and error to get the focus spot on.  You will you need to take a test shot, review it, adjust the focus a little bit closer or further and test again.  Repeat until you're happy with how sharp the stars look.

If you happen to find a bright enough star you can try pointing the camera directly at the star, bump up the ISO and use the x8 manual focus assist to help find the focus sweet spot.  I've never succeeded with this method on my NX1 or NX500 though because once the ISO reaches a certain point it's too noisy to see the stars on the LCD screen.  (This method works on my Sony A7r4 and saves me A LOT of time).

Now here's the other thing - once you have found the perfect focus, don't turn off your camera until you're completely finished!  This will reset the lens back to it's default focus position and you'll have to do it all over again.

With all that said, the 16-50mm is a wonderful lens for astro because i find it quite sharp at 16mm and f2 is just excellent for astro.

The stars are actually sharper than this but I tried stacking and couldn't get it perfectly aligned.