Hello and how the hell are you? If this is your first time here thanks for stopping by. In todays blog we are going to go over the easiest way to shoot the Milky Way with just about any interchangeable camera. There is a idea that shooting the Milky Way is really hard. I am here to tell you that it is not only really easy but once you learn how to shoot it you will never forget how to do this. The hardest part about shooting the Milky Way is getting focus while in the field. So I am going to give you two sure fire ways to get focus while out on location under the night sky.
The first issue that you are going to run across is that it is dark and you cannot see to focus your camera. This means that you are going to have to find another way of grabbing focus. Truth be told you want to have your fstop to the lowest that it can go to gather as much light as you can. Then you have to grab focus but how the hell can you do that if it is pitch black out. The first method is the fastest and that it to put your lens on affinity that is if your lens has this. Once you have it on affinity put the camera into live view and the lens on manual focus. This allows you to see the stars then all you have to do is make the star a small dot on the screen. This ensures that you have the sharpest focus that you can get. This trick works so good that it is the one that I use all the time while out in the field shooting.
The second is going to be a little harder and it is for the people that don’t have an affinity mark on their lens. The is where you grab a flashlight/headtorch shine it as far away as you can and still grab focus. Again you will have your lens in manual with live view on so you can see. This method gets you in the ballpark for then pointing the camera at a bright star to fine tune the focus. This method is one that works about 80% of the time. This is the one that I used for years while shooting with a crop body and a kit lens. I have gotten so fast at grabbing focus this way that it is not funny.
The actual trick to grabbing focus when it is dark is getting as close as you can to the focus that you want before yo even try to grab focus. You see these methods are the starting point that will get you the focus that you need. Shooting the stars is all about getting focus on the stars the rest will just fall into place after your grab focus. The bonus tip is test shots. Simply right that is the point making this as easy as you can for yourself. Having a 6000 dollar camera is not going to make a difference when you are shooting the stars. In fact that more expensive camera is not going to help you at all because the settings are going to be the same as they will on a cheap entry level body.
The one tool that is going to help you the most when out shooting the stars is a great live view experience. Being able to grab focus manually with live view is truly the one thing that is either going to make or break the shot. I have shoot with all three of the major brands and to tell you the truth the only one that works all the time is shooting on Canon. The screens just show clearly what is going to happen after the shot. Shooting with a Nikon there is going to be way to much noise on the live view screen when you are out shooting. Yes you can still use these tips but the noise that the Nikon screens give you makes it so much harder. Sony is another company that puts more research and development into little feature that will help with eye AF but they lack when it comes to the back LCD screen. The panels that they use give you the same issue that you have with a Nikon.
With a Canon you have no noise and it just works so much better in my opinion due to the lack of noise. The Canon bodies that I have used range from 15 years old to 6 years old. With all of them I have been able to grab focus with ease. The Canon Rebel T6 was the most basic of basic models and I was still able to grab focus with ease on that model. I hope that this blog helped you with gettin focus at night. Enjoy from St Johns AZ y’all
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