Topic: Photographing the night sky with a digital camera

I have an Olympus Camedia C-5000 ZOOM and am just really starting to explore all it can do (purchased it about a month ago)

It has a low-light feature, as well as the ASL feature which lets me do manual settings, but I'm having a hard time getting a good picture of the night sky where the stars can be seen clearly.

My best attempt had to be tweaked in the photo-editor, raising the contrast, raising gamma, and cleaning up noise. IS there a better way, or can anybody give me any tips on settings or editing?


(I was actually surprised the colours showed the way they did. I assume it's to do with the types of stars but I may be wrong. I was really hoping for a more "natural" look.)



[This message has been edited by Spike Page (edited 01-25-2004).]

Im guessing the only way to improve your sensitivity issue is to use higher ISO setting (means more noise), and a longer exposure time. If u leave the shutter open long enough u'll see the stars, but theres a drawback - if u leave it open for too long the stars will appear as traces rather than dots, due to the earth's rotation of course. The solution to that one is get yourself some device which would follow the sky, like they do in observatory : )

I Googled this for you Spike Page SpaceWatch
I've bookmarked it myself.

:::tao:::

The other problem one often has with digital cameras and the night sky is a heat issue.
On a film SLR camera, you can leave the shutter open all night long. No problem. If you have a properly mechanized tripod, you can even get very clear pictures of all sorts of space objects.

The CCDs in a digital cameral aren't made to stay open that long. They build heat very fast and have no sufficient way to dissipate that heat. Heat in CCDs = noise in image.
There are specialized digital cameras made specifically for astro-photography, but they are very expensive. Most digital cameras just aren't made for the job.

I read a tutorial where you can eliminate noise by taking a picture with the lense cap on either directly before taking a picture of the sky or directly after. Either way, the noise should be close to the same in both pictures and can then be canceled in photoshop leaving only the stars in the picture.

any chance of us getting a link to that tutorial?