Photographing stars is a relatively easy thing to do. Especially with modern cameras. Todays modern Nikon and Canon cameras allow for long exposure times. All of my Nikon’s will allow a 30 second exposure. The common misconception is that you have to leave your shutter open for much longer than that. You don’t, and as a matter of fact a really long exposure will cause the stars to become trails. This is cool also if you want to create some of those star trail effects, but I usually prefer the stars as a nice sharp point of light. So how long do you leave your shutter open? This is where the rule of 600 comes in. You divide the focal length of the lens you are using into 600. So that means a 24mm lens can be open for 25 seconds before the stars start to streak. Then you control the exposure by your f stop and ISO. The image left was shot with a 24mm lens at f2.8 ISO 800 at 25 seconds. That’s not quite all of the story however. The question is how did the light get on the old building? Well … you know me, I’m never satisfied with ordinary. So I took a Nikon SB-800 flash and walked a few feet from the camera and fired it 9 times. Why 9? Well, my batteries were low and I was not getting full power. 4 or 5 might do it for you, you’ll just have to experiment.
