this week I'll be showing you how to
photograph the stars in the Milky Way
with a crop sensor camera to follow
along with this tutorial all you need is
a tripod your camera and your kit lens
even though I'm using the a 6500 in this
tutorial you should be able to follow
along with any of the a 6000 series
cameras and also you'll probably be able
to follow along with any crop censored
camera as well the menu placements might
be different but the principle is the
same I have the kit lens I also have a
lower 12 millimeter 2.8 and the sony 10
to 18 millimeter f/4 with the kit lens
at 16 millimeters at its widest this is
the equivalent to around about 24
millimeters on a full-frame camera the
first thing you need to do is find a
dark sky location I do this by using the
website WWWE pollution map info
basically the darker the color on the
map the better the skies will be so you
need to be away from any big cities or
big sources of light I actually had to
travel for three hours to get to the
location to shoot this tutorial and
that's what you might have to do you
might have to find a dark location or
you might have to travel quite a way to
get to a good location now there is a
scale called the boat'll classification
and basically what this is is a scale of
light pollution and how good or how bad
it is 9 is the worst one is the best if
you look on light pollution map info and
click on a location it'll give you this
bottle rating anything with a bottle
rating of 5 or lower is really good you
can shoot the stars with higher ratings
but there'll be less stars in the sky
because the light pollution will bleach
out these stars and if you can find a
location with a bottle classification of
2 or lower that's fantastic and you'll
get some really brilliant night skies as
there's very little light about the
camera needs to be really good at
low-light capture and the a6000 series
of cameras are really good at the
if you pair this with a really good fast
lens with basically a really wide
aperture you can get some really great
images if you do try this out and really
enjoy it
it's worth getting a manual focus lens
the twelve millimeter samyang f/2 is a
great manual focus lens for this job I
could only borrow the twelve millimeter
Laur which is the more expensive one but
they are very close in image quality and
the samyang is a lot lighter and a lot
smaller and it actually has a wider
aperture of F 2 which lets in even more
light the great thing with manual focus
lenses are that once you know where the
infinity point is sometimes it's not
quite on that infinity point that it's
marked too on the lens but once you know
where this infinity point is you can set
it to that same point every single time
so these are the steps put the camera on
a tripod
make sure the back display is on turn
the mode dial to manual turn on the self
timer I normally have it on two seconds
if your camera has it turn off the
steady shot turn off long exposure noise
reduction change the file type to raw if
you're using a zoom zoom out as wide as
possible change your white balance to
incandescent switch to manual focus if
you have a marker on your lens set your
focus to infinity if you don't this is
the tricky part set your ISO to about
ten thousand the aperture as wide as
possible this basically means your F
number as low as possible and your
shutter speed to around about six
seconds find a bright star that you can
see on your display you might have to
turn the brightness of your screen up a
little and then use the magnified tool
making sure the bright star is in the
magnify area now turn your focus ring
until you can see the star clearly and
in focus this comes down to trial and
error and sometimes you might have to go
backwards and forwards until you get
that focus point that you want keep the
focus in manual and try not to touch the
focus
you should check your photos every now
and then to make sure they are still in
focus if you've had to focus this way
come out of the magnify mode then take a
shot depending on the moonlight and any
ambient light from any cities nearby
your shot might be overexposed
if so increase your shutter speed this
first step with having a really high ISO
and relatively fast shutter speed is
merely to quickly find a pleasing
composition once you've got a good
composition start bringing your ISO down
and lengthening your shutter speed just
don't make the shutter speed too long
otherwise the Stars will start to streak
due to the rotation of the earth now
when it comes to getting pinpoint stars
there's a rule with full-frame cameras
called the 500 rule this is known as the
300 rule for crop censored cameras
basically what you do is take the number
300 and divide it by your focal length
so with a 12 millimeter that I have you
can have a maximum exposure of 25
seconds with the kit lens at 16
millimetres which is his widest focal
length you can have a maximum shutter
speed of 18 point 7 5 seconds and with a
24 millimeter you can keep the shutter
open for around about 12 and a half
seconds to be honest with the really
fast lens in these modern cameras you
can be a little bit more conservative
with your shutter speeds but this is
where it comes down to experimentation
you want to go out and take a few
different shots at different exposure
lengths and different apertures and
different ISO settings you'll have lots
of time to experiment and if you're in a
dark quiet location you can basically
camp and chill out and take loads of
photos all the way through the night you
will be a little bit tired the next
morning so just be prepared for that
then it's just a case of coming up with
interesting compositions and following
the patterns of the moon and the stars
to see what might give you an
interesting sky I'm into wide field
Astro photography and that's where these
wide-angle lenses really come in handy
if you do some research into Astro
photography you'll find that people
really get into this and then they'll
start getting things like trackers
telescopes and get into deep space Astro
photography and there are some amazing
photos of nebulas gas clouds and things
like that as I said I'm only into
widefield astrophotography so all I need
is a tripod a camera and a wide-angle
lens if we look at these photos compared
with the full-frame camera I normally
shoot with it's really surprising how
well the a 6500 held up to the a7 3 if
you zoom in to a hundred percent even
though the noise pattern is worse in the
a 6500 if you added some noise reduction
to it it would clean the image up nicely
the other option would be to take a
sequence of shots and then use starry
landscape stacker or sequitur and stack
these images together to reduce the
noise if you want to see my video on
stacking astro images click on the I in
the corner or the link in the
description and that's about it I hope
this tutorial helps you getting some
really good shots of the Stars and the
Milky Way with your a 6000 series camera
if you're just going to do it as a hobby
or you're just gonna grab a few Astro
shots every now and then this camera is
more than capable for the last few years
I've always used a full-frame camera and
I was expecting the quality to be much
lower but I was really surprised and I
was blown away by the image quality that
I actually got from this camera if
you've tried photographing the stars
with any of the a 6000 series cameras
let me know how you got on in the
comments below
it'll be great to hear your thoughts
also if you're interested in buying any
of the kit in this video I've left some
links in the description they are
affiliate links so I'll get a bit of a
kick back with no extra cost to you I've
also linked this samyang 12 millimeter
f/2 now this will be a perfect lens for
this camera to shoot the Stars as always
if you like what you see give me a
thumbs up if you didn't give me a thumbs
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