Stood in the desert for an hour trying to get a star shot right

I was out at the Great Sand Dunes last month, had my tripod set up for some Milky Way photos. The sky was clear but I kept cranking the ISO too high and getting noise in the shots. After about 45 minutes of fiddling with settings, I finally dropped it to 3200 ISO at f/2.8 and did a 20 second exposure. Came out way cleaner than anything I got before. That whole trip I was just chasing better darkness and got more detail than I expected. Has anyone else had a moment where a simple change in settings saved a whole night of shooting?

2 comments

2 Comments

wood.zara1mo ago

Kept cranking the ISO too high" is such a relatable pain point. I spent a whole night at a lighthouse shooting star trails and my early shots looked like static on an old TV. Dropping from like 6400 to 1600 ISO and bumping the exposure time to 25 seconds made everything look so much cleaner. It's wild how stubborn we get about settings when the simple fix is right there.

nora541mo ago

Bumping the exposure time to 25 seconds" is exactly what saved me too. I was out at this lake trying to get the stars reflecting off the water, and I kept getting these blown out highlights because I had my ISO up too high. Finally just set it to 1600 ISO, f/4, and did a 30 second exposure. Everything looked way more natural and the stars came out sharp instead of noisy. It's such a simple fix but it took me like an hour to stop being stubborn and try it. Now I always start with lower ISO and longer shutter speed first before fiddling with anything else.