Help! I tried my first attempt at night photography... I live in the mountains where we do not have much light noise from town.
I used a Canon 5D MIV with the first photo lens of 24-105 STM lens. Second photo Canon 17-40. Yes, I screwed up and in the lack of light did not manage to have the lens set at 24 or 17mm...
1st photo 35mm f4 30 seconds ISO 1600. I also tried to help it out in LR 6 and have attached what I did there.
2nd photo again, did not notice I was off from the 17mm... 25mm F4 30 second ISO 1600
To the naked eye there were certainly not that many stars in the sky. What is all that in the sky? I put the focus on infinity with the 17-40. The 24-105 does not have the window for focus so I just focused as far out as I could on manual. I locked the mirror up, and used a remote control. How do you focus? What did I do right & what was wrong? I don't like these photos, but don't know what to do to get it right.
I added one last photo where I tried to do some light painting and the tree looks bad out of focus etc.


A faster lens of at least f2.8 or better is should be used. Exposure time should be 30 seconds or less. I like using less to compensate for oblong stars caused by the Earth's rotation. High ISO between 3200-6400 should be no problem with you 5DMkIV. Pre-focus while there's still light on a far away object. Then flip your auto focus switch to the off position on the lens. This will prevent your from accidentally changing the focus once you have it established.

Try different exposure times and ISO's to find the sweet spot. I've found my sweet spot using f2.8, 20 second exposure, and ISO 6400 using a 20mm lens on a 6D. This is the setting I use all of the time for shooting stars and the Milky Way.

I found using the lens correction in LR or PS will also make quite a difference in star sharpness.

My PP version is on my other computer. This is a sample straight out of the camera before PP and lens correction. The line you see is a meteor passing by the Milky Way.


Any tips would be appreciated!

One of my previous clients was a TV production studio. Believe me the graphics design guys DID NOT use laptops. They used top spec components for everything and it was still too slow. The video editors use high end HP workstations. Some of my wifes Proshow Gold productions take 45 minutes to produce and I estimate they would take about 3.5-4 hours on either of our laptops. So I can only assume that the average laptop user doesn't attempt high end jobs or they have the patience of Jove. Being a non US citizen I have noticed that the queues at Disneyland with mostly US citizens are very patient so maybe it is a cultural thing. Me, I am interested in the starting minute and the finishing minute and the closer they are together the better.
When I was doing laptop repairs I couldn't believe how accepting the users were of pathetic performance (and these laptops weren't the cheapest models either). An upgrade to a SSD drive resulted in an acknowledgment of how bad they had been putting up with the previous performance.
However I guess whatever works for you is what you do even if sometimes I cannot understand it. It is what it is.

I have been building desktops, selling them, and selling laptops since they started making them.

My bottom line is that the Penalty Pricewise for portability (laptops) is 35 to 40% for similarly configured machines. Or turn it around. For the same price invested in a desktop, you get approximately 40% more performance with with the desktop. These figures have held up for me for many of the 25 years I have been in the biz.

Add another penalty to the laptop. No upgrade path in the laptop, whereas on a well thought out desktop, there are significantly more performance components available.

No matter how you cut it, except for RAM, once a laptop is built and purchased, it is a "dead end" computer. It will require full replacement to make it perform better..... again, except for RAM.

Portability punishes the buyer significantly. And the most portable devices, tablets and large smart phones have NO features that are significant to performance, compared to a desktop.

Smart people plan, configure and buy desktops. People on the travel circuit suffer or PAY for their devices.... a lot!

What is the proper way to use saturation...., locally, globally?
The biggest offenders are Sunset/Sunrise but every genre is represented. In many of the images posted it's pretty obvious that the photographer felt that oversaturation must be a good thing.
Some things are of unknown color so one can get away with a lot, but other things are KNOWN, like the color of peoples skin, most animals, and yes, even sunset/sunrise. We've all seen them, we know what they're supposed to look like.
How do you apply saturation and how much? Is saturation abused?
Feel free to post a before and after pic to show your point!!!
SS

I agree with you... and with SharpShooter. Knowledge is far more important than gear, until you need better (or more appropriate) gear. Without knowledge, experience, practice, and understanding, better gear is just an expense.

There are many who CAN benefit from better equipment. There are many more who think it will make them a better photographer. Most of the latter group are, sadly, mistaken or misled.

A great photographer eventually will find the limits of any equipment he/she owns. There's a decision point: Do you want to go beyond that limit? Or can you work within it? RENT to try, before you buy, is my best advice for those who think the results will be better with a Shiny New Toy. Renting also makes sense if you have a one-off need or assignment, and don't want to tie up thousands of dollars for a marginal improvement under rare circumstances.

I have used it and liked it as a photo editor. I did not encounter the slow response reported by other members, but I was editing 8 or 10 images, not 370+. I had more time available to consider what steps/techniques I wanted to employ. On1 and some other Lightroom contenders do not have a true import function similar to Lightroom, and it has no cataloging facility which I would indeed miss having used Lightroom. With On1 you choose a file from wherever, edit it and export (store) it wherever. On1 does not get involved. How much those things mean to you depends on you and what you plan to do with your images.