Canon EOS 50D - Night Photos

[Jessmarree]

Hi Guys,

I have a Canon EOS 50D camera. However I am struggling to figure out to take photos of the stars/clouds and thunder at night. When I go to take a photo, the flash automatically activates and when you hold down the shoot button, it seems to only want to think about taking the photo. I am also starting to think it needs a focal point in the image to take the photo and being night time this could be hard?

Has anyone else had this problem? Its racking my brain here and I need to take some photos for my course, so any help would be greatly appreciated as I am still learning how to utilise my camera as best I can.

Thanx guys!!!

[Doc Jones]

Hi Jessmarree,
the flash is coming up? Are you in auto mode?
I reckon you might try S mode (shutter priority) so that you can set a low shutter speed. You'll probably want to be on a tripod
and maybe just try some different shutter speeds and see how they work.
Cheers, Doc

[ricktas]

Manual mode
Tripod
remote shutter release or use self timer
about f8 and shutter speeds of 15 seconds, up to minutes or hours.
The longer the shutter speed the more 'star trails' you will get.
Keep your ISO as low as possible, cause long exposures introduce noise, so adding more from a high ISO detracts from the result
Check out your camera manual for long exposure noise reduction, and how it works, it can be very handy, though it takes just as long to process as your original shot (ie 30 second shot, followed by 30 second Long Exp NR)