Capture the Sky

Astrophotography Without a Telescope

You don't need a telescope to take decent photos of the night sky. All you need is a digital camera and a tripod. A D-SLR—especially one with a telephoto lens—can produce impressive images of the Moon, star clusters, nebulae, and comets. Although it's a challenge for a point-and-shoot's tiny lens to gather the necessary photons to produce a sharp image, it still can create nice constellation shots and capture lunar features.

First, you'll need a target. The Moon is good, or star groupings such as Orion and the Big Dipper.

Start with a steady tripod, and turn off your flash. Longer exposures are preferable (except with the Moon), but they may add a rainbow graininess. At long exposures with higher zooms, the stars look like streaks because of their motion across the sky. Many lenses suffer from soft focus at higher zooms, so start at the shortest focal length and work upward to see where the stars begin to lose their sharpness.

Merge Digital Images with HDR

If you spend a lot of time on Flickr, you've no doubt seen richly colored, almost 3D-looking, images tagged as "HDR." HDR (high dynamic range) images are created by shooting several photos (usually two to six) of the same scene at different exposures and combining them using software—such as Photoshop CS2 ($649 direct), Ulead PhotoImpact 11 ($89), or Photomatix ($99 direct, free trial version—to form an image that incorporates the range of light levels revealing detail that otherwise would be overexposed or underexposed.Photoshop CS2

To produce a range of images from dark to bright, try doubling the exposure time for successive shots (say, shooting at intervals of 1/400, 1/200, and 1/100 second). For point-and-shoots, you can vary the exposure compensation in manual mode. Compensation values typically range from -2 to +2; moving to the next highest number—say, from 0 to 1—has the same effect as doubling the exposure time. HDR shots are most effective where there is a wide range of light levels, as in scenes shot shortly before sunset or interior shots with a brighter landscape visible through a window.Photomatix

Most HDR software can align the shots automatically if they're nearly identical, but use a tripod. If a person or object moves through the shots, it may create ghost images. For more photo projects, visit—Tony Hoffman