Here, I took series of pictures without moving my camera on a tripod. Later I combined some of those pictures in Photoshop to enjoy the progression of the red moon in one picture. (Sony a7s, Sigma 150-500mm at 500 mm with a E mount converter, f/5.6, 0.4 sec, ISO 128,000). Difficulty: 6
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Sometimes you just have to be lucky. How often do clouds cover over Vermillion Cliffs? And no where else? Very rare. How often does it rain there? Very rare. How often does the cliff get sandwiched between the clouds and shadowed grasslands and get sunlight on the cliff? Very rare. Well you sometimes need to get lucky unless you live there everyday. On a photo trip, I constantly check weather but you still need to get lucky. I was lucky (Sony A7s, 55mm Zeiss FE, f/5.6 at 1/1000 sec, ISO=100)
Bryce Canyon is one the darkest spot in the U.S. You can see the milky way with naked eyes! This makes taking pictures of stars more interesting. You get green, red, blue in the galactic center. With today's camera equipment, a shot like this is super easy....as long as you don't fall into the canyon or get lost. It's super dark and scary. Make sure to have enough battery in your flashlight. (Sony a7s, Zeiss 50 mm 1.8 at f/1.8. 20 sec. ISO 6400). Difficulty: 6
I rather shoot at night than during the mid day. If you are at a decently dark place, not in the middle of the city, you can shoot stars with a reasonably priced camera. As long as you have a "manual" mode in your camera, you can capture the starry night. Must-haves are a tripod and a digital camera that allows you to set on the "manual" mode. You need a manual mode because you need to collect a lot of light into the camera's sensor without disturbing the image. Too get a lot of light into your camera, you need 1) a wide aperture, 2) longer exposure, 3) higher ISO (sensitivity) and 4) dark sky. If you can open the aperture to f/1.4, that's great but many of the decently priced lenses only go up to f/3.5-4.0. That's fine. You can decrease the shutter speed (or open the shutter for a longer time) to compensate for that. But, be careful not to keep the shutter open for too long. The stars move (or the earth rotates). If you keep the shutter open for too long, the stars become a line (not a dot). I don't recommend having the shutter open for more than 30 seconds. If it's still too dark, you can always increase the ISO. But, be careful. More noise will show with a higher ISO.
It is advisable to capturer something in the foreground. Having just stars would be boring. Here, I lit the flag with my flashlight placed right underneath my tripod. Also, I had my headlamp aiming at the flag. (Sony a7s, Sony/Zeiss FE 4/24-70 at 24 mm, f/4, 8 sec, ISO = 400, Tripod) My son is getting better at golfing. While recording a video is cool, I want some pics that show some motion. I slowed the shutter speed to 1/30 to get this shot. But when you do that, the aperture gets so small that the depth of field is so large. To make it look different from any of the iPhone picture, I want the depth of field small. I reduced the sensitivity of the sensor so low to compensate for it. (Sony A7s, FE70-200 F4 G OSS at f/4, 140mm, ISO = 50, 1/30)
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