Hey everyone, as the title says, I'd like to document my astro journey here, and Since I was able to get out last night, I am officially starting it. I'm using a stock Canon T8i, started editing with Corel Aftershot pro 3.

All of these first pics are with the 18-55 kit lens. I would like suggestions. I have pretty thick skin.  One thing I learned fast last night is shooting under a street light 100 yards away is a no go. Next time I will get out further. I shot in RAW, in Manual. I think I did pretty damn good for my first time! I'm happy.  

first shot, the show wasnt very good yet. I'm very happy with the stars though!















at some point in there I figured out that foreground was getting washed out so I tried to adjust. I also like the ones where you can see the moon and venus (I think thats venus, I'd have to look again) But, there was only a sliver of the moon out last night and its all washed out. another thing to learn, maybe I could clean that up in editing....

Please feel free to give tips/tricks. heading out now to try some moon shots.

Heres my edited pics. didn't do a whole lot, made blacks blacker, saturation and contrast are bumped up.

And arfcom wont let me upload any of these... Thats annoying. what is the best free image host?







heres the first two. will post more tomorrow.

Again, please give me feedback.

Not sure of any advice for shooting at night. For image hosting I use Flickr.

Your edits look pretty good, albeit the 2nd edit has color noise patterns from pushing either overall exposure or bands of exposure too high, and over saturation.

Says a guy who's never tried to take a photo of the auroras, so take it for what you will.

Auroras, if I'm not mistaken, are the realm of fast glass with large apertures f/2.8 or wider.  A kit lens is going to be challenging, but as long as you have raw files for those, I think you have good images to work with.

Tokina has a wide f/2.8 lens for APS-C cameras, and they should be attractively priced.  Relatively speaking.

But, even with kit lenses, you can do a lot of neat stuff at night, especially with star trails, which I'll often shoot at f/4 and up.

I don't know shit about taking photos of auroras (even had to check the spelling...) but this popped into my Inbox. I've not looked at it but PhotoPills usually have some pretty good videos.

@Sixgunner45