Hi guys,

did you ever ask yourself, how those photos with thousands of stars on a clear sky by night have been taken? I asked this myself not just once … honestly … because, everytime I tried a long time exposure by night to capture that wonderful star sky, I failed … all stars had trails and the picture itself looked interesting, but the result was not, what I actually wanted …

So, here’s the simple rule of 600, which solves all our problems. The simple formula is:

600 divided by focal length = max. time of exposure. Really simple, eh? So, in a real life example with my Walimex pro 8mm fish-eye, this would be: 600 / 8 … errr … mind the crop factor … so, once again … 600 / 12,8 (8*1,6) = 46 seconds … as a rule of thumb, I subtracted 10 and landed on the safe side of 36 seconds. Use a decent ISO of 1600 and the lowest aperture, your lens gives you – in my case, it’s f/3,5 … and set manual focus to infinite. That’s all about it.

Have fun with your shots.