Wow. Finally I thought you're never gonna make it
here I told you we'll make it. When you were getting stuck I was doubting it. Digging and digging but such a beautiful place. The trees are phenomenal.
Mind-blowing. The stars are gonna be fantastic tonight. Definitely a special place. But before we continue can we have a braai (BBQ) first? Right, let's make a fire. While the guys are out making food for
us now I gathered a few things from the car that we'll need for the stars later
on. I quickly wanted to show you. First of all, obviously we need a tripod - the
sturdier the better to make sure we can take nice long exposures. Your camera with a nice wide-angle lens. We're going to need extra batteries. Make sure you have enough space on your CF for SD cards. Very important - various kind of torches. Make sure you get a head torch so you
can have your hands-free. That's always very useful. Get a stronger torch, a softer light, whatever you've got and last but not least you're gonna need a
remote trigger. It can be one with a cable. Without a
cable. You can have an intervalometer in there. Whatever you think you will need
for tonight so you're set to go. I'm really excited! Finally, finally, I'm
on Kubu Island. I've been waiting for this opportunity so long. Behind you see
there's a couple of Baobab trees and I can't wait to photograph them with the Milky Way.
I've been playing with one of my star apps and the one I've been playing with this
Photo Pills. It actually shows you even in daytime where you can find the Milky Way. So im gonna head in this direction scouting around and see if I can find a really cool tree Luckily it's New Moon as well so it's going to be really dark and yeah I'm really excited! Let's see if we can get something really cool. Wow, look at this spot! The Milky Way coming over. Clean background. Set up here and go a little bit down. Wow, look at that. That's cool. And that's how the Milky Way is going to sit? Wow, that's like perfect. I just really want it to get dark now so we can come and take some
pictures! We're now sitting here just before
sunset and I want to set up my camera together with you before it gets dark so
you're ready when you want to take the stars. If you do shoot a full-frame
camera as 16mm to 35mm is great even 14mm is great. If you shoot a cropped sensor please try and go bit wider not so wide that you get a terrible distortion in
the horizon. But you need to make up for the crop. In order to shoot stars, we're
gonna have to set our cameras on Manual The Big M and we're gonna have a look
that we're on a two second timer so that when we touch the camera on the tripod
we're not going to shake it by accident and we're going to make sure that we're
going to set the focus on the lens on manual focus. Then we can get to the
settings. We're going to shoot on the widest aperture that your lens allows. If
you have an f2.8 lens great go down to f2.8 even lower if you can. If you have an f/4
lens we're gonna try it with an f4 and now it depends on how high you want to
set the ISO depending on how much light pollution you have around you. If you
have a pitch-black night as we do with nice new moon we're gonna try and start
off at about 3200 ISO. If you have a camera that really struggles with noise
you might not want to go any higher than that. If you do have a camera with a
pretty good sensor play around with it throughout the night. The higher you can push your ISO the better the Milky Way is going to show. So how long do we need to
shoot? If your sensor is pretty good we can try and shoot under 25 seconds.
However what you need to keep in mind try and never shoot higher than 25
seconds. Once you hit 30 seconds the earth actually moves around the Sun so
that our position in the universe has changed and it looks like the stars are
blurry. They're not. They just moved a little bit and started making a little
tiny streak. So I would start off at 25 seconds it that's too bright
bring your shutter speed a little bit lower. Let's give it a try. Thank You, Charl for finding this amazing
spot for us. We found some beautiful Baobab trees and he anticipated
perfectly where the Milky Way is gonna be. I'm gonna try and set up my camera to
get the shot. So I still have my settings from earlier I'm gonna start off with 20
seconds and 4000 ISO and see how it looks like. We have absolutely no light
pollution here and I'm gonna try and get my spirit level all straight in my
camera to make sure that it's not totally crooked and then I'm gonna ask
Charl if you can quickly light up the Baobab trees. Thank you, Charl.
I'm gonna go in to live view. I find it easier to see on live view at night time
to frame my trees because I really don't want too much ground The ground is
gonna turn all black. Now I want to make sure I get as much of the Milky Way as
possible. I'm gonna try them at the bottom left of my frame. That's awesome.
Thank you very much, Charl. So you see teamwork is really important guys
because it is quite difficult to all set up by yourself you also need to make
sure that you don't blind each other and that you make sure that you shoot at the
same time so that you don't ruin each other's shots. But having somebody there
to help you out with with the light it can be very helpful. So how do we now
focus on our stars? Simple as that. My lens shows beautifully
infinity here and I've tested it many times. I know exactly where it's sharp on
infinity so I turn it on to manual focus so that I do not refocus by accident
when I when I press my shutter and I simply set it on infinity. That is
very quick and easy in the dark. However, if you don't know where your lens is the sharpest or you simply can't see properly there's an alternative. You can
go into live view and then you use your zoom x1 magnification X5
magnification and I see a star here so I'm gonna look for one. There we go
X10 magnification. So now on manual focus you can try and get the stars in
your viewfinder nice and crisp. That works. I think that should be good
somewhere there. Last option is that you can use a torch to shine on an object
far away. If the torch is strong enough you can maybe pick up on autofocus.
However, then don't forget to switch it back to manual focus before you press a
shutter. We need to turn all our torches now off.
We're gonna try a 20-second exposure and see how it turns out. Wow very very cool and the Milky Way is popping on 4000 ISO Those stars are definitely
bright enough. My horizon is a bit crooked and that is because the
landscape I'm sitting on is slightly hilly. So I'm gonna have to adjust it
again. Very easy you just try and shine on the stars and you have to try a few
times and eventually you'll get it right. So when I shoot stars I like to play a
little bit with my white balance Although I am shooting RAW and in
RAW it doesn't make so much difference with your white balance. I still like to play
around and I still prefer to shoot tungsten. Tungsten gives you a little
bit more of a bluish color. In this case you can see here nice and blue or if you
prefer to make it nice and warm you can either choose cloudy or sunshine. That
will give you a Kelvin of around between 5200k and 6000k. This bluest image that I like. The more
blue color or the blue sky. This is around 3200. If you do the stars and you have a subject that that is, of course, ideally in front you
can also lighten it up by a soft torch. So you can walk around your subject, like
in this case, we have beautiful trees so you can either go from the back or the
front and just to give a little bit of a soft light. I'm gonna ask Guts to
lighten up this tree for us. Ok, let's see how this is coming out. OK, so here we have one without any light painting and a little bit of light - just
soft light painting on this Baobab tree So I have decided I want to do a
panorama stitch of the Milky Way just because it's kind of hard to fit
everything in even though that I have a 14mm lens and then later in a
software like Photoshop/Lightroom you can stitch it all together So the most important
thing I found if you want to do panoramas is that you have a proper
tripod with a nice panorama head, so that you can tilt the camera very easily in
one line so that your software later doesn't struggle to stitch it together.
So what I'm going to do is I'm gonna throw it into a vertical position. Just
to fit as many stars in as I possibly can. OK. Then obviously I'm gonna tilt it up looking in my viewfinder just to see. If
someone can maybe just shine a torch for me Guts. Perfect. I'm just gonna look at my scale. Yeah, it's straight enough. That will do. Then basically all I have to do is do my
20s exposure. That is the time I've decided it works well. I did a test
shot beforehand so I'm going to wait for 20s. Do not touch my tripod. I did
do the pre-focusing. So it's on manual focus. Not gonna touch the lens again and
then after the 20 seconds the easiest ways to tilt it. You have a
little scale on your panorama head to tilt it about 15 degrees each time and
then I just take another shot. So the one is finished and I go 15 degrees and the
next one. Then I go on until I am at the end of the Milky Way. Just a little note
it is kind of important that you leave a little bit of space and do a little bit
of an extra shot where the Milky Way starts and ends. Otherwise, you might have
a bit of distortion and also leave quite a bit maybe 1/3 of ground in your picture
that makes it easier for your software later to stitch the image. I will show
you in another tutorial how I'm gonna stitch it all together. So you can check
out our YouTube channel for that tutorial. Sabine, I would really like
to do a star trail. We have to use this opportunity to get this. Sure I did bring the intervalometer that we need to keep the shutter open. How do you want to
do it? I'm gonna try a long exposure but you like the stacking one don't you? I think so. It's just that if someone walks through it with a torch or a plane comes through then the shot is not ruined you
wait after or quite a long time. Very true. That is a problem when you do a
longer exposure star trail that if someone walks through a damn head
torch on their head or a plane flies through that you mess up your whole
picture and you have to start all over again. But is you have a stars stack you can just delete that specific image, correct? Yeah that's right. All right then should we try it? Another thing that I like about the slow exposure or
the long exposure star trail is you get immediate results you can see it on the
back of your screen. Bam I've got it! Yeah, that's true. Takes quite a long time to
download all the pictures and then load them into Photoshop and stack them or
star stacks but I've heard the result is worth it because you don't have all the
hot pixels and the thermal noise. Which is very true and because you do tend to get a bit of a brighter image with a longer exposure you don't get that nice dark sky. But it does give a lot of
noise at the end of the day. I dont have my computer here and I don't know star stack so I think I should just stay with what I know and gonna do a normal
long expose. You do an old school one and I'll do the new one and let's see. it's very difficult when you do demonstrate exactly a long exposure star trail
because some of the older cameras we used to talk about the magic 4. f4,
400 ISO, 40-minute exposure. But the new cameras with the fancy sensors you don't even need to go, you said 100 ISO you found it's more than appropriate. Yeah if you have a bit of light pollution around you need to be
careful and keep your ISO quite low because to new sensors are very
sensitive. Especially when you're close to cities and stuff. I would rather go for the lower one and then see how the result is. You can always brighten but
if it's too overexposed then you might have a problem. Correct. Also in the old days, we were very careful about burning your sensor. But the modern cameras the
new cameras you can just stay open for just about every as long as your battery
lasts. So be careful if you have an older camera. Sensors start giving trouble at
45-50 minutes and they can burn but the new cameras keep as long as you want. Yeah the great thing about both methods is we have lots of time to sit under the
stars and just look up and enjoy. I think that's what I appreciate the most about a star trail is that absolute peace and quiet. The darkness and you can look at
the stars and you know you think of those little things you don't always get
chance to think of and I think it's good for your soul. Alright, Sabine, what would you like to shoot? I think South just to have the nice
circular. That circle in the southern hemisphere and we use the southern
celestial to get that beautiful circle around our subject. If you're happy with that? How do we find it? Now you're testing me! The way I learned it is... I've got a laser here. See if this works, is
we've got the Southern Cross over there if we extend the long axis of the
Southern Cross downwards then the two pointers over there aligned
perpendicular to them where they cross right there. That's a southern celestial.
So that's the point where you'll get all the stars turning around that. Am I
correct? Yeah sounds about right, thank you. So I'm very excited to have to see your stacking compared to the long exposure. Should we give it a go? Would you line it up for us? I'm gonna line mine up and then you can head over to yours and we get going. Perfect. Guts are you done? I'm done. OK All right let's have a look. Oh wow. Really cool. That's the one beautiful thing about a long exposure. Immediate results.
Stars turn beautifully around the Baobab tree. Just what we wanted. So it was
50-55 minutes. ISO 100 It was a beautiful f2.8 and I
like that. Yeah really nice you don't have any gaps I'm anxious to see if mine
looks as cool as yours let's see. There we are, Sabine, you're done with your stacking? Yeah it's just finished. I will see it only later. So now you have to get it all back home on your computer and stack it all together. And you can use star stack and
all these fancy... Yeah I think I'll use Photoshop but star stacks will also work but Photoshop we have so I'm just going to use that. Perfect. Tell me in your settings for your stacking what waist? Basically just as I shot Milky
Way panoramas earlier I shot on a 20s exposure, F 2.8 and ISO 3200.
Ideally, you want at least 50 frames. I did shoot about 300 now because I wanted a nice, you know, proper trail and then the interval I did set to about 2s.
I didn't want to make it too long because they're not gonna get gaps in
the trail. So its only two seconds between your frames? Yeah And you say if you make
it longer there's gaps. Yeah That's a nice thing about your method you won't have any gaps. Alright guys it was a whole night
shooting stars now it's time to do some fun photography what do you think? Yeah! Thanks for joining us at our Kubu
island star expedition. Good night. Good night. Good night good night. BEEP. Hello again Good night Turning torch off is challenging! These beautiful circles around your baobab tree. yeah I read that I did mine - the same way Fantastic. Something for the funny movie. Guts are you done? I'm done
Sabina let's have a look. Let me see 55 minutes later...oh wow! (flashing light and laughter). And then the two spotters on the left or whatever you want to call it It's the pointers! OK guys we are just tired... no... we're not tired Thank you guys for joining us on our Kubu island star expedition. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night.
