Time Lapse Night Sky and Desert

I think the D7000 only allows 999 photos to be taken with continuous shooting, but I'm trying it anyways on the night sky and stars.

I will be on a mountain overlook focusing on the desert valley with its surrounding mountains with the sky night sky in the background.

Does anyone know what settings should be considered in doing this and how long the time between shoots should be?

I will be using an AF-S Nikkor 35mm with an aperture of 1:1.8. I may also try my AF-S Nikkor 18-105 Wide angle, but it's max aperture is only 3.5.

Thank You

I have read/heard that 30sec. exp. and 30sec. intervals in between shots and wide open for aperture. Have fun!

If you're looking for star trails, go with long exposures, but remember that the longer you leave the shutter open, the hotter the sensor will get creating noise in the final picture. Sometimes it's better to take a series of shorter exposures and Stack them in Photoshop.
If you're just looking for stars, then 30 sec is a good starting point with a relatively short lens. The longer the lens, the faster the stars will transition across the lens. A good starting point is to divide 600 by the focal length and that will give you the max allowable exposure time. So, with a 300mm lens, you'd be limited to 2 second exposures before you start detecting trails. a 20mm lens would give you 30 sec. of time before the movent is detected.

Related: when I set my lens to infinity, it doesn't seem to be in focus. (sigma 50mm 1.4, Nikkor 16-85..) I was under the impression that anything from the minimum focus distance to infinity would be in focus. Am I missing something?

eurotrash said:

Related: when I set my lens to infinity, it doesn't seem to be in focus. (sigma 50mm 1.4, Nikkor 16-85..) I was under the impression that anything from the minimum focus distance to infinity would be in focus. Am I missing something?

Click to expand...

I think if you make certain you're truly at infinity and not at the point in which the lens focus ring stops, you should be in focus. Older lenses would all stop their focus rings at infinity, however modern lenses now all go past infinity. I remember reading why this was necessary, as I recall there was a good engineering reason for this but I can't remember exactly what is was now.

Yes, but that's what I'm saying. at exactly infinity as shown on the lenses, it seems as if nothing is in focus. Well, perhaps some random stuff IS in fact in focus, but I was under the assumption that everything past the minimum focal distance would be in focus. It just doesn't seem like a fool-proof method since if you're even a hair off, wouldn't everything not be in complete focus? There just has to be an easier way to do it without being hair-pullingly complicated.

The "past infinity" i've read has to do with any number of things ranging from shipping the lenses to heat-related issues where the barrel will expand and retract to the way the motor hard-stops the lens when cycling it. I'm not sure which to believe if any to be honest. But what we do know is that they all do it, lol

Tell you what, I'll take some shots of the lenses at infinity and then we can talk. this thread is useless without pictures.. I hope I'm not intruding on this post, and if I am, Let me know, I'll apologize in advance and will create a new one.

So here's the most evident shot..
A cattin at iso 200, 1/4sec, f7.1 on a tripod with a 2 second delay:




As you can see, nothing is in focus. This cattin was about 5.5 feet away from the lens, probably even more from the sensor itself. Here's another where parts look in focus but others kind of..dont.



This was shot at iso200, 1/20th, f.7.1 on a tripod with a 2 second delay. Again, parts of the image (like the car and the tree) are in focus, but the lady raking the lawn is not as sharp as it would seem, as well as the bush in the foreground which was about 7 feet away from the camera.. The minimum stated focus distance for this particular lens is 17.7 inches.

Both of these are "screaming Bryan Petersons UNDERSTANDING EXPOSURE" where he used F22 focuses at 3' on the lens and takes the pic

So what you're saying is stop up the lens..

Page 53, great reference. I don't know if it was a momentary lapse of retardation or what, but I swear...I knew that!

for those 2 shots yes for the stars I have no clue I'm trying to learn that and can't wait to get up north next year at my parents place to try some it very dark there

I actually did one a looong time back with my d5100...are you talking about doing something like this?
Star Trails - YouTube

I can't remember what if anything, I focused on to make it work, but looking back, it doesn't look like much of anything is in focus, LOL! 300 shots got me 10 seconds of footage. I probably didn't do it right in post.

I like that and hope I get some shots like that my fist time

An AF lens has to have enough adjustment to go past "focus" and then back up to it. Because of that, and AF lenses have some room above "infinity". Try getting two small pieces of painters tape. During daytime, manually focus on something in the infinate range. Mark the focus ring with one piece of tape, and one piece on the fixed body of the lens. Once you're out in the dark, use your flashlight to align the two pieces of tape. You're now focused at infinity. Oh yes, don't forget your flashlight.