In our Astrophotography course, you will do a crash course covering many aspects of Astrophotography. You will learn everything from planning to taking the perfect exposure and having an image ready to post process. We will share with you not only our knowledge but our tricks, tips & secrets.

The topics you will cover and learn during this course are as follows; ISO-aperture & shutter speed settings,  location scouting & planning, locating night sky objects, bulb & manual mode settings, 500 Rule vs NPF Rule, single exposures, multiple exposures & stacking, time lapse, low level lighting vs light painting, panoramas, and for the more advanced tracking.

We will show you how to get the best out of the equipment you use, and how to push your night photography to another level.  We will focus on how to find a perfect composition, if your aim is to shoot the Milky way it’s often not so simple. It requires correct planning and a knowledge of the night sky objects, we will show you how, where and when to be to capture that perfect composition. 

Once the theory part is covered, we will move to the practical aspect of the course and begin setting up our equipment and framing our compositions ready to capture our first images. We will review your images and workflow to see if you are using what you learnt from the theory part of the course, giving you feedback and remarks to maximize the results of your final images. 

We will then test out different techniques with low level lighting, depending on location we may work with car trails to incorporate them to our night images, and we will also learn how to resolve problems we sometimes face during Astrophotography and how to use certain situations to our own advantage. 

For the post-processing, we will give advice and share our knowledge. However we strongly recommend our Lightroom and Photoshop courses as a follow up. After the editing session, we will end the day with a presentation of the pictures you took and have a short image critique.

Who should attend the Astrophotography Course?

It’s possible for anyone to do Astrophotography; all it requires is a basic knowledge of camera settings & functions. If you have no experience with manual & bulb mode settings, then we strongly recommend you take an intermediate course first. It isn’t required to have a huge experience, but you should be able to navigate between settings.

What should I bring?

Often, we imagine we need the best equipment to capture such images of the night sky, but chances are you already have enough equipment that can suffice to capture a great image. Don’t have everything you need?  Check out our list of rental equipment.

• A camera with interchangeable lenses (DSLR, mirrorless, MFT – any camera that allows for manual settings and interchangeable lenses)
• A wide-angle lens ranging from 14mm to 35mm, zoom lenses are acceptable, the wider the aperture the better preferably (f/1.4 – f/2.8)
• A tripod is mandatory for Astrophotography (the stronger the better)
• A Intervalometer is highly recommended as it is required to use bulb mode (if you have an app that allows you to do exposures longer then 30.0s then that will suffice)
• A Star Tracker for example the iOptron Skytracker Pro (highly recommended but not necessary for the class) 
• More than one fully charged battery for your camera (the more the better; 3-4 reccomended)
• A headlamp to see in the dark.
• Hiking boots & some warm clothes (we will be standing around in the dark night for several hours and it can get cold)
• If you think you might need a bit of extra help then take a look at our Beginner & Intermediate Courses first

Do not forget to dress according to the weather and prepare for evening chills.