Recently I have been gaining quite some interest for Astrophotography. I have always loved these great images of night skies and star trails and such, but never saw myself take any photographs like that. Because I always thought that the techniques and materials you would need for this were out of reach for me.

I have been talking to my friend Asgeir from Iceland about shooting the stars for quite a bit for the past few weeks, and have to admit that his work and our conversations inspired me to give it a decent go. He basically nails this type of photography. His work are master pieces. He has provided me with plenty of very useful tips and the motivation to step out of my comfort zone and try something new, thanks buddy! (Check out Asgeir's great photographs right here)

So below you can see what I managed to push out of my camera. I don't have a full frame camera, and my widest lenses are both at F3.5 only. For this type of photography you would really want a "fast" lens (with apertures ranging from F1.4 to F2.8) so F3.5 isn't that bad at all, but it comes with a little challenge. There is slightly less "light" hitting the sensor compared to a F1.8 for example. I had the ISO up to 3200 for both shots, which is still pretty good on my "old" D7000 but also showing that from there grain and noise become much more visible and a disturbing factor. I did edit both pictures in Lightroom and Photoshop to try and get the best quality out of these images. And I am pretty happy with how they came out, what do you think?

Anyways, I am back off to saving some more money to reach the point of possibly upgrading my body and lenses to something more powerful and capable, for experimenting a bit more with this type of photography.

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