For a while I’ve been wanting to try my hand at astrophotography.  I had a decent wide angle lens for my Canon 60D, the Rokinon 14mm aspherical lens, and my wife gave me the “ok” to relinquish Dad duties for the evening and I jumped.

Light pollution is a problem for most people trying to capture the Milky Way so I decided to tackle that problem first.  Knowing we’d found a spot, Jim and I headed for a state park outside of Montpelier VT., which is about 3 hours from where I am 95% of the time.

We found a perfect little alcove with a peninsula on Hookersville Lake, just past St. Johnsbury and weren’t bothered all night.  It was quite fortunate that we found this little spot as we were thinking that, at worst, we would capture stuff in the parking lot of the Northern Skies Observatory but this…this spot was PERFECT!

There was a debate about taking Milky Way shots during a crescent moon as opposed to the “new” moon that’s occurring next weekend but I’m not a weatherman and couldn’t predict weather (see what I did there…?) the skies would be clear the following week so Jim and I decided the trip was a go.

Most of these shots are set at 3200 ISO and the lowest possible aperture setting, which in this case was f/2.8.  The Rokinon is a manual focus, manual aperture camera so getting a good focus was a challenge that required a lot of trial and error but ultimately came out decently.

The Rokinon performed admirably and the focal issues I was worried about were not an issue.  I surprised myself with these images though I started the night with low expectations and worked my way up from there.

I did a really good job and my pal Jim made it easier so he deserves so credit for these images…thanks Jim!

Check them all out here!

Cheers!

-Eric