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Star Eater – Why I No Longer Recommend Sony Cameras for Astrophotography: An Open Letter to Sony

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Sony makes excellent cameras. In the last few years, they launched a completely new full frame camera system that has pushed the bounds of digital photography. I switched entirely to Sony gear after first seeing the tremendous low-light capability of their a7S and have enjoyed many outings shooting astrophotography on many different Sony camera bodies since. I have previously recommended Sony gear to countless numbers of fellow photographers looking for the best landscape astrophotography cameras. That is no longer the case. If you want to shoot landscape astrophotography, don’t buy a Sony. If you already have a Sony camera, don’t update the firmware.

Here’s why I no longer recommend Sony cameras and how the latest firmware update made Sony’s a7RII and a7SII terrible for astrophotography.

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How to Find the Best ISO for Astrophotography: Dynamic Range and Noise

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ISO is one of the three major exposure settings in the exposure triangle of a digital camera. Of the three: shutter time, f/number, and ISO, it is ISO that is probably most misunderstood. Even more so than f/number. In fact, it is a common misconception that higher ISO settings will cause images to be noisier. In fact, the opposite is often true. Wait, what?

That’s right, higher ISO settings alone do not increase image noise and higher ISOs can even be beneficial to low-light photography. In this post, I talk about the craziness surrounding ISO settings, how ISO actually affects exposure and how to find the optimal ISO setting on your camera for astrophotography.

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Photographer shoots Great Balls of Fire which turn out to be a Chinese spaceship reentry

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Photographer Ian Norman was out on shooting some night skies photo in Alabama Hills near Lone Pine, California. The photos are gorgeous (as you can see below), which is pretty usual up till now. But some time into the shoot Ian notices a huge fireball over the Sierra Nevada mountains.

While Ian’s “big guns” gear was not setup to shoot it, he grabbed an A75 and started recording.

It turns out that those fireballs were the expected reentry of the upper stage of China’s recent CZ-7 rocket launch, namely the rocket upper stage.

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Photographing the Milky Way with a Smartphone and the Future of Photography

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Some believe that smartphones will never replace “real cameras” like DSLRs or mirrorless cameras. This article is about providing evidence to the contrary and about making some amazing images with limited equipment. Here’s my account on shooting some of my first images of the Milky Way with nothing but a smartphone and a tripod.

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