Nebula Photography Tutorial

Astrophotography  •  Photography Tips

Astrophotography is a very specialized genre of photography. The images that you can get are truly fascinating. However, taking photos of beautiful celestial bodies is not a matter of simply pointing your camera and releasing the shutter. As complex as the subjects are, the gear needed for astrophotography can be seemingly even more complex. Besides, you need to have a proper understanding of what you’re aiming for and what you’re doing. To help you get started with astrophotography, astrophotographer Trevor Jones, takes you through the entire process of photographing a nebula in the night sky from start to finish:

Astrophotography comes with a lot of challenges. You’ll need some specialized gear like a telescope, an equatorial mount, and different sets of filters. You may even need special software on your computer to precisely locate and photograph a particular subject. Jones talks about all of these factors and also points out certain other challenges that can come up when taking astrophotos.

For instance, light pollution can be a common challenge with astrophotography. Jones shares how using certain filters can help you overcome this challenge. But again, there can be other setbacks that you can’t do anything about – a cloudy sky for instance.

“Astrophotography is all about piling on the data so that you have enough data to play with.”

Towards the end of the video, Jones also quickly runs through how he processes to get the final image. If you’re really interested in getting started with astrophotography, be sure to go through the entire video. You’ll definitely learn a great deal.