Photographing the ISS: A Newbs Perspective

I heard on the radio over the past couple of days that the International Space Station was going to flyover Columbus on April 15th, 2016.  I have been wanting to try some astro-photography lately so I decided to try and shoot the ISS.  I have never done this before, so I did a little research on camera settings and even picked up an app called SkyView for my Android phone so I could properly plan my “3 minute window of opportunity” to shoot the ISS.

Things I discovered in the heat of battle:

1. Tripods suck
2. Tripod heads suck
3. Did I mention tripods suck

Camera Info:

Canon 7D with the Canon 17-55mm F/2.8 IS
Manual Mode
Manual Focus (set focus to infinity then back it off a tiny bit)
ISO 800
20 second shutter speed
f/2.8
17mm focal length
2 second self timer
Mounted on the tripod from hell.  An older Dynatran AT-L103T Aluminum beast.  Honestly, the tripod itself is okay, my main issue was with the crappy ball head.  If I can find a better head for the thing I might be happy.

On with the Images, first up the “OMG WE ARE MISSING IT,” because I was paying more attention to my phone than the sky.

In the second image you can clearly see that the tripod head rotated ever so slightly during the exposure, I hate tripods.

In the third image I actually start to break away from the local light pollution and get an okay image.

Now to avoid the same tripod disaster from the second image I rotated the head around and changed the angle of attack! Came out quite nice, too bad there is no foreground just a star field and an ISS streaking across the sky!

In this last image local light pollution starts to creep back in and gives me some lens flare…my fault I forgot the lens hood.  I can’t blame the tripod for lack of a lens hood.

Lessons learned:

1. Cheap tripod heads are not worth the effort
   1. Get a new tripod head
2. ISO 800 is way to high for a city with huge amounts of light pollution
   1. Drop the ISO to 400
3. Leave focus at infinity
4. Should have used my Nikon D300s
   1. We all know Nikon has better dynamic range
   2. Nikon’s Active D-Lighting might have helped a bit
5. Kids 10 and under are not impressed by a little bright light moving at 17,500MPH
   1. They thought they were going to see a space station
      1. Solution: Leave kids at home
6. Need to find a better spot with less light pollution and better foreground subjects

All said and done though, a newbs work for sure.  Next time I will be better prepared.