Hello, I was wondering if someone could help me out by telling me if a Canon SX280HS is capable of taking low-light photographs of the Comet NEOWISE? If it is possible, would someone be able to help me out with the settings. I'm a straight out amateur. I have very little understanding of ISO settings and shutter speeds even though I've always been aware that they are important and I have messed with ISO settings in the past. My problem is this: I'm afraid that the comet is going to be gone before I become proficient with taking night shots with the camera (If it is even possible to achieve.) I can't seem to figure out from the manual how to change the shutter speed, but nonetheless, I did manage to change it somehow, and now it says that the ISO setting is locked because of the slow shutter speed. The shutter seems to be open for about 8 seconds or more and when I try to take a picture with any light the screen is almost completely white. The camera also takes a very long time to store the photograph. Taking a picture (on a tripod) at night doesn't seem to work and just results in a completely black picture except if I take a picture of a streetlamp in the distance. Clouds are always in our forecast and it seems like tonight might be my only chance of getting a good shot of the comet. Running out of time. Can my camera take the picture? I would greatly appreciate any advice if it is possible. I usually can figure things out like this if I have a long time to mess around, but I don't have the skill and experience to do it quickly. Thank you in advance for any advice. Regards, Tim
http://gdlp01.c-wss.com/gds/4/0300010764/01/pssx280hs-cu-en.pdf Page 98 describes manual mode where you can dial things in yourself. So I will side step the A or P modes which are basically letting the camera make decisions. In AV or TV mode you dial the shutter or the aperture and it sets everything else so if you go with TV and set the shutter the camera will try its best to dial in other setting, likewise AV you set how much depth of field with the aperture. Night sky you will not need depth of field so you can set AV wide open at 28 or 3.5 or 4 what ever the smallest number is and see what it does. I can tell you a good shutter speed starting point in the night sky is about 30sec to expose stars at 2.8. The comet will be moving faster and have a trail. You can dial in number under manual. Page 85 tells you how to dial in ISO. Auto ISO will try to stay low. High ISO will take images faster and have more noise, i am guessing there is a cap on long exposures to reduce noise from the sensor based on what you said, but in M mode you should be able to choose everything. Shutter /Aperture/ISO all have light sensitivity and you whole goal is to prioritize which ones you need to lock in where. If you need to freeze action or blur the image the shutter is crucial for example. add or take light away in one, then you adjust another accordingly its called the exposure triangle. You can still use your in camera meter to dial in exposure in manual and adjust accordingly. The while one meant it had so much light in the 8 seconds that it was way way way over exposed, black was the opposite issue you did not have enough light to expose anything. Night is tricky, what are you exposing? You can have a shutter stay open on for minutes until it looks like it is evening, or you can purposely expose just for a street lamp. You get to decide. You want a fun exercise at night lock in a 2 min exposure where there is absolutely no light around and take a strong flash light and paint in a tree by moving it slowly around the whole surface. Trial and error will be your friend, and trust your in camera meter a little and get used to using M to dial in the settings you want. I hope those pages in the manual will help, the sections around them are probably your biggest area to read up a bit on.
Wow. Thank you Johnsey. I really appreciate all of your help and am still trying to digest it. Since you directed me to the exact page that I was not understanding, I reread it and finally realized the answer to one of my many problems. I was pushing the up button as the manual directed, but I was expecting that push to take me to another settings page. I didn't notice the bottom settings that were being highlighted. I wouldn't have noticed if it hadn't been for you. There's still a lot that I'm not understanding but this will get me going again. The shutter speed seems to be measured in what looks like an '' (inch) mark. I'll start by trying to look up what that means. The comet (at least where I'm located) is hard to see by looking at it directly. You almost have to look out of the side of your eye to find it. Would there be a rule of thumb for a shutter speed and ISO setting that I could start with to get things dialed in? The iso being locked out last night pretty much ended me experimenting with anything, this along with loosing my night vision every time I tried to adjust the camera. Sorry for all of the questions. I plan to read more in the manual since you got me going again. Finding answers always leads to more questions.
Well, after much messing around my main problem seems to be not knowing how to properly set the shutter speed. The only changes that I can make are 15'' 13'' 10'' and 8''. This is in manual "M" mode. The changes seem very erratic as well. A lot of times I can't seem to get the numbers to change at all. To change the speeds I'm pushing the top of the round dial and then turning the ring part of it. There are two green arrow type indicators on each side of the shutter speed on the lcd display which you can move with the top button on the ring and sometimes this turns off when changing the shutter speed. Very confused. There seem to tons of shutter speeds on page 192 of the manual (at least on the TV setting.)
Hello Tim, I have no idea if your camera is capable of taking an image of comet neowise. But there is only one way to find out. I am going to give you the rough settings that I would use with a dslr to start out with, and maybe these will point you in the right direction. M (manual) is the exposure setting that you want. Change your ISO to something like like 1600 for starters. I would also suggest manual focus, and to use live view, but I am not 100% sure if you have that option with your camera. Shutter speed, lets try 8" (that's seconds) Do this inside where you can see what you are doing. Go outside and mount your camera on your tripod and take an image. On a dslr, when you take a long exposure, sometimes the camera will take a second image all by itself, straight after the first image has finished. This second image is to help with noise reduction with the image. I am not sure if your camera will do this, but just be aware that the camera could appear to lock up, but it is just taking it's noise reduction image. If the image is too dark, increase the shutter length (to 16" seconds), or increase the ISO to 3200, and see how you go. I hope there is something in here that helps. Post some images, I would love to see them. I am not sure if the comet is going to be visible down here at all. Good luck. Gary
My understanding is that the dial will change the value for your aperture, shutter, or flash depending on the mode and how its accessed. For stutter and aperture, if in manual you will need to use the up arrow button to select between the two then use the dial. If in AV or TV the dial will change that setting to what you set it to and then auto expose the rest of the settings. You can set ISO specifically using function button selecting iso and using the dial to move off of auto. (P85). All of this is a bit different from my cameras which have 2 dials, but seems pretty straight forward.
Oh i missed that you figured out the dial thing, oops. And yes " is seconds until you get to fractions of a second. And settings both Gary and I through out some suggestions, if its dark you will need multiple seconds, and I would probably stay at 1600 or lower, you will start seeing noise get pretty obvious if you push further. As i noted wide open/almost wide open lens (2.8 or 4) or what every aperture is smallest will let most light in but have shallow depth of field which is a non issue if shooting the sky.
Hi. I'd like to thank you both for your excellent suggestions. I've learned so much in the last day that I almost feel like I know what I'm doing. The SX280HS "might" not be suitable for such low light photography. I'm certainly not ready to make this statement, but it looks like the ISO is pretty much locked to 80 once the shutter goes above 1''. Go to 1''3 and the ISO goes to 80. Johnsey, I saw your suggestion about page 85 but haven't had time to look at that yet. I love this camera and found the only thing that I can complain about. When setting the shutter speed, once you go past the speed where the ISO is set to 80 you can't go back to faster speeds...you only have about five speeds to mess with and you seem to have to reset the camera settings to go back to the full assortment of speeds. I did have awesome luck in having a great (as in awesome) niece who is into photography who brought her DSLR and got some awesome shots. She even did some light tracing. Please see the picture below for what I was able to do. I could only take a picture of our bright town lights on the treeline. The comet was actually on the other side and nothing showed up. If you are interested the International Space Station also goes by (at least here) at least twice each night while the comet is visible. It's very bright and would make an awesome photograph with the comet. We were just getting set up when it went by and I didn't realize until this morning what an awesome photograph we missed. There's an online program called Stellarium that tells exactly where the comet and ISS will be at what time. Thanks again everyone! I can't post the link to Stellarium but it's easy to find. The online version is actually better to use. If you click on the time you can slide a time bar to see what is going to happen. Gary - I'm sorry. I just looked it up and NEOWISE isn't visible in the Southern Hemisphere. At least according to EarthSKY. Hope that you have one appear soon.
Well, there is lots of interesting stuff up there to photograph. It's good to see that you have dipped your toes in the water, and you had a go at it. The night sky can be a tricky subject to photograph, if your interested, maybe it's time to upgrade to a dslr camera as you have seen what your niece's camera is capable of. I know of Stellarium, and I have a couple of other apps on my phone to help find my way around the night sky. Hopefully, another comet will come along that we can see down here. Gary
