Night photography

This is a story of how I thought I was starting a new hobby and found out my location may not be the bets possible for it. Some learning was one, however. Note: Unless otherwise stated, pictures have not been edited aside from straightening horizons.

30 s, f/2.0, ISO 3200
21:20 PM

Guess what this is! Yes, my first attempt at astrography, photography of the stars! Could've gone better. Rather baffled, I started to tweak the settings, wondering what I'd done wrong.

10 s, f/2.0, ISO 800
21:24 PM

 Apparently I'd ignored the warnings about light pollution near cities and moon. Slight tweaking of the settings and I did get something visible.

10 s, f/2.0, ISO 800
21:25 PM

 Not quite.

1/10 s, f/2.0, ISO 800
21:26 PM

 Nope.

1,6s, f/2.0, ISO 6400
21:27

So I tweaked the settings a little and pointed at Niuniu. Which revealed the awful amount of light pollution from the city lights around us.

1/8s, f/2.0, ISO 6400
21:27 PM

 Though to my human eyes the scene looked like this (and the background lights did not look that bright in reality)...

1s, f/2.0, ISO 6400
21:29

 ...with proper camera settings I could create an illusion of tons of light, almost like daylight.

1s, f/2.0, ISO 6400
21:30

 I quite like these. The focus is not exactly where it should be, but since it was too dark, I had to use manual focus, and since it was too dark, getting the manual focus right was nearly impossible.

1s, f/2.0, ISO 6400
21:31

 On the left: what the camera actually gave me on normal settings. On the right, same picture lightened a lot to show there actually is a dog. (1/30s, f/2.0, ISO 6400)

1s, f/2.0, ISO 6400
21:36

 Tweaking of settings and there we have it.

1s, f/2.0, ISO 6400
21:39

So... No stellar star pictures.

0,5s, f/2.0, ISO 6400
21:39

 But it was nice to hang out in the moonlight with Niuniu.

0,5s, f/2.0, ISO 6400
21:39

1/4s, f/2.0, ISO 6400
21:43

 Some more tries at the night sky, now that I'd established the fact I should ignore the advice of using high ISOs and lowest possible shutter speed (since there quite simply was too much light for that).

0,3s, f/2.0, ISO 3200
21:44

 So, this is the best I got! The big dipper!

13s, f/2.0, ISO 100, lightened on computer
21:46

 There are stars. Quite a few of them. I can help the situation a little by trying again when the moon isn't shining. But it won't help much, there's quite simply far too much light coming from the surroundings, and I won't be getting anywhere truly dark anytime soon. Hence, I guess night sky photography shall not be becoming a new hobby anytime soon...

Let's finish with how a skiier appeared on the ice, alarming Niuniu. This is what happens, when one doesn't have a chance to properly finish a long shutter speed shot of the night sky.

Conclusion: Try again when no moon. Do not expect too much. Wait for a hiking trip to the middle of nowhere.

And a camera with ISO 6400 teamed with a lens of aperture of f/2.0 can save ok:ish pictures in amazing lighting conditions!