1. When composing the shot, avoid any direct light sources. Because this is a long exposure they'll get blown out and potentially ruin the image.
2. Focusing in the dark is difficult, so you want t
o make sure you get it right before you start. If you're including foreground objects, try shining a light on them so your auto-focus will pick them up more easily. If your main focus is the stars, take a few sample pictures first to make sure your focus is accurate.
3. While you can always white balance in post, if you want to get it right from the beginning you're going to need to decide what you want. Setting your white balance to Tungsten will cool down the redness you'll generally pick up from a long-exposure night photo. The opposite would be setting your white balance to 10000 Kelvin, giving it an orange glow.
4. Once you've got your composition down and your shot focused, set your exposure to the bulb setting.
5. Set your camera's aperture to pretty much the widest setting. An aperture of 3.5 to 4.0 is generally good. You may find a lack of detail if going to wide on a lens that has an aperture of wider than 2.8.
6. Set the ISO to 200 (or 100 if you find you're getting too much noise at 200).
7. Press your remote shutter and let the exposure last 30 minutes.
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