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Showerthought: a guy at the Cherry Springs star party taught me more in 20 minutes than 3 months of YouTube videos
I was at Cherry Springs State Park in Pennsylvania last August for the dark sky event, and my first astrophotography attempt was a mess, stars looked like little dashes instead of dots. This older guy named Walt walked over, looked at my setup, and said "your tripod is on grass, that's your problem." He showed me how to press my tripod feet into the dirt and use a 3 second delay so my hands wouldn't shake the mount. Has anyone else had a random stranger at a star party fix their whole process in one tip?
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abbyp614d ago
Wondering if one tip really counts as "more than 3 months of YouTube" though. Pressing your tripod into dirt and using a 3 second delay are pretty basic things that get covered in like the first video you'd watch on astrophotography. Walt sounds like a nice guy and I'm sure it helped in the moment, but there's probably a reason the videos didn't stick, like you weren't out there actually trying it yet. Some stuff you just can't learn until you're standing in a field at night with cold hands.
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