July 13th, 2022, 10:30 p.m. local time
The Summer of tracking the International Space Station continued tonight, this time with a direct fly-through of The Big Dipper, and an extremely close encounter with The North Star, Polaris.
And I changed up my equipment setup a little from the prior nights, and I am pleased with the results. Tonight’s image was taken with my Canon DSLR camera and Sigma wide lens. I set up the camera in manual “bulb” mode, using the Canon app on my iPhone to control the shutter, keeping it open for long exposures.
I spent about 10 minutes before the ISS flyover fiddling with the ISO and focal settings, trying to get the best settings I could for an approximate two-minute exposure. The final camera settings I used for this photograph are below. The ISS took about 100 seconds to fly through the area I captured.
If you compare this Northwest image to that of last night’s, you will see my ornamental pear tree again, but this time I aimed the camera higher, since the ISS was traveling “higher” from my vantage here on Earth.
I like this DSLR/Sigma lens setup for the ISS, and plan to tweak the camera settings during future sessions.
Equipment Used:
- Canon EOS Rebel SL3 on tripod
- Sigma wide field lens, 17mm focal length
- f/5
- 102 sec exposure
- ISO 100
- Minor touchups in PaintShop Pro and AfterShot Pro
