Comet Hale-Bop, photographed with an ordinary SLR film camera with a normal (50-mm) lens. Date: April 5, 1997. There is some sky glow to the north (bottom-right side of photo), coming from the city lights of the Vancouver, British Columbia---Bellingham, Washington metropolitan area.
Equipment Needed:
•35-mm SLR film camera with a "B" exposure setting option (I used a Pentax K-1000).
•Camera clamp. ($25-$30)
•Shutter release cable ($5 - $10).
•Kodak Gold ISO-1000 speed color film (1000-speed color film can sometimes be hard to find; try a specialty photo store or buy it on the Web).
I took the photograph at a dark spot on Chuckanut Drive, a scenic road along Bellingham Bay, about 10 miles south of my former apartment. After I experimented with exposure times, I found that 20-seconds is optimum. Exposure times longer than 20-seconds will cause the stars to smear out due to the Earth's rotation. I didn't use a timer; I just counted out "one thousand one......one thousand two....." etc.
Use a camera clamp and secure your SLR to an open car door or to another stable structure (camera clamps can be obtained from photography shops or on the Web. They're cheap).
Point the camera at the part of the sky that you want to photograph and then tighten the nut on the clamp to secure the camera. Next, set the exposure time to the "B" setting. Open the lens aperture as far as it will go (I opened mine to 2.0). Focus the camera. Cock the camera. Using a shutter release cable, open the shutter and begin timing the exposure (keep pressing the shutter cable until the exposure is completed). Twenty-seconds total exposure time is best. Remove your thumb pressure on the shutter release cable to close the shutter.
That's all there is to it! One last tip: Before you take photos of the night sky, take a few daylight photos of your friends or your pets on the same roll that you will use to take the sky photos. Why is this a good idea? Because film developing shops (particularly the 1-hour establishments) often have a hard time seeing the night sky images on the negatives. They need to know where to cut the negative roll into sections. You don't want your negative cut through the middle of one of your images! If you begin the roll with a couple of daylight images, it will help the photo processor employee see the boarders of each image. I have gone as far as to take one daylight photo, then a night sky photo, then another daylight photo, etc.
