Canon 6D - Astrophotography

Astrophotography is easily one of my favorite types of photography. Even without a camera, stargazing was something my friends and I would do just to unwind. Capturing the stars on camera is not the same as looking at a panoramic star filled sky, but it’s where we can merge our creativity with the night sky in a shareable format.

I first started taking photos of stars and the Milky Way with my Canon T2i, and I was proud of the few very noisy shots I got. I always knew that I could take better photos with a superior camera. After 8 years of using my T2i, it was time to take my gear to the next level.

Astrophotography played a big part in what my next camera would be. The low light limitations needed to be addressed, and I had to stay within a relatively low budget as far as DSLR’s go. After considering all of my options and consulting with my wallet, I finally purchased my Canon 6D Mark II on Black Friday of 2018.

In this article I’m going to break down the Canon 6D Mark II and focus on how it can be best put to use for astrophotography. Let’s dive in!

Reasons to Use the 6D Mark II for Astro

1) Full Frame Sensor

Full frame sensors have always delivered better low light performance. This was a must have for my next camera after using the T2i, an older crop sensor. At the time of purchasing, the options were the Canon 5D Mark IV, Canon EOS R, and Canon 6D Mark II. I wanted to stick with Canon due to lens compatibility.

2) Cost

The Canon 6D Mark II was priced at $1300, while the EOS R and 5D Mark IV were priced at over $2000-$3000+ in 2018. The EOS R and 5D Mark IV would take a huge amount away from possible lens investments, which I consider more valuable.

3) ISO Range

ISO range is a little overrated due to images becoming virtually unusable after a certain threshold. This is more important to me for a nightscape composition setups, which can be difficult without a very sensitive sensor. High ISO gives you some rough ‘night vision’, if you will.

4) Various Other Features

  • 26 MP sensor
  • UHS-I Memory Support
  • Articulating LCD – A LIFE SAVER
  • Built in Intervalometer

Setting Up the 6D Mark II

Note that these settings are not for image stacking astrophotography. That is a different technique entirely that relies heavily on post processing. We are focusing on simpler single image methods which require the usual post processing corrections.

  • Turn off Long Exposure Noise Reduction
  • Turn off High ISO Speed Noise Reduction
  • Set camera to manual mode
  • Set shutter delay to 2 seconds
  • Ensure lens is set to manual focus
  • Set image type to RAW
  • Set screen brightness to lowest setting at night
Canon 6D MK II Astro

Workflow

I usually try to do the following to get the most out of my astro shots. Sometimes you don’t have the luxury to do all of these, so we’ll discuss some alternatives too.

Check Light Pollution

  • Before travelling, I like to view my destination on a light pollution map. This helps me expect what level of stars my camera and my eyes will be able to see. Find your destination here: https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/ . This website is a great resource to get a general feel for the light pollution. I mainly check this to see how good my chances are at catching the Milky Way.
  • If you want the most stars, finding a low light polluted area is half of the battle. You also want to travel on a new moon. A full moon really dilutes the sky of visible stars. A small crescent moon is still better than a half or full moon.

Find Shooting Location & Subjects

  • Ideally, find your shooting location during daytime. This way you can think about your composition more easily.
  • If you are targeting certain stars, use the Google Sky Map to find its location at night.

Plan Shooting Time

  • Depending on your location and time of the year, aim to shoot during the darkest hour of the night. This is the hour between sunrise and sunset.

Camera Setup

  • Setup your tripod in the desired location, and weigh the tripod down. Weighing down the tripod is particularly important if you are not using a wide lens, or if there is anything that can compromise the stability of your camera.
  • Connect your remote shutter to the camera.

Find Focus

  • With our lens in manual focus, switch the 6D into Live View. A few of the brightest stars in the sky should be visible on your LCD. If not, reduce your shutter speed and increase your ISO to ensure you are getting the most exposure possible via your LCD. Use the 5x and 10x zoom functions in live view to get close to a star and adjust focus to sharpen the star to the best of your ability. If you do astrophotography a lot, you can make a mark on your lens or place a strip of painters tape to save this focus point.

Find Composition

  • If you were able to get an idea of your composition during the day, most of your work here is done. If you were not able to check out the location in daylight, don’t worry! Set your camera to a low shutter and high ISO setting, such as a 20 second shutter and 10,000+ ISO. Take an image, and you should be able to see what features are around you. Keep taking images all around you until you get an idea of what composition you want with the landscape and star patterns you are surrounded by. Don’t worry about the horribly noisy image on your screen. Once we dial in the composition, we can dial in our final settings.

Dial In Final Settings

  • Once you have your composition using the high ISO settings, we will want to dial in our camera settings to get the most useable image. We want to make sure we get the sharpest image with the lowest noise while keeping as much light information as possible. The three things that can affect image sharpness include:

    • Camera Shake

      • Ensure your tripod is very stable and you can eliminate this variable. Lowering our shutter speed can reduce the amount of camera shake, however ensuring a solid grounding here is always the better option for setting flexibility.

    • High ISO Speeds

      • High ISO always leads to noisy and sometimes unusable images. Test out a few images at different ISO speeds and perform an image review while zooming in to determine whether or not the amount of noise is acceptable. Some noise can be removed in post processing, it is fine to leave a tolerable amount. I try to keep my ISO between 1600 and 3200 depending on the scene.

    • Wide Open Aperture

      • Wide open apertures are great for bringing in all the light, however this is where lenses are softest. I like to go down at least a stop or two in aperture to avoid the softest area of the optics.
    • If you want to speed up your camera setup workflow, check out our article on using custom shooting modes!

Shoot!

  • Now we have our tripod ready, composition set, and settings dial in. Shoot away! Rinse and repeat starting from the composition step for more images in you location.

Essential Gear

With the camera body, there are other pieces of gear that are critical to have a good astrophotography experience. I always have the following gear when shooting any type of astro.

  • Headlamp with Red Light

    • Red lights are special in that they don’t affect your eye’s light sensitivity as much as white lights. Adjusting your eyes to the dark night’s conditions can take up to half an hour! It would be a shame to flash a white light at the darkest hour of the night, and then have to wait a full half hour to regain the same eye sensitivity. Red lights can be handy to light things up as needed while not ruining your photography and stargazing experience.
    • Petzel and Black Diamond are terrific options in the headlamp space. The Petzel Tikka and the Black Diamond Cosmo 300 are two great options around $30.

  • Tripod

    • A good tripod is always important to have. This is even more important with astrophotography where we have long exposure times. Long exposures mean there is more time for any movement to possibly disrupt your shot.
    • Heavy tripods are more stable, but are hard to carry around. A lightweight tripod that has a good weight capacity is the best of both worlds. This makes it easy to carry around, and when you want a stable setup, you can add a backpack or some other weight to ensure it stays in place.
    • A great example of a light weight and high capacity tripod is the Manfrotto BeFree Advanced Tripod. This weighs in at just over 3 lbs, and can hold over 17 lbs of gear!

  • Shutter Release

    • Speaking of a stable setup, not touching the camera is part of this. A remote shutter helps you isolate yourself from the camera. Instead of pressing the camera shutter and potentially moving it, you can press a button on a remote shutter connected by a flexible wire!
    • A basic shutter release cable is very inexpensive and are widely available.

  • Fast Lens

    • Fast lenses are all about getting more light. Even stepping down using one or two stops, a fast lens can still be a great low light performer.
    • f/2.8 lenses are great for low light conditions. If you want to close the aperture a stop or two, that can land you in f/3.2 or f/3.5, still a relatively wide aperture.
    • Lenses I most commonly use for astro Include the following:
      • Canon 50mm f/1.4 Prime
      • Rokinon 14mm f/2.8 Prime w/ AE Chip

I hope this article helped you find strengths of the Canon 6D for astrophotography and learn more about my thought process when taking astro images. If you have anything you’d like to add or share, please comment below!