Astrophotography reaches new heights: shooting the stars on the Canon EOS Ra

Capturing the rich colours of nebulae

The Canon EOS Ra is built for astrophotography, with a modified optical low-pass filter optimised for the infrared end of the spectrum. "This helps particularly with deep sky photography because it lets through wavelengths of light that a conventional camera won't," says Fergus. "You're seeing brighter colours, particularly in nebulae, than you would with a standard camera." When photographing deep sky nebulae that emit hydrogen-alpha (Hα) light, this filter ensures red hues are rendered with exceptional richness.

One of Fergus's most memorable moments was photographing Andromeda for the first time. "The galaxy appears as a faint, slightly blurry star, but it's huge – we just can't see it very well [with the naked eye]," he says. "With a Canon EF 400mm f/2.8L IS III USM lens and a 30-second or minute-long exposure with the telescope, we got an amazingly detailed picture – a colourful, spectacular image of the Andromeda galaxy. The moment that appears on the screen, you just go 'Wow, that's amazing!' It's the biggest and furthest thing I've ever photographed."

The camera's latest DIGIC 8 chip provides fast processing and improved noise reduction, while its responsive AF system is class leading. For Fergus, the new 30x focus magnification option was especially useful. "When you're doing this type of photography and looking at the image on the LCD screen, you're usually manually focusing, and sometimes you need to zoom in on an area to check your focus. The new 30x focus magnification option allows finer focus adjustment on the stars."

Landscapes in low light

When photographing night scenes set against your surroundings, Fergus says the basics of good composition apply and suggests adding a person to your shots to add context. There's a lot you can be doing to prepare before you venture out at night too. "During the day you can be out composing your image with a nice rock formation or lighthouse and work out where the Milky Way will be in your frame," he says. "That way you've composed your image before it's even dark."

Photographing the night sky set against a landscape like this requires a delicate balance of light. Here Fergus found that the Canon EOS Ra's full-frame 30.3 megapixel Dual Pixel CMOS AF sensor came into its own in low light. "It's the most light sensitive and highest-resolution astrophotography camera Canon has made," he says. "It's a big step up from the Canon EOS 60Da.

"The biggest challenge with astrophotography is light sensitivity and getting enough light onto the sensor. The Canon EOS Ra has a bigger sensor and it is full-frame, meaning that each photo site on the full-frame sensor is bigger and can gather more light."

The camera's sensitivity range extends to ISO40000, offering impressive flexibility and resolution, but Fergus was happy working at ISO3200 or 6400, which gave him "workable" shutter speeds.

"On a fairly moonless night I can be pretty confident that for a wide angle Milky Way shot, the best exposure for the sky will be somewhere around 25 seconds at f/2.8 and ISO3200," he explains. "I can either have dark or silhouetted foreground features, or if I want to light them, I will use either use a very low power setting flash from a Speedlite or do some very brief light-painting with a constant light, like a head torch or a small panel light. If there's a bit of moon, perhaps a half-moon or less, you can often achieve good foreground lighting from the natural moonlight, but a full moon will tend to obliterate the delicate light from the stars."