What did i do wrong with my canon

Question

Last night I was trying to photograph the meteor shower. I had my Canon Rebel XTi on my tripod with a 75mm lense on night shot mode, but whenever I pointed it to the sky to take a picture they all turned out bright orange! It basically looked like these light strangs except it consumed the whole image http://www.neon-nites.co.uk/shop/images/Neon%20Orange.JPG What did I do wrong?

Answer 1

If you would have posted a actual image of what you had it would have been more easier to suggest something...

If your camera has a M setting I would go with that for one thing. Another is using a wider lens. 75mm is very narrow in view for what you want and the luck of getting a meteor streak thru such a lil window is doubtful.

M exposure of 30 seconds, or B for time exposures if you have it. You can go many minutes if you want, too. Aim the camera where the radiant of the shower is to be from, lock the camera in place with the f/stop of the lens wide open and shutter speed from 30 seconds to 2 to 5 minutes and ISO at 100 to 400.

If your in or near a city or bunch of lights, yes, your images can indeed come out looking orange from - sky fog. Light reflecting back down, from the sky but from city or parking lot lights into your camera. Only way to get around this is to go where it is much darker...

Again, don't set things on - Default... Go to Manual and set it all your self..

Bob - Tucson

Answer 2

Night shot mode was intended for taking pictures of people at night, not the night sky. The camera's automatic exposure calculator tried to expose the night sky as though it were a normal subject, so it left the shutter open long enough for the image to get bright. The orange glow is light pollution.

A better to do this is to use manual mode and experiment to find an exposure that gives you good bright stars without too much sky glow.

Edit: Cloudy? I hope you mean partly cloudy; you're not going to see any meteors though the clouds.

Answer 3

If it was cloudy you would not have captured any meteors anyway unless one happened to land in your yard.  Doesn't the night shot mode on the XTi  fire the flash?  It is meant for people shots at night, and uses a slower shutter speed to capture some ambient light and the flash to capture the person.

Next time set the ISO to 100 and the shutter speed to about 30 seconds to begin.  Use wide angle on your lens to cover more area of the sky.  The f stop is not critical, anything between f/2.8 and f/8 will work.  You may want to work up to a longer shutter speed of several minutes on bulb.  If the meteor count is high enough (and there are clear skies) you should capture a few.  There may be enough stragglers to make it worthwhile for tonight.

Answer 4

How long was the exposure? If it was several minuets then you probably captured lights from a near by city. If your in the city, or even near a large city, your camera will pick up even the faintest cast of light in the nights sky. Trust me on this, even if the sky looks completely black, an exposure of 15 minuets will pick up the faintest cast of light from miles away and cause a color cast in the sky.