# ISS exposure



## Don Haines (Sep 2, 2017)

I am wondering what exposure and ISO people use for taking a picture of the ISS as it passes overhead....

I am going to try it with a 600F6.3 lens with a 1,4X teleconverter, manual focus, so I will be shooting at F11...

Any advice? Thanks!


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## Click (Sep 2, 2017)

Hi Don,

You'll find some tips here:

https://photographingspace.com/photographing-the-iss/

I hope this helps.

Cheers


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## Don Haines (Sep 3, 2017)

Click said:


> Hi Don,
> 
> You'll find some tips here:
> 
> ...



That article was about capturing a streak with a bit of visible landscape.... I'm trying to just get the ISS as a still image... and yes, I know the image will only be a few pixels wide.....


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## KeithBreazeal (Sep 3, 2017)

this is a comp for size comparison with the moon



Moon and ISS © Keith Breazeal by Keith Breazeal, on Flickr

This shows the uncropped image with inserts of the actual pixels before resizing, then after.



ISS 28 Dec 2013 final comp © Keith Breazeal by Keith Breazeal, on Flickr


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## Don Haines (Sep 3, 2017)

KeithBreazeal said:


> this is a comp for size comparison with the moon
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Fantastic! Just what I needed and more!

So if I use a 7D2, the image is 5472 pixels wide instead of 5184, and with 600mm instead of 400mm, I should be able to get a whoppin' big 51 pixels on the target!


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## KeithBreazeal (Sep 3, 2017)

Don Haines said:


> KeithBreazeal said:
> 
> 
> > this is a comp for size comparison with the moon
> ...



Yes! I used the 100-400 after trying the 300 because the ISS is a speck and waving the prime all over trying to find it was a pain. I zoom out, acquire, then zoom in. Orbit angle and sun angle will produce widely varied results. Critical focus is difficult. I found that continuous shooting while varying the manual focus a bit produced more "keepers".(less blurry- LOL)
I saved the raw file as a tiff, then went through at least 10 gradual resizing crops.


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## privatebydesign (Sep 3, 2017)

KeithBreazeal said:


> .... then went through at least 10 gradual resizing crops.



Keith, can you elaborate on that a bit? Did you use PS as I found little difference between 'stepped' increases and one large one. Also auto resize seemed perfectly adequate for almost every use. But I'd love to hear your methodology because it looks very good. Thanks.


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## KeithBreazeal (Sep 3, 2017)

privatebydesign said:


> KeithBreazeal said:
> 
> 
> > .... then went through at least 10 gradual resizing crops.
> ...



I use an old program (Digital Image Pro 9) to resized and crop. I start with the largest file size the software will handle, then crop 10-20% each pass. Each pass takes about 5-10 seconds. I set the dpi at 300.


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