Here’s a single 30 second exposure with my 28mm F/2.8 lens and my camera mounted on an old CG3 style mount with a simple clock drive.   I had a Bogen ball-head camera mount so I could position the camera.  The mount works well at this focal length for 30 seconds.  Too bad there were clouds.

The Orion and Taurus constellations taken with a 28mm F/2.8 lens.  The camera used is a Canon XS at ISO 1600 and was mounted on a regular tripod.  I used 3×20 sec exposures combined in IRIS.  Calibration frames were from old data.  Bright Jupiter is visible on the right.  Even with just 20 seconds for exposure, the stars trailed due to the Earth’s rotation. I had to do some star rounding in PS to correct it somewhat.

What can you image with just a camera with a wide angle lens and a tripod?   The Milky Way, that’s what!   I just love taking images like this.    I was in the process of upgrading my telescope mount and had taken my C-8 off the old mount and moved it to a new one.  Unfortunately, I was lacking the hand-paddle/computer for the new mount and I could not do any imaging with it.  Not to be stopped by a little problem like that I used my camera on a tripod and obtained the image above.

This was taken way back in 2005 with my then, brand new Canon Digital Rebel (the old 300D,) which was my first digital SLR camera.    It was a 25 second exposure at ISO 400 with a 28-70 Sigma zoom lens set at the lowest focal length and ratio.

Since this image was taken, the trees have grown considerably and the light pollution is twice as bad as it used to be.  Oh, well.  At least I still have the original RAW image files to play with.  lol