canon eos 1300D - what lense/settings for astrophotography??

Hi Christine,
Suggest you get used to the camera doing normal photography first, read the manual and understand all the functions and get used to finding your way around the camera in the dark, essential for astrophotography. When you've done that, here is a guide to get you started on shooting stars .

I'll assume you are on a static tripod for now.
It is possible to get some very pleasing wide field astro images with your camera and I suggest trying the 18-55 initially, it will be much more forgiving.

here is an example from a friend of mine
Orion & River Greta, Ingleton by Pete Collins, on Flickr
Don't want to bog you down with too much but here is a good start just to get some sort of a result to wet your appetite.
CAMERA SETTINGS-
set the dial to manual, this will allow to select the exposure length, more on that shortly.
set the aperture to wide open right now, probably f4.5.
set the zoom to 18, most wide angle
set focus to manual for now
set iso to 800 ish
set quality to raw
set screen brightness to max

SETTING UP YOUR CAMERA-
set your camera high on it's tripod and shutter release cable and point it towards some bright stars, some foreground trees can add to your initial image.
Not sure if your model has a screen on a hinge? if not it can be quite hard to see the screen for focussing as it will be pointing at the ground to a degree.
so focussing, put your camera on live view and move your focus ring back from infinity and hopefully you will see some stars come into view, use digital zoom to fine tune your focus, stars should be as small as possible.

SETTING EXPOSURE-
there is a rule you can use to minimise star trailing, very simply, 600 divided by your focal length, result in seconds. So if you use 18mm initially that will result in a shutter speed of 33" (30" will probably be the max you can set your camera before going to bulb)
Light pollution will have an effect on your settings for sure, reduce the exposure if your images are washed out with an orange colour.

Suggest right now rather than going into anymore advance techniques, is to give that a bash and see how you get on. It will be a steep learning curve initially but hopefully you will be astounded by your results and go on to become more involved. Remember the images on AstroBin are with complex setups and people have taken years sometimes to achieve these results

Best of luck, look forward to hearing how you got on.
David

I have the same camera and when the night is not to warm is an excellent performer.

About 20 degrees C outside temperature do not go more than ISO 800.   If the night is cold ( below 10 degrees C ) .. you may go up to Iso 3200.

If not using a filter… choose white balance un Daylight ( Around 5200 K )
If using a filter or your camera has been astro modified….. just do a custom balance in Menu.. it is very easy. Always in RAW and manual… DO NOT FORGET to do DARKS and Bias.

If shooting from city… ALWAYS use a CLS filter for nebulas and  a Optolomg L-pro for Galaxies.

CS. and good luck.

Luis.

Some great advice here already, but here are my $0.02:

- If you don't have a tracking mount, and will use the camera only with a fixed tripod (I strongly recommend starting this way), you will be limited in exposure time due to Earth's rotation. The 600/FL rule is a great starting point. So try the widest angle possible: 18mm.  And expose for as long as possible, always, so 30s (unless the trails bother you too much, than you can try to lower it to 25s or 20s). As you are limited in exposure time, you should open the lens as much as possible. I like to shoot with my 18-55mm at 18mm f/3.5 30". If you could have a faster lens, you should open it up as well (f/2.8 or less is the best-case scenario).

- Now comes the ISO: this might seem counter-intuitive (especially if you read some daylight-photography websites): noise goes DOWN as you INCREASE ISO, not up. ISO 3200 has less noise than ISO 200! More specifically, read noise goes down as you increase your ISO. Unfortunately, your Dynamic Range (DR) also goes down with ISO. So, ISO does 2 things: lowers read noise [good] and lowers dynamic range [bad]. However, the loss in DR is really not the biggest deal in astrophotography, as usually it is all dark, and especially so in fixed-tripod-imaging. So, one of the most frequent begginer mistakes is to shoot too low an ISO, resulting in a too dark of an image. I shoot at ISO 6400 when using my cameras on a fixed tripod. I would start there as well. Unless you're in a very light-polluted area, you should not worry too much about having an image "too bright". I don't think you should try to get your back-of-camera image to look good or final. It will be usually brighter and less contrasted than you want. That's normal (and desirable). It's in the post-processing that it will go the way you wanted it.

- Now the most important: get to the darkest sky you can. Do you know about the Bortle scale? Have a look at it online. Aim at Bortle 4 or less, if you can. If you are in a large city, Bortle 7 or more, I must say your results will likely be pretty limited. If you have a lot of Light pollution, the noise will be way up, and you will get a brighter image. Unless your back of camera histogram is visibly beyond the middle line [probably only if it is all in the rightmost quarter] I would consider lowering the ISO (because it would mean your image is too bright, and might be white clipping, which is worsened by the lower DR).

Bottom line: 18mm f/3.5 30" ISO 6400. As dark skies as you can.

Online forums and websites are a fantastic knowledge center: also check CloudyNights Forum and several Astrophotographer's Websites.

But the most important: have fun, go out there and shoot. Astrophotography is a beautiful hobby, that requires a lot of practice and experimentation. Try different settings and do not take my (or anyone's) advice. Try it for yourself! After shooting, you will also need some skill in post-processing (the second phase to make a good image). It is all a great learning experience.

Finally, as we usually say: [Wish you] Clear Skies!

Best regards,
Gabriel