So.... this will be one of my first times shooting wilderness photography with my DSLR. Going to bring my tripod in - so thank you for the recommendation...

I will have my kit lens of 18-55mm

My still lens of 35mm

and my zoom lens of 55-300mm.

For nighttime specific... Any specific things you'd shoot? I'd love to try and shoot the milky way - or I just saw on facebook a Star trail picture which looked AWESOME! Do you just leave your exposure open for a bit? I suppose I'll play around with it, but I'm SO EXCITED and hope for some clear skies!!!

How does one shoot the Milky way or the Northern Lights?

Thanks for teaching me! I'm used to portrait photography, and stoked to get into landscapes.

I haven't tried star trials, but I have shot the Milky Way. You want to shoot probably wide open with your 35mm assuming its fairly fast. You can try it with your kit lens too, card space is cheap so might as well try it. To determine the longest shutter speed without trails I subscribe to the 500 rule where you take 500 and divided by focal length 500/35=14.28 so 15s, and set your iso at 3200, for full frame cameras anyway crop sensors may have some additional math?
The hard part is accurately focusing at infinity in the dark, if you're lucky your lens will have a hard stop at infinity, if not try zooming in with live view, and really crank the iso to see better.

This shot was 20mm at 1.8 for 20s at 3200, so you can see I don't follow the 500 rule very strictly, I guess its more like a guideline. :)

What camera body are you taking. Night time sky pics, need fast lens and good sensor to get really good results. Lots of good online tutorials.

Here is some good basic stuff.

And one with a lot more detail. Milky Way & Star Photography Tutorial

Lonely Speck has a lot of good info too. I've got one of their focus filter things, seems to work. It takes a little time to get focused but I think its easier than not using it.

Lots of good advice already on shooting the Milky Way.
Another thing to consider is campfire shots. There will be some trial and error.

One situation is just after the sun has set but there is still some light in the sky. This was tripod mounted, ISO 640, F8, 19mm focal length, .8 seconds.


For this shot, it was a couple hours after sunset and was very dark. Camera again tripod mounted, ISO 3200, F4, 16 mm focal length, 30 seconds... yes, my buddy sat still that long :-)

Take a lot of shots and have fun!

Based on your lenses, I guess you have an APS-C camera (maybe a Sony). So your 18 mm lens is a full frame equivalent of ~30mm, i.e. not very wide angle. Most people who do astro photography use quite wide lenses, so maybe a 10-12mm focal length for your camera. Consider renting a wide angle lens (I use lens rentals.com).

A handy item is a $6 wireless shutter release for the camera. Also, you should be familiar with setting the camera in manual mode and perhaps the bulb shutter mode if you are doing exposures longer than 30 seconds.

As for the tripod, make sure it is solid for doing long exposures. If you put it on rock wind can cause some vibration - remove the camera strap so it is not flopping in the breeze. If you put the tripod in duff, drive the legs in a bit for sure footing or else it might "drift" a little over the course of the exposure.

quote jeroldharter: "Based on your lenses, I guess you have an APS-C camera (maybe."

I have an entry level Nikon.

Thanks for the advice folks! I really appreciate it, and loved your sample pictures you posted!

My recommendation is for more mem chips and batteries. The more ya use it the more ya learn!

butthead

The question that I have not seen asked is, What are you using to process the photos? If you are using a platform that allows stacking, it will improve the photo considerably. I will leave you a link that may be beneficial. http://deepskystacker.free.fr/english/index.html

I have not used this program, but thought that you be interested

One other suggestion is shoot Raw......shooting in the raw is entirely up to you :)

quote butthead: "My recommendation is for more mem chips and batteries. The more ya use it the more ya learn!


butthead"

I have 2 mem chips that will hold aprox 2000 photos each, and 3 fully charged batteries.... ;-)

I was in luck! Night #1 we had Northern Lights. Not in total focus, but here was one of my first cracks at night time photography!

Nice. Is that a RAW image or a jpg? It looks like a jpg.

jpg.

You will get much better results taking RAW images and then processing than you will with jpegs. This is especially true for astrophotography. Most cameras that take RAW images have a mode call JPG + Raw that captures each file for every photo. That way you can use jpgs if you want but have the option to process them yourself. You will want a large memory card for that.

This is a quick Lightroom edit of the small file from your post (i.e. a big RAW file would be much better!).

quote MNLindsey80: "I was in luck! Night #1 we had Northern Lights. Not in total focus, but here was one of my first cracks at night time photography!


"

Nice, you did get lucky. I wish I had more opportunities to take some northern lights photos. Night focus is a bit tricky, but keep at it, you'll get it.