Night shooting

Hi All

I am going to get a DSLR for christmas and have asked for a Kx, I am new to DSLR, I have used an old 35mm a few years ago and took some night shots of the aurora borealis in North East England where I was able to keep the shutter open, will I be able to do the same with the Kx or can anyone explain how I can take night shots.

Much Appreciated
AndyA

If you're going to take long exposure shots make sure the Kx can turn off any Dark Frame Noise reduction. What this essentially does is take another shot equal to the length of the exposure to 'cancel' noise from the sensor. Unfortunately that means if you take, for example, a 10 minute exposure you won't be able to use the camera for another 10 minutes.

The K10D allows this to be disabled. The K20D sort of does with some debug mode hassle. I'm not sure about K-x

Ok cheers for the reply, as only have a limit of £400 for camera I have opted for the Kx, so I will have to wait until christmas to check out this feature.

the Kx can only turn off Dark Frame Reduction for exposures less than 30 seconds; any longer than that is going to take at least twice as long as the intended exposure time, which if you want to use a really long exposure time, means you'll be waiting a really really long time before the shot is ready. but there's a potential way around that by using software such as Image Stacker, which can combine a series of shorter exposures into a longer pseudo exposure. more info here...

http://www.tawbaware.com/imgstack.htm

Get a wired remote control that will work with your K-x like this one and use the 'Bulb' feature. You can set the exposure time yourself.

The K-x does not take a wired remote - it's an infra red one.

Pentax remote F link