Really depends what kind of 'night time photography' you're trying to do. Landscapes, vehicle light trails, low light portraits, startrails?

You either need to make your camera more sensitive to light (high iso), better able to gather light (slooow shutter speed, wide aperture) or create some light of your own (torch/flash etc) - perhaps a combination of the three, depending.

Vic, just a fan of old VW's and thought I'd heard all the urban myths - Skoda was a new one on me!

Interesting claim Vic, would like to know more. I know of pre-war Tatras and Jowetts with aircooled flat fours plus the Tatra V570 prototype, which had a beetle-like shape and aircooled twin boxer; also the NSU type 32 that Ferdinand Porsche designed before the Volkswagen, but nothing of any Skoda influence...

Perhaps the seller isn't too clever - auction header says 7D picture, photo is of a 7D but the body text gives details for a 5D (picture) - enough of a snag for a genuine dispute perhaps?

Listings like this are great reminders why I don't much like people.

The theory is fine, but unless you run hacked firmware you'll struggle with this technique for star trails using the K20D. That particular camera does dark frame subtraction noise removal for anything over about 8 secs exposure...

Use anything under 8 secs and you'll probably not pick up sufficient star detail, too long an exposure and because of the DFS you'll have dotted lines for star trails. Long exposures were the reason I kept hold of my K10D after 'upgrading'

Hopefully someone can come up with something more constructive to help solve this.

Nice work nipper, some decent ones in here and you should be encouraged by the results - for a first effort these are great! Good on you for posting some of the misses too, helps us to help you Looks like the light and track accessibility weren't entirely on your side either so again, well done.

If I had one comment to add it would be that there's a slight lack of variety - next time perhaps a bigger range of focal lengths, some shots with a wider aperture, slower shutter speeds etc will give you a more 'complete' set of event pics. These will come with practice and experience, so keep at at!

Not read the link but have nothing but high praise for Vapextech, both products and service - used their AA cells in RC radio gear since 2005 and their eneloop-style 'Instant' cells (2100mAh version) the last year or so. As an aside, their 7.4V LiPo packs are also as good as 'proper' branded stuff costing double.

Yes, I do have too many hobbies

Darn it, my Slik 700DX (though great) has been breaking my back for two and a half years now. Tempted to break that 'no photo gear' resolution already...

Shot my Tammy 70-200 in rain, snow and plumes of motorcross dust. Sure it's not ideal but as long as you manage the risk and use a bit of common sense you'll be fine. Might be worth mocking up a rain cover of sorts (old plastic bag with a hole in the bottom) and putting it, along with some tape, in your camera bag.

Don't discount the 18-55 WR either, if you can get close enough to the track a wide angle can work wonders too - not motorbikes, but shot with a Sigma 10-20 at the wider end:

Aha, now you're talking You won't have too many issues with that setup, I have the same and AF is pretty good, AF-C is quite respectable too.

Aperture-wise it depends what you mean by 'small'. Remember that a small f-number actually means a larger iris opening. Put simply, the lower the f-number you use, the more critical focus becomes. This is especially true if your working distance is quite small, i.e. your subjects are whizzing by pretty close to you.

f8 is generally quite safe, f5.6 okay and you'll notice anything less than that becoming increasingly tricky. Take a look at the exif data of some shots you like and see what effects the varying apertures have.

As for shutter speeds, aim to keep your shutter speed high, 1/250 or faster at first, then as you feel more comfortable begin to vary it and experiment some more.

Good luck and let us in on the results, the K5 is a much better tool for this than any previous Pentax DSLR