Astronaut Chris Hadfield, famous for posting beautiful photos of the Earth on his Twitter account, shows in a video published this Monday (22) by the Canadian Space Agency how he takes the images and the equipment he uses (see the video).

The Canadian astronaut points out that the International Space Station (ISS) is hundreds of kilometers above the Earth. Therefore, “to create an image rich in detail, you need a long-range lens,” he explains. Hadfield sometimes uses a telephoto lens to take photos.

Three factors are important: “concentration, setting and fire,” explains Hadfield. Since the light reflected from the Earth makes it bright and space is dark, using the camera in automatic mode can be distracting – the astronaut prefers to operate it in manual mode, as he says in the video.

Most of the time, he uses the so-called “sunny 16” or “sun 16” rule to create the images. Basically, the rule says that when photographing an object, the camera’s aperture should be open to f/16 and the shutter speed should be equal to the ISO of the film or digital camera.

The astronaut typically uses ISO 200, according to the video. He takes high-resolution images and says the colors and textures of the Sahara Desert are among the most interesting things he has observed from space.

The “Sunny 16” rule includes a table that provides for changing the aperture opening depending on the conditions of the day (sunny, cloudy), but the astronaut makes no mention of using other apertures in the video.

Region of Earth’s atmosphere in image of an astronaut (Photo: Reproduction/Twitter/@Cmdr_Hadfield)

Image released in honor of Earth Day by Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield (Photo: Reproduction/Twitter/@Cmdr_Hadfield)

Image of the dunes of the Parnaíba Delta, in Piauí, published by the astronaut (Photo: Reproduction/Twitter/@Cmdr_Hadfield)