Wide-field astrophotography is an area where the beginner can bypass the complexities of prime focus telescopic astrophotography yet still excel and achieve good results quickly. Easiest way is put camera on tripod and take short exposure.

Image below is consist of ten 15 second exposures on EOS 350 (1600ASA, 15mm/f4,5). Images are stacked together in Registax. You can see beauty of The Milky Way above island Pag (Novalja). Scorpion, Sagittarius... you can touch it with hand..

Advanced techniques is "piggyback".

You need to mount ordinary 35-mm cameras atop an equatorially-driven telescope in order to produce stunning portraits of constellations, the Milky Way, bright nebulae, and star clusters using wide-angle and telephoto lenses..

Image right:

Milky Way in Cygnus region. Nebula North America (NGC 7000) can be visible even if use shorter exposures (5 minutes).

Photographed with Pentax with 50mm/f:2 lens. Exposure was 15 minutes on Fuji Superia 800 using Celestron LPR filter.

Milky Way in region of Sagittarius. From right bottom corner to center you can see Lagoon Nebula (M8), Trifid Nebula (M20), Omega Nebula (M17) and Eagle Nebula (M16).

From picture like this, you can make you own star chart (image bottom right).