Hey Oliver,
I have been hoping too, I was going to go to the Badlands in South Dakota to capture them. Up until 4 days ago, the forecast was clear. But now it's showing cloudy skies and thunderstorms at night, so I have been looking for other options, possibly heading more west into Wyoming or Utah.
To capture them is pretty simple, it's the same as capturing the Night Sky in general. I have a tutorial I have written up in the Article section, but let me list the basics for you.
1. Focus before it's dark, and do not use infinity. Be sure to set your camera lens to wide open, whether that's f2.8, f1.8 or whatever, make sure it's wide open and then focus. Focus based on Hyperfocal Distance, you can google charts showing that, but the wider lens you have, the more DOF you have, so I would recommend using a 14mm if you have one, especially since you are new to Night Sky photography.
2. Presuming 14mm....
Go with
25 sec shutter speed,
Wide open Aperure.... ie.... f1.8, f2.8.
Depending on how wide open your lens is, I will recommend...
for f1.8 - ISO 3200
for f2.8 - ISO 5000
- Don't trust your LCD display for reviewing the exposure. It's dark out, even a severely underexposed image will look good. Use your Histogram, and make sure that it's about 1/3rd from the left. If it gets to 1/2 way on the Histogram, it will be too bright. Get it down to around 1/4 to the left it will be too dark. Obviously our Post Processing tools are so much stronger today, so you might be able to recover the raw image, but shooting for 1/3rd to the left gives you the best of both words.
3. Make sure to take some images during the twilight so you can use the ground layer from it to blend with your stars later on. With almost no moon, the ground will be very dark.
4. Aim to the NE. That's the general direction of the Perseids. They do move a bit during the night, but basically aiming to the NE will get you what you want.
I think that's it.
