Hi Jemima! ( @laura-aome )
I’ve tried a couple of different ways of shooting star trails. There really are only two ways of doing it: either you leave the shutter open for a long time, or you set up your camera with an intervalometer and take a bunch of shorter exposures (about 30 seconds apiece) back to back to back and stitch them using StarStax (which is FREE and easy to use! https://expertphotography.com/starstax-review/) or Photoshop (which is not free and has a bit of a steep learning curve).
The first method (leaving the shutter open) is the easiest, though you are right! You do have to account for the image getting really bright at ultra-long shutter speeds, and you will need to stop down (though not nearly as far as f/32) and keep your ISO relatively low. I’ve got a book that gives some base values for star trails (Photography Night Sky by Jennifer Wu—I’d highly recommend it), and it says that if you want to leave your shutter open for 2 hours, stop down to f/5.6 and manually set your ISO to 200. You can add more stars by shooting with a wider aperture (like f4, f3.5, or f2.8) or increasing your ISO, but use those values as a baseline.
I’d also recommend shooting as zoomed out as possible (at least 24mm or 18mm or even wider, if you’ve got it). Shooting with a new moon (or when the moon isn’t out) is going to be important as well.
I’ve tried this first method once before on a beach, and it worked (sorta). I don’t remember my settings and I unfortunately can’t access the original file at the moment, but I’ve attached the image. You can see there are few stars visible, and the dunes are a bit bright due to lights from nearby houses. It was my first try though, and it’s exciting to see something like that come straight out of your camera!
The second method (in my experience) yields much more impressive results, and it’s what most professionals use (but it does require a little more legwork and things can get a bit technical!). I’d recommend picking up an intervalometer (or using this hack: https://www.lenspiration.com/forums/topic/shooting-the-perseids-shooting-stars/) and then shooting a series of 25-30 second exposures. If you’re going to do this, make sure that you also have a manual white balance set as it will make the rest of this a lot easier (I set mine to 4000K). When I did this, I set my ISO to 640, stopped down to f/5, and left my camera until it had taken 264 pictures (about 2 hours). I then developed the RAW files on my computer (this is not required if you’re shooting JPEGs) and merged the images in StarStax… and wow it was a night and day difference.
I’d recommend picking up a copy of Photography Night Sky, especially if you’re just getting started (I found it at my local library). It’s super helpful and makes star photography pretty accessible. I also like Dusk to Dawn: a Guide to Landscape Photography at Night by Glenn Randall. Both books are detailed and thorough and will help you get started.
Hope this helps!
—Logan ( @loganlamar )
