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Hi everyone,
Last night I tried to capture star trails,
I had a 3 hour shutter speed, But this is what my photo ended up like!
What did I do wrong?
Thank you
– JemimaAttachments:
As @jamesstaddon mention in a post about 7 years ago
Here’s a great article on how to shoot and combine star trails: https://petapixel.com/2013/03/18/how-to-photograph-star-trails-from-start-to-finish/ (I recommend you have AdBlock Plus installed for that website)
If shooting in Bulb, it’ll take a lot of experimenting. You’ll need 30min to an hour at least. This is rough on your camera. And if your tripod gets bumped for whatever reason, or your battery runs out….oh well, you have to start over.
The safest way to go about creating nice long star trails is to stack many, many 30sec exposures. It’s very simple. In Photoshop, it’s a matter of setting each layer to the Lighten blend mode.
THere are probably actually star-trails in your picture (although without having the raw photo to work on I can’t prove that), but you have so many hot pixels and ISO noise that you can’t see them.
I took a look at the EXIF data and immediately spotted the problem. You had the aperture closed all the way to f/32 and the ISO is down as low as it can go. Try opening the aperture up to f/4 or f/2.8 (as wide as your lens will go) and bump your ISO up a little. That should help you be able to see more than darkness. 🙂 The goal in star photography is to gather as much light as possible from those faint little stars.
You’ll also see more stars if you use a wide angle lens instead of 105mm. Try something like 18mm.
Don’t get discouraged at your first attempt! Astrophotography is a lot of fun once you get the hang of it! 🙂
Thank you @cheesestick and @buddingphotographer,
Would the picture not get too light at f/4 or f/2.8 having it on the bulb setting though?
Lord willing, I’ll try again soon!
– JemimaHi 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 )
Attachments:
@laura-aome said:
Would the picture not get too light at f/4 or f/2.8 having it on the bulb setting though?
This is a question best answered by thinking about the three basic factors of image lightness: ISO, aperature, and shutter speed.
The quick answer is that no, it wouldn’t necessarily, if you balance all three settings correctly.Here is another great conversation from about seven years ago that you’ll probably find helpful.
Thank you @loganlamar, I think that will be very helpful,
I’m excited to try again!
– Jemima
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