How To Shoot Star Trails

[wes242]

Very nice... For a long time I just left my shutter open. I didn't know you could stack them, then I found this site.... http://www.startrails.de/ then it made it so simple to make a startrail.
Of course I didn't try it till winter. I am waiting for this summer to give it some more "good" tries. Here is a couple I made with this.

 

[Nick]

Nice shots, wes242. I highly recommend trying StarStax. I started using Startrails.exe but StarStax has some better features, better UI and is available for any OS.

 

[Nick]

Miss Buffalo, when I was making A Year Under The Stars, I noticed that the shots I took with my old Canon XSi had a ridiculous amount of noise compared to my 60D. I didn't use most of what I took with it because it was just too noisy. So it definitely could just be your camera.

 

[Yvonne]

Miss Buffalo, when I was making A Year Under The Stars, I noticed that the shots I took with my old Canon XSi had a ridiculous amount of noise compared to my 60D. I didn't use most of what I took with it because it was just too noisy. So it definitely could just be your camera.

good to know that the camera can really be an important factor.
Despite that fact I'll give it another try and maybe I can figure out something that works with my camera.
5 more weeks to go...

 

[Duke]

So I have been tooling around with photoshop for some time now and don't remember seeing a 'stacking' command. Photoshop has this or is it Startrax (or whatever that was) that you 'stacked" with?

BTW, great thread. Thanks for the info

 

[Nick]

So I have been tooling around with photoshop for some time now and don't remember seeing a 'stacking' command. Photoshop has this or is it Startrax (or whatever that was) that you 'stacked" with?

BTW, great thread. Thanks for the info

Welcome to BackcountryPost, Duke!

Stacking can be done in Photoshop but it is tedious. Download StarStax and it will do it for you with just a few clicks.

 

[Lorna]

Thanks so much Nick. When I saw some of your trails a couple of years ago, I did some internet searching on how to do this, and didn't have a lot of success. You make it sound easy! I will look forward to trying this out when I get back on the trails.

 

[barl0w]

Awesome write-up. Thanks for the tutorial. I can't wait to get out and do this - I have a few spots that I have in mind.

I tried this last year at Bryce, and wasn't happy with the results. See below for what I mean. I did have high-ISO noise reduction on at first, and then realized that it was taking forever for the image to write to the card, so I started over after turning that off.

These final settings were: ISO 3200, f/2.8, 30 sec, 0 EV, 10.5mm Nikon Fisheye on a Nikon D300

There are some obvious things I could have done better - such as light up the foreground in one frame, but I will certainly keep practicing with all of the other advice here.

 

[Nick]

I tried this last year at Bryce, and wasn't happy with the results. See below for what I mean. I did have high-ISO noise reduction on at first, and then realized that it was taking forever for the image to write to the card, so I started over after turning that off.

I think that was an awesome composition. Even if you didn't light up the foreground, I think that's about as good as you can get for a simple black silhouetted foreground. Sometimes those tall cliff walls are just too far away to paint.

My only piece of advice, aside from the noise reduction setting, would be to turn the ISO down. Especially since you were shooting at f/2.8. Capturing too many stars means they just blend together. I turn the ISO up just to the point that I'm getting enough to still have some good inky black sky between them. Aside from that change, I think that's an awesome shot.

 

[barl0w]

I think that was an awesome composition...My only piece of advice, aside from the noise reduction setting, would be to turn the ISO down.

Thanks ibenick. Gee - and here I am thinking the more stars the better, and thus the higher ISO setting. Note taken. That photo was on Wall Street BTW. Definitely lightable

Take a look at this free class I just stumbled on from BorrowedLenses.com and Jim Goldstein: https://www.facebook.com/borrowlenses/posts/365255303496357

 

[NightHikingIsRad]

I think its best to shoot star trails with a full moon. You need to what time the moon is rising/setting and where its going to be when planning your shot. Here is an almost overhead full moon in Joshua Tree.

 

[Bill]

Killer Shot!

I think its best to shoot star trails with a full moon.

I like a little moon.. but not a full moon.

 

[neiloro]

I did have high-ISO noise reduction on at first, and then realized that it was taking forever for the image to write to the card, so I started over after turning that off.

It was not actually taking forever to write to the card. High-ISO noise reduction takes a second shot with the shutter closed, for an equal amount of time. It then looks at the noise from the hot spots on your sensor from the long exposure, and deducts them from your original shot. So, if you take a 40 minute exposure with high-ISO noise reduction, it'll take a second 40 minute shot to delete the noise from the first one.

 

[Momoegy]

Dear Nick,
i was reading " how to shoot stars trails " and i want to ask about the time laps that u did at the end.
I know the process of making a normal time laps and i know how to make the post production but i never tryed to make one for the stars ! is there is big difference between them ?
by the way i am going tomorrow to the white desert in cairo for camping and make photos
and time laps my gear at this trip will be:
-Canon 7D
-Manfrotto 190MF tripod
-tokina 11-16MM
- Cable Timer Remote Control

any advices ?

thanks for your time

 

[Nick]

Hi Momoegy,

The time lapse is an easy by-product of shooting star trails using the stacking method. You just take all of those individual images that you shot but instead of stacking them into one image, you turn them into the time lapse movie.

You should be able to use about any movie editing software to do it. I've used Adobe Premier and iMovie. There are just a couple of tricks to making it look good. First, keep in mind that you'll need to crop down to a different composition to fit the widescreen format of HD video. I like to do this ahead of time in Aperture or Lightroom. I then export all the images at 1920 x 1080 so that they are just the right size for the video.

From there, you just import all of those stills into your video editing software and accelerate the speed to the desirable level. I found that 20fps was about as slow as I could go and still make it look okay. 24-30fps was great and speeding it up even faster sometimes was also effective. For my 'Year Under the Stars' video I ranged the rates all over the place, something very easy to do in Adobe Premiere.

-Nick

 

[Nick]

One other thing, if you plan to do time lapse, let your star trails run a very long time. Since you're packing 20+ 30 second exposures into one second of video, it's not at all unreasonable to let it run for 3+ hours.

 

[Momoegy]

Thanks so much Nick , i will try it out and post it here when it done and c how things will go
much respect now i need to pack my stuff and get ready for Egypt desert
Thanks again
-Momo

 

[Nick]

Thanks so much Nick , i will try it out and post it here when it done and c how things will go
much respect now i need to pack my stuff and get ready for Egypt desert
Thanks again
-Momo

Awesome, we'd love to see anything and everything from your trip. It would certainly be the first trip report from Egypt here on the site! Looking forward to it!

 

[Howells Outdoors]

Thanks for this tutorial! (is there a place on backcountypost.com with all the tutorials?) I feel dumb now, I attempted to take a multi exposure star trail over the weekend and was manually pressing the trigger after each 30 sec...it does it automatically if i lock it down?

 

[Nick]

It doesn't lock down, you just need a wired trigger. What kind of camera do you have?

This one works great for the entry and mid-level Canon SLRs like the T4i, 60D, etc.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...=B00004WCID&linkCode=as2&tag=backcountrypo-20

As for a place with all tutorials - no, we don't have them organized like that. It's a great idea though. If I could ever get some time, I plan to build out a 'resources' section that has nicely catalogued things like this tutorial, trail recipes, and other helpful guides. Hopefully by next winter.