Star Trails

Tony Smith · Jun 13, 2017

Fairly new to photography in general and still trying to master the basics. But I thought I'd have a go at some Star Trails on my local village church. This is 85 images stacked in Starstax. Thoughts & critique appreciated. Sorry, not yet worked out how to post the image, so [url=https://www.clickasnap.com/i/rdjio4vma4296zi6]Please click here to view [/URL]

taking_moments_captive · Jun 13, 2017

I would have to agree with one of the comments. Made me a bit dizzy ....but in a good way!

I think, especially for being new to this, you did a very nice job. I am not an expert myself (also new) but the picture is aesthetically pleasing and I suppose that is what we are all after...

benhasajeep · Jun 13, 2017

Never heard of Starstax. The chapel is nice. The star trails themselves are a bit choppy. I would guess the result of 85 separate frames over a given time. Over what time span are the 85 shots? Are they are regular intervals, or just when you hit the shutter?

zombiesniper · Jun 13, 2017

Pretty cool shot.

TCampbell · Jun 14, 2017

Hi Tony, what I'm noticing in your image is that the dimmer stars appear as rows of dots rather than as a connected arc.

What were the exposure settings you used for the individual frames?

Also which camera model are you using?

If they were brief exposures, followed by some interval to wait for the Earth to rotate, then another brief exposure then it would explain the gaps in the star arcs. You can even get them if you use an intervalometer because for many cameras if you take a 30 second image, then immediately try to take another 30 second image without waiting a few seconds for the image to write to the card then the camera will miss the image because it wasn't ready.

One technique is to set the camera to shoot in continuous mode (as if you were shooting fast action sports and wanted a rapid burst of frames) except dial the shutter speed to a 30 second exposure then lock the shutter button on the remote shutter release (most wired remote shutter releases have a lock switch). This causes the camera to immediately start capturing the next frame after the previous frame was captured with virtually no delay (it doesn't wait to write the image to the card).

How the camera behaves will, of course, depend on the camera model.

Tony Smith · Jun 14, 2017

Starstax is a free piece of software you can download to, believe it or not, Stack Star images ha ha. You can I'm sure do the same thing with layers in photoshop, but I don't know how to use photoshop much yet.

Tim. I have a Canon EOS 70D and on this image I used a Samyang 10mm F2.8 lens @ F2.8 If I do this thing again, I will stop the lens down a bit as I don't like the blown out lights on the church corner. I used your last technique, locking the shutter button down on my intervalometer with the camera on continuous shooting and 30 second exposures. In Starstax I think you can set it to fill the gaps between the stars, but as this was only my second attempt at star trails, maybe I didn't have itset correct to fill the gaps.