How can I make my Star/lighting pictures sharper?

Amoore00357 · Aug 5, 2012

I am only a hobbyist so i cant afford professional camera body's and lenses so i am wondering if there is any way i can make my pictures better (not so blurry or noisy).

Untitled | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Star Trails at Halsey National Forest | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

I was using a canon 60D and a sigma 10-20 F3.5
(please tell me if you need to know what the settings were)
Thanks for the help.

MLeeK · Aug 5, 2012

There is nothing wrong with your camera body. It does the same basic thing any other camera body does. So, just get over the thought that it is holding you back because it's not.

The link you gave isn't a star shot, it's a light painting shot. However I did find a star shot in there.
About the only thing I would recommend is getting even further from civilization to minimize the light on the horizon. Otherwise? It's a perfect star trail.

Aloicious · Aug 5, 2012

that star trail shot is nice, I do see the noise you are refering to, but that is kindof the price you pay for long exposures like that, its kindof to be expected. you could try using a noise reduction software...what kind of editing did you do on it, and what software are you using?

MLeeK · Aug 5, 2012

Are you using long exposure noise reduction? In your custom functions menu's

Amoore00357 · Aug 5, 2012

Well it good to here that i am doing the right thing. I spent alot of time researching on how to do things right.
But do i use any of the long exposure noise reduction or high iso speed noise reduction features?
Should i use the auto lighting setting?

MLeeK · Aug 5, 2012

I am not sure what you are talking about with the auto lighting setting. Yes, turn on the long exposure noise reduction for these.

Amoore00357 · Aug 5, 2012

For Aloicious
For the star trail picture i could not do anything about it but being on vaction there was a full moon that night. But i just took about 1200 pictures with 20 second exposure at 3.5 and 320 for iso
and i stitched them together in starstax and i didnt do any extra noise editing on them

480sparky · Aug 5, 2012

What aperture & ISO are you shooting at?

Are you shooting raw?

Are you using any sort of sharpening process already?

Amoore00357 · Aug 5, 2012

Thanks MLeek

but the auto light setting is on my main screen for the settings. i never found what it does so i just turn it to off.

Amoore00357 · Aug 5, 2012

480sparky i was shooting at 3.5 and 320 for iso (i didnt want alot of noise thats why i had my noise low)

480sparky · Aug 5, 2012

It's a trade-off, but try shooting at a slightly higher ISO and a smaller aperture. Probably around f/8 @ ISO 1600 or f/5.6 @ 800.

Aloicious · Aug 5, 2012

Amoore00357 said:
For Aloicious
For the star trail picture i could not do anything about it but being on vaction there was a full moon that night. But i just took about 1200 pictures with 20 second exposure at 3.5 and 320 for iso
and i stitched them together in starstax and i didnt do any extra noise editing on them

ah, okay, that makes some sense, I was wondering why the plane trails were chopped up like that, but that explains it if you stiched a bunch of exposures together that may be contributing to the noise too. I'd try reducing the noise in photoshop or noise ninja or something if it really bothers you, or if you have some kind of plans to use the photo for something. but its really not very bad IMO though. I'd give it a shot but you have it marked that you don't wnat your photo's edited.

as far as what to do next time you are out, +1 on all of sparky's questions....

does the 60D allow exposures longer than 20s? I'm not too familiar with canon's setup. also for shots like star trails, using the in camera noise reduction is a good thing....sometimes you want it off for astrophotography, but not really for things like this.

Amoore00357 · Aug 5, 2012

Aloicious
It allows like 13 15 20 25 30 second pictures but i read that its better to have the shorter frames thats why i did 20 seconds

Aloicious · Aug 5, 2012

yeah shorter frames for some stuff for sure. but for star trails its not a requirement....here's a single 930s exposure I took at 800iso 14mm f2.8....not perfect, but with only in camera noise reduction, there isn't too much noise (although there is some, just less than you'd expect for a 15.5 minute single exposure).

I've got a shutter release that lets me just lock the button down, so when I put it in bulb mode it can take as long exposures as I'd like, it was like $5 or something, you could try something longer than 30s......it's beneficial since you won't get choppy plane trails...however I think I see a satellite passing in your shot which turned out pretty cool and wouldn't show up the same way in a single exposure, so it's really just whatever you like to do....