star trail info

[maverickphoto]

I have a rebel xsi and i would like to take some pics of star trails, How do i go about doing this?

jason

 

[rom4n301]

8 min exposure...

 

[doenoe]

well, you will need a tripod and a long exposure. I always try to get the ISO as low as possible, cause longexposures can get noisy.

 

[John_Olexa]

Heres a link that might help you.

http://www.astropix.com/HTML/I_ASTROP/TRIPOD/TRIPOD2.HTM

 

[Bifurcator]

Yeah, only 8min. is more of a "star-smudge" and not really enough for trails unless you take 15 to 30 exposures or something.

 

[Tha Bizness]

Depending on your location (if you have light pollution) you would probably want to combine many short exposures to make your image. If you were to keep the shutter open for 8 minutes and you live in a light polluted area like most the resulting image will be over exposed and washed out.

You do need a tripod or mount for a telescope and some sort of cable release.

Here is a link from my flickr.com page. The image is made from 94 frames of 60 seconds each for a combined 94 minutes of star trails.

 

[rom4n301]

when i tried doin star trails i was on a beach so no light pollution.. and i did it for 8 min and it came out fine

 

[Bifurcator]

The Earth was rotating extra fast that evening?

 

[Garbz]

Depending on your location (if you have light pollution) you would probably want to combine many short exposures to make your image. If you were to keep the shutter open for 8 minutes and you live in a light polluted area like most the resulting image will be over exposed and washed out.
Here is a link from my flickr.com page. The image is made from 94 frames of 60 seconds each for a combined 94 minutes of star trails.

Sweet. Finally good to see someone who uses this technique as well. http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1353/773160897_fae20200db_b.jpg here is one less then 5km from the city centre. The light pollution is representative of a 1 minute exposure. 120 exposures make up 2 hours worth of star trails.

http://www.tawbaware.com/imgstack.htm Stacking is a good idea even if you do not want to take a maximum light reading since you will end up with less noise thanks to the sensor being reset at the end of every exposure.

when i tried doin star trails i was on a beach so no light pollution.. and i did it for 8 min and it came out fine

Good now try for 2 hours and see if there's some light pollution

Just a quick warning. A LONG exposures as in more than 30 min worth has been known to damage some cameras. The dead camera I saw was a Canon 350D, but also my Nikon D200 got too hot to comfortably hold after taking a 2 hour exposure.

 

[dhilberg]

Sorry to resurrect this thread from the grave, but I have a question regarding this technique.

Garbz, since Image Stacker doesn't process RAW files, did you shoot your images in RAW and convert each to JPG before stacking, or just shoot in JPG?

Also, what would be a good white balance setting to use? Daylight?

Since it's new moon I'd like to try this.

 

[CygnusStudios]

Here is one of the best tutorials that I have seen

 

[Josh66]

Also, what would be a good white balance setting to use? Daylight?

I would use Daylight. It should look 'right' too.
If you use auto, there's a good chance that every shot will be slightly different. Daylight will be consistant.

 

[Garbz]

Shoot RAW, pick your white balance afterwards. The colour of the lightpolution that may crop into a long exposure is too unpredictable to set a specific WB for.

Also I shoot in RAW and then adjust one photo to suit (mainly whitebalance / crop) then batch adjust and convert them all to TIFF before stacking.