Stars Over The Lake.

[Cyotheking]

Still working on trying to balance out the noise in my star shots.

Gear
Nikon d3200, 18-70mm lens (Shot at 18mm).

Settings:
SS 30 seconds
Aperture: f/3.5
ISO: 1600.

 

[ceeboy14]

Need to work on your focusing first. I am guessing those lights across the lake are a good 1/4 mile away and they are out of foucs...if they're out, then the sky will be out as well. Go longer (2 1/2 minutes or so or stack 6 30 second exposures) and shoot at f/11 or 16.,

 

[Cyotheking]

Won't I get a lot of noise doing exposures that long? 30 second exposures already seem to be getting me a lot of noise.

 

[Eclectix]

You'll generally get less noise with a lower ISO. You only introduce noise from long exposures if the sensor gets hot. How long this takes varies from camera to camera and also on the conditions of use; taking a lot of consecutive shots can do the same thing. If your camera is cool, you should have no worries with 30 seconds to a couple of minutes. After a couple of minutes the stars will turn into trails, though, so if that's not what you're after bear this in mind. I agree with Ceeboy, though; focus is a bigger problem than noise in this image.

 

[Cyotheking]

How are you guys managing to pick up a lot of stars at such a high f/stop?
i just went out and experimented a bit and this is what I came up with:

ISO: 800
SS: 2 minutes
Aperture: f/9

almost zero stars showed up until I boosted the exposure in LR. And the few stars that did show up were trails.

Then I tried

ISO: 1600
SS: 2 minutes
Aperture: f/9

More stars showed up (not as many as I would like though) but they were all trails.

 

[Aloicious]

I REALLY liked your shot in the little thumbnail, but then I clicked on it and saw the focus issues with it. would have been a beautiful shot if not for that.

I believe he's recommending f11-f16 for depth of field perhaps, not quite sure? but I'd not recommend stopping down that much, you'll lose so much light and when you're shooting stars you want all you can get, I'd say stay close to wide open, get all that light you can possibly get. push your ISO to the point you're comfortable with, you've got a decent amount of noise at 1600, you could probably work with it a little and clean it up, but personally I probably wouldn't go much past that. The focus issues you're getting aren't due to depth of field, its a focus mistake, you should be focusing at infinity since everything in that shot is far far away (proper infinity focusing is NOT all the way at the stop point of the focus ring, its just slightly before that). what you want to do is to switch to manual focus, go into live view mode, and find a star or point of light or something and zoom the live view screen in on it as far as you can, then while watching that, adjust your lens focus manually until you get it to the best focus you can (remember that you're focusing through MILES of atmosphere and temperature fluctuations and stuff, so it may not look perfect even in live view when you're zoomed in at 4-5x, but get it to it's best point), then exit live view, and trip the shutter.

2 minutes is way too long an exposure if you're wanting to avoid star trails. to (roughly) figure out the max shutter speed before you start getting noticeable star trails take 500 for a DX sensor, 600 for an FX and divide that by the focal length you'll be using, this will give you the approximate time in seconds that you can leave the shutter open without discernible star trails. so for example, using a 18mm focal length on a DX sensor, take 500, divide it by 18 and you get ~27s. you might be able to push it to 30s without too much issue (remember its a rough estimate)

you can stack images like was mentioned, like a bunch of 30 second shots, but remember that the stars will continually be moving (as will the clouds at a different rate), so when you align your images for stacking, either you align them for the stars and your foreground and clouds won't align, or vice-versa, you'll have to separate the foreground from the background, and separate the clouds from that, align and stack them separately and individually, then combine them after the fact. which would be fairly difficult (though still possible and an option) for this kind of shot, it would work well if you wanted to get super long star trails, but for alignment without trails, it would probably not be the ideal way to do it.

try it like you did in your first shot, f3.5, ISO1600, 18mm, 30s, but focus it using the live view method.

 

[JosephCarter]

I agree 100% with Aloicious, you should print out his guidelines and take them with you next time and you should come home happy with your results!


If you just listen to him and ignore this post you will be set, but just to reiterate in my own words...

As a general rule, which would certainly apply to your setup as Aloicious has pointed out, never shoot longer than 30sec if you want your stars to be sharp and not trails.

Star photos are hard and easy at the same time. Easy in the sense that you don't have to figure out the best combination of settings.. because basically you should always:

1. shoot wide open (there could be arguments made for the contrary, but if you want the MOST stars you can get that's the way to go)
2. focus on infinity (this is the HARD part for many photographers, but once you get the hang of it with your own setup it gets easier)
3. set shutter to 30 seconds (if you still see undesired trailing at this shutter speed, your only option is to speed it up)
4. ramp up your ISO, until you're pleased with your results.

If the 'liveview focusing method' isn't working for you (when learning to shoot stars I didn't have the option) I found the best way to 'find infinity' is to go out in the day light and get a feel for where infinity is on your lens by focusing and un-focusing on something far away. Then when you go out at night, you can get it pretty close by feel and then take some test images and fine tune from there. Its kind of an unreliable method, but as long as you keep taking test shots until you're happy with the focus then it works.

Good luck!

 

[Aloicious]

I agree 100% with Aloicious, you should print out his guidelines and take them with you next time and you should come home happy with your results!


If you just listen to him and ignore this post you will be set, but just to reiterate in my own words...

As a general rule, which would certainly apply to your setup as Aloicious has pointed out, never shoot longer than 30sec if you want your stars to be sharp and not trails.

Star photos are hard and easy at the same time. Easy in the sense that you don't have to figure out the best combination of settings.. because basically you should always:

1. shoot wide open (there could be arguments made for the contrary, but if you want the MOST stars you can get that's the way to go)
2. focus on infinity (this is the HARD part for many photographers, but once you get the hang of it with your own setup it gets easier)
3. set shutter to 30 seconds (if you still see undesired trailing at this shutter speed, your only option is to speed it up)
4. ramp up your ISO, until you're pleased with your results.

If the 'liveview focusing method' isn't working for you (when learning to shoot stars I didn't have the option) I found the best way to 'find infinity' is to go out in the day light and get a feel for where infinity is on your lens by focusing and un-focusing on something far away. Then when you go out at night, you can get it pretty close by feel and then take some test images and fine tune from there. Its kind of an unreliable method, but as long as you keep taking test shots until you're happy with the focus then it works.

Good luck!

yeah good point, pre-focusing in the light is also a good way to do it, like if you go setup in your tripod and shooting spot at dusk, focus on the far horizon or something far in the distance, and just lock it in at that focus spot (i.e. switch it to manual focus after confirming ideal focus, then don't touch it, even tape it in place if you need to so you don't bump it accidentally haha). then you're setup at infinity for all your night shots after the sun sets.

 

[ceeboy14]

I've only done a few star shots so my info was obviously flawed but not as per the focus, which if not correctly first, won't make for good stars no matter how accurate the other exposure info. Aloicious/Carter seem to know what they're talking about...go that route for sure.

 

[bc_steve]

if you have bright lights like you do across the lake it should be pretty easy to confirm that your shot is in focus. They should be visible through the viewfinder even. Venus or possibily Sirius can also be helpful for this.

 

[Cyotheking]

Thanks for the advice everyone!

I would try using live view but I'm using a Nikon D70 so I don't have that option. I think I will try playing around with infinity focus during the day and figure out where that sweet spot is.

One last question, how would you guys focus in a situation like this photo? I realize I did a TERRIBLE job focusing, but should I have focused on the stars, or the house? Should I have focused on the house and brought the f/stop to a higher number for more DOF?

 

[Eclectix]

Focus on the stars. With a wide focal length, the focus should be fairly decent for the house if the stars are good.

When I got my new camera back in early July I did a bunch of test photographs of the night sky- not worrying about composition but just getting a handle on the settings- and I took this photograph from my yard. The tree and the edge of the house gutter are pretty close to me, but at 20mm, focus set on the stars, everything in the foreground is still fairly sharp.

The settings for this were ISO800, f/3.5, 13 second exposure, 20mm. Aside from a couple of hot pixels due to a longish exposure (which I could easily edit out), noise does appear when the image is zoomed in at 100%, but at full frame scaled to a reasonable size it is barely noticeable. I live on the outskirts of Denver and am surrounded by car dealerships so there is a great deal of light pollution, yet there are still a surprising number of stars visible in the photograph- about ten times as many as I could actually see with my eyes (I could only see about 7 of these stars with my own eyes). If I had gone someplace where there was less light pollution, I could have used a longer exposure (more like 30 seconds) without making the sky completely washed out, allowing me to get a lot more stars.

In short, if you get the stars focused and exposed properly, you should be able to get the rest okay, too, although you may need to adjust the brightness of lights on the house if you want to keep them from getting blown out completely.

Full frame scaled to 1000 pixels:



Crop at 100% resolution:

 

[eswebster]

Keep the aperature open and focus properly. If you are shooting at night you dont ever want to stop down to anything above 4. Longer exposures with higher fstops may be useful if merging two images together but if you are shooting the stars you just need to find the proper infinity focus and shoot wide open.