Star trails which direction

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Customer Support. Authorized Service Centers. User Manual. It helps to set your camera to use only its centre auto-focus point so you can precisely select what to focus on. Good luck with that.

While we're messing about with the lens, now's also a good time to turn lens stabilising OFF if you have it unusual on a wide lens anyway because it'll chew through your batteries on a long star photo! Yes, you really do need one. Use a good solid tripod, maybe even weight it down with rocks on the legs if it's at all windy or spongy ground. You've got a choice here - depending on where in the sky you point your camera, you can either have the stars seem to streak past the sky, or you can have them appear to swirl around in a circle.

If you want maximum star trail length in the shortest amount of time, then you'll want to point your camera either vaguely East or West and you'll get basically straight line paths, because looking due South, the stars will appear to circle much more slowly around the point that is the South celestial pole the North celestial pole is over the horizon in Australia.

Right at the centre of this celestial pole, the stars don't appear to move at all. You get the idea, it's up to you. If you do want to aim for the star circle shot - and they do look pretty cool - you can work out where this 'south celestial pole' is quite easily. Basically, just extend the Southern Cross down along it's axis by about 4. Remember your rule of thirds and any other composition rules that you feel apply.

I sometimes find it handy to ask a friend to wave a torch around on the scene so that while looking through the viewfinder I can at least vaguely what's in shot. Now, we have a choice to make Take one long exposure, or lots of shorter ones and stack them together later? Tricky question, and different people swear by different methods. Basically, taking one long exposure is a hell of a lot easier to do, but has some significant drawbacks. This means that for lengthy exposures, the longer the shot is, the lower quality it will be.

I recommend you to follow the same approach. But, as always, it's a matter of taste, a personal choice. You could also shoot longer exposures and get great results.

In my opinion, shooting short exposures gives you more flexibility and control over the final Star Trails image:. Like I do in my Milky Way photos, I use the NPF rule to figure out the maximum exposure time that allows the camera to capture the stars as big bright spots i.

The good news is that you can use the PhotoPills Spot Stars calculator to do all the math ;. Obviously, if there's any Moonlight or light pollution you need to take the extra light into account when exposing. The total exposure time results from the addition of all the short exposure times. It determines the length of the Star Trails.

Again, as I mentioned in section 3 , you can use the PhotoPills Star Trails calculator to estimate the total exposure time you need to get a determined Star Trails length. Obviously, the longer the total exposure time is, the longer the Star Trails will be. But, as the sensor heats up, there will be a moment when the camera will start producing a ton of thermal noise. And you don't want that in your images Using the short exposure strategy image staking , noise produced by sensor heat will become an important issue only when you push your camera sensor to the limit.

Depending on your camera, this can happen after one, two or more hours shooting. The good news is that until you reach that limit, you can use all the photos you've taken to create Star Trails. Maybe not the one you wanted, but I'm sure you will get a final image with long trails. Since you want to capture stars as bit bright spots short exposure time , you have to set a high ISO to avoid an underexposed image.

The ISO choice depends on the noise performance of your camera. Start with a high ISO , , , , and adjust accordingly.

If you want to capture the color of the stars, don't go beyond ISO Use the lower value possible that gives you an image correctly exposed. Remember that, in this case, you have to increase the exposure time, not getting stars as spots in the photos.

Now, one word about shooting Star Trails during Meteor Showers. The higher the ISO, the more Meteors you'll capture. If you want to capture the stars as big bright spots in every single shot, you need to collect as much light as possible during the exposure time. Notice that this is exactly the same workflow you should follow in Milky Way photography. This approach might wash out a bit the color of the stars. You won't get stars as spots in each single frame, but it will help you capture their natural color.

If you're interested in learning more about the hyperfocal distance, take a look at our depth of field DoF guide. Now, find a star and zoom in on it to magnify it or use the Focus Magnifier option. Then, turn the focus ring to make focus on it. Turn it until you see the star as a tiny little dot actually, the smallest possible dot. But, since I'm sure you would like to capture the real colors of the stars right in camera, use the following values as starting points and then adjust it from there:.

Go there, and walk around looking for potential compositions and framings. Once you find the scene you like, plan it with PhotoPills section 5. And when the shooting date arrives, come back at night at the right time for the planned shot.

When framing at night, use a flashlight to lit the foreground and its elements. Then, take a short exposure at a high ISO to see if everything is at the right place. At the beginning of the session, test your exposure and the light painting of the foreground. When you're happy with the image, make sure to quickly start the shooting using the intervalometer.

At the end of the session, just before you stop the camera, light paint the foreground again. This way, you have at least two great photos from where to choose the foreground for the final image. So, use your skills with the LED and flashlight to turn a boring foreground into an appealing one. Make sure the extra light is subtle. It makes the image look more natural. Use the LED to add a soft continuous side light to the foreground.

And use the torch to highlight a certain area. When applying light, make sure to keep moving the light source. That way you'll avoid overexposing a specific area or spot. In addition to this, count the seconds you're lighting the scene while taking the test shot. It will help you to make further adjustments afterwards.

If you have Moon , take advantage of it when it's low in the sky and its light comes from the side not the front or the back. You're almost ready to start the shooting.

You've calculated the exposure time to get stars as bright spots, and you have set a wide aperture and the ISO value according to all the considerations I explained before. All you have to do now is to take a couple of test shots and check the histogram to adjust exposure. You're looking for an histogram that gives you a neutral exposure, with both edges of the histogram just touching the edges of the histogram window.

Obviously, this depends entirely on the colors of your scene. Finally, when you get the foreground lit in a pleasant way, quickly start shooting the rest of the photos. Before you finish the shooting, lit again the foreground and take the last shot.

This way, you'll have two foregrounds to choose from ;. Turn off the LCD display before starting the shooting. Otherwise, your camera will automatically display every single frame. Depending on the noise performance of your camera, it may be a good idea to take a couple of dark frames at the end of the shooting. These dark frames will capture the noise produced by the sensor heat.

They will be very useful during the post-processing to reduce the noise of the final Star Trails image. If you want to include a human figure in the foreground, you should include it in the first photo you take, making sure his or her body doesn't go above the horizon doesn't cover any star to avoid the ghost effect. When you have your main camera set and working, it's time to set a second camera, lens and tripod and start shooting the Milky Way.

After waking up late the following day, and having a delicious well deserved breakfast, I sit down in front of my computer and start creating the Star Trails image. You know that the main function of any star stacking software is to merge a series of photos into a single image.

By doing so, the relative motion of the stars creates structures that look like Star Trails. StarStaX is my favorite star stacking software by far. It's free and it runs on Mac, Windows and Linux. StarTrails is one of the first star stacking software solutions that was created. It was very popular among photographers before the launch of StarStaX. This app for Mac is a great choice because it allows you to do both:.

Unfortunately, it takes too much time to fill in the gaps and to stack all the images in Photoshop. Can you use Lightroom for Star Trails stacking? Star Trails stacking in Lightroom is pretty painful and time consuming. You're forced to use Photoshop actions, which it takes too much time and computer memory. I particularly like a video by Michael Shainblum. Watch it to learn:.

I think this video is super helpful, but I thought that you'd like to have the main steps written down too. If you don't use the Gap filling mode, your image will probably have gaps in the Star Trails.

Maybe you don't notice it on your computer screen, but if you zoom in, you'll see them. Spending the whole night shooting like crazy to build a beautiful Star Trails image is great, but there are a couple more astonishing images and effects you can create.

So, why stopping now? Lincoln is truly a master telling stories with the Milky Way and Star Trails. And he has inspired me in many ways. In section 13 , I'll talk about Lincoln and many other awesome photographers that have inspired me, but now, let's go straight to the point.

Well, you could do it in the field using a custom motorized zooming device, like Lincoln Harrison does. These zooming devices progressively move your lens' zoom ring during the shooting zooming out. For example, you start with a focal length of 50mm and end with 14mm. Then, you stack all the photos in post-processing getting the spiral effect. Doing it in the field is a real adventure, but you can also do it at home, comfortably sitting in front of your computer.

Mike Ver Sprill wrote a great article on how to create vortex Star Trails. It has a few years but you may like to have a look at it. Yes, you can make a Star Trails video, starting with the first photo and ending with the last one to shows the Star Trails growing over time. Now, to create a Star Trails timelapse video, follow the same workflow.

But in StarStaX, select the Save each cumulative stacked image option before stacking. So at the end of the stacking process, you'll end up with the same number of photos, but each one will contain the cumulated trail resulting from stacking the previous ones. And the last image will be the full Star Trails image. Finally, take all these cumulated images and use After Effects to easily create a timelapse video. If you are a Mac user you can also use the Star Trails app.

Daniel Low 's approach to Star Trails timelapse is to show how Star Trails are formed until a certain size and then they start rotating keeping a constant length. Defocused Star Trails is one of the most challenging effects. You create it directly in camera, while shooting. You have to continuously defocus your camera's lens during one single long exposure or from shot to shot when shooting multiple exposures.

The more you defocus the lens, the wider the trail will be. The result is a pretty curious effect, which reminds me of a badmington shuttlecock.

There are many other stunning effects you can produce comet, blobulous and even panoramas , but I believe it's time to start learning from the best: the true Star Trails Masters! These are the most common mistakes that people make when doing Star Trails photography. I know them because I've made them too.

Having ideas and not planning them for perfect execution is like playing the lottery. It might be easy, it might be fun, but you lose every single time. Follow the steps I showed you in section 5 and you'll turn your ideas in real images in the blink of an eye. Do your scouting work during the harsh light hours of the day. Go and look for locations and frames.

Just take your camera out, place the tripod, focus at the hyperfocal distance and take the same photo you want to take at night. If you're going to shoot multiple short exposures stacking , you're probably going to take several hundred photos to get long Star Trails.

This means that you need to plan the number of memory cards you need to take. So, use PhotoPills Timelapse calculator to find out the total memory usage and take enough memory cards with you! I can really feel the pain in my heart when my camera stops because the battery died, and I forgot to take a spare one with me Such a waste of time!

Before leaving home, always make sure you charge your batteries and take a few spare ones. You can also use a grip with extra batteries. You'll be shooting at night, usually in the cold, and low temperatures drain batteries much quicker. There are other things that can cause gaps: you ran out of battery, you ran out of memory space in your card, you got several ruined frames lens condensation, plane and satellite trails, punctual intrusive lights, sporadic clouds, etc.

In this case, you can get rid of small gaps when post-processing in StarStaX. Just make sure you select the Gap filling blending mode. Sometimes your Star Trails don't draw a circumference. It looks like somebody or something has altered the framing. And now the stars follow a different path. Always, always, always level the camera before start the shooting. Use an external bubble level or the internal level of your camera.

If you're still getting an unleveled horizon, follow these steps in Lightroom to correct it:. When you get the foreground in focus but the stars out of focus, it means that you failed when focusing at the hyperfocal distance. You probably focused at a shorter distance. Refocus again and make sure that you're focusing the lens at a slightly larger distance than the hyperfocal distance 1 m is ok. Above all, make sure not fall short again! You'll find how to focus at the hyperfocal distance in section 8 and in this video.

If the whole photo is completely blurred, and you've focused correctly at the hyperfocal distance , it's because you're having vibrations in the camera and lens, you accidentally changed the focus or you're suffering from moisture condensation on the lens:.

With narrow apertures, you're not letting too much light into the system, and the Star Trails will be pretty weak. Obviously, you could crank up the ISO, but your camera will produce more noise! Instead, use a wide aperture and focus at the hyperfocal distance. You'll get bright Star Trails and everything in sharp focus. If there is no Moonlight or light pollution, you'll get a pretty dark foreground when exposing the photo. Use a LED or a torch to add artificial light.

Have a look at section 8 and learn how to light paint the foreground the right way. When there is a lot of light in the scene that you don't control such as light pollution or the Moonlight , the workaround is to lower the ISO, close a bit the aperture, reduce the exposure time or a combination of the three. Another solution is to use a graduated neutral density filter GND. Place it keeping its darker side in the bottom of the filter holder. This way, you'll be darkening the foreground.

One of the reasons image stacking is so great is that it allows you to have absolute control over the Star Trails length. Depending on the number of photos you're stacking, you get one length or another. Different stars have different colors white, blue, red, etc. If you're getting only white stars, it's because the camera sensor is capturing too much light:. It's much easier to capture the true color of the stars when you're shooting multiple short exposures under a pitch black sky.

Find out the right exposure using ISO values from to Light pollution or Moonlight washes out the color of the stars.

If that's the case, you're telling the camera the scene is warm yellow hue. And the camera will try to compensate it with a blue filter, giving a blue hue to the photo. The goal here is to capture the real color of the sky as real as possible. To do so, I like to use the following white balance settings:. The RAW file contains all the information captured by the sensor of your camera. So it's much easier to make adjustments in the image without losing any quality.

I believe that following the work of great photographers is a fantastic way to get inspired, try new things and evolve. So, every time you find a photo you like, stop and look at it for a while. Read it, analyze it in depth.

I'm sure that after a while, without any particular reason, you'll start connecting the dots. The mix of the locations you know, the subjects available and the stars will make ideas flow like water down a hill! These is the list of my favorite Star Trails photographers. If you have other names, please, share them with me and the rest of the PhotoPillers in the comments section at the end of this tutorial. Simply one of the most internationally acclaimed professional travel photographers.

Elia Locardi is a real nomad. He and his wife are traveling around the world since He has been a great inspiration for me. I'm sure he'll inspire you too. He is behind one of the greatest astrophotography blogs on Internet, LonelySpeck. His photos, tutorials and videos have inspired and educated many photographers around the world, including me. If you're looking for hypnotic images, Lincoln is your guy! You'll find her chasing the stars in South Africa and Namibia. Tanja Schmitz not only creates awesome Star Trails images, she also shares her knowledge with the world.

She runs a fantastic educative platform, together with her husband Cory Schmitz: Photographing Space. Photography is his escape. His goal is to make us find the same beauty and serenity in viewing his images as he finds making them. His method, spending hours planning shootings outdoors days, weeks and sometimes even months in advance to make sure all of the elements align properly. It takes a brave dose of guts and grit to pick up your life and pack camper to chase down your dream, but this is exactly what this intrepid couple is doing.

Brad and Marci have embarked on an odyssey to educate the public about the damaging effects of light pollution and help reconnect people with the beauty of the night sky through art. Michael Goh bought his first DSLR camera back in , and after a short period of time has become one of the great masters of the night sky.

You can also get inspired by PhotoPillers from around the world. Check the images that we're featuring everyday in the PhotoPills Awards! You can access to all the photos from the Awards button you'll find in the My Stuff menu of your PhotoPills app or in our Instagram account. And if you're still hungry to learn more about Star Trails — maybe you'd like to discover the perfect Star Trails strategy for you and your equipment — ask me, let me know the problems you're facing by leaving a comment right now.

Antoni Cladera is a landscape photographer with commitment to the environment. He's part of the PhotoPills Team. Special thanks to Sandra Vallaure , a great photographer and friend, for her tremendous help in making this article possible.

Note: Some links on this page are affiliate links. What does this mean? Thank you for your support. Have you noticed it? Every time you shoot a Star Trails image and share it on Instagram or Facebook, you get more interactions, more likes, more surprising comments such as: "Mind-blowing! You shouldn't be. Something that's happening out there, in the universe, but no one can see with the naked eye: "The movement of the static stars, the traces of time, together with a breathtaking foreground.

This method was the only way to photograph star trails in the days before digital cameras. When using the single exposure method, your camera needs to be in manual mode, with the shutter speed set to Bulb. Some cameras have a separate mode for Bulb. It is like manual mode, but the shutter stays open for as long as the release button is depressed.

A time controller such as the Nikon MCA , or Canon TCN3 can make things easier by allowing you to lock the shutter button down, or program a set amount of time for the exposure.

ISO should be set to The wider the aperture is open, the brighter the star trails will be. If you are photographing in a completely dark setting, with no moonlight, the stars will likely be the brightest object in your scene.

The longer the exposure, the longer the trails. The image below was a 30 minute exposure. This image was created as a single exposure. The star trails are dimmer due to the smaller aperture, the fact that the moon was still in the sky, and light pollution from the city in the distance, seen as the glow to the right. The street in the foreground was painted with an LED flashlight for several seconds during the exposure. One thing you need to be concerned with when using a single long exposure is Long Exposure Noise Reduction.

If you choose to photograph star trails using a single exposure, the heat generated on the imaging sensor adds noise to the image. Turning on Long Exposure Noise Reduction reduces that noise by using a method known as dark frame subtraction.