I set it to the " Tungsten light" preset (3200K), because that will make the sky the most blue-looking.Ĥ. I recommend setting your white balance to something other than automatic, so that the white balance for each picture will be the same. Usually that is far enough away that stars will also look sharp. Alternately, focus on the furthest away streetlamp or light source that you can see. Use the "zoom" button to soom in 10x and try to find a bright star, then turn your lens's focus ring until the star is sharp. To help focus, I recommend turing on LiveView (where you can look on the LCD screen). Set to manual focus, set to a preset white balance Shoot some test shots to find out what ISO you need, it will probably be between 400 and 800.ģ. Set your aperture to the lowest your lens will go. If you are not using an intervalometer, you will be limited to 30 second shutter speeds. Camera settings: approximately 30-45 seconds, f/2.8-f/4.5, ISO 400-800Ĭhange your camera settings to something similar to the above. This composition will create star trails that are circular, instead of just streaks across the sky.Ģ. Why: All of the stars appear to orbit/rotate around the north star, which is almost directly above the north direction on a compass. Make the stars take up the upper 2/3 of the frame, with the ground/lake/horizon being the lower 1/3. Use a compass or star app to find north, and point your camera so that north is in the middle of the frame. If you enjoy camping, you might have an easier time having all of this line up perfectly for you. If the moon is in the frame your pictures won't turn out as well, so try to do it on a night when the moon isn't high in the sky when taking pictures, or when it's a new moon. If it's too cold your batteries might die and then you'll move the camera a little when switching them out. For this reason, you either need a private location, or to stay near your camera the entire time. It only takes a few minutes to set up the camera, but the camera needs to take pictures for an hour or more to have very defined star trails. I personally recommend the app "Star walk" ( app store link) ( google play link), because it gives a lot of other star-related information. Most phones come built in with a compass app. This is useful if you want to have the North star in the frame, so you can see the full spiral of the star "orbit". I only have one intervalometer but like to use two cameras for these pictures (just as a backup), and on the secondary camera I just use a wired shutter release or wireless triggers and use rubber bands to hold down the button. However, you don't necessarily need this. I use this intervalometer from Amazon, and highly recommend it. You don't need anything fancy, you could even just lean your phone on some rocks to get it to point in the right direction.Īn intervalometer is a device that plugs into a camera and controls how often, how long and how many shots are taken( 1). ![]() You need to figure out on your camera how to change the shutter speed, aperture, and ISO settings. And don’t miss our recent story with four great tips for shooting stellar photographs of nighttime skies.You need to be able to set it to take 30 second exposures or more, and with the same settings each time. ![]() ![]() You can find more astrophotography tips on the Milky Way Mike YouTube channel. At that point all that’s left is a bit of cleanup to arrive at the final result. He then adds gradient filters to both the foreground and the sky shots.Īfter exporting the images to Photoshop, it’s a simple matter to eliminate satellite and airplane trails, adjust the opacity of the sky, and merge the star trail layer with the foreground layer. The next step is making basic adjustments in Lightroom to vibrance and saturation, white balance, and sharpening. He explains that the underexposed shots provide more color for the sky, while the brighter images increase foreground shadow detail. In the tutorial below you learn an image-stacking technique for creating dramatic star trail photos of your own.Īstrophotography expert Mike Ver Sprill (AKA Milky Way Mike) begins by importing a number of images shot at different exposures into Lightroom. Star trail photos of nighttime skies are among the most spectacular images captured by astrophotographers.
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