Astrophotography for beginners: Star trails
I still remember my beginnings in astrophotography some years ago. I joined some astrophotography forums and admired the pictures some masters were taking. I didn’t have a telescope, a mount or any other equipment. I had just a Canon 3000N camera and kit lens.
Many of you would say that with this equipment astrophotograhy is just impossible. But this is not true! I have spent a lot of time capturing the moon with my very first telescope (60/700 Meade) and the star trails. The pictures was often useless but I have learned a lot for my progress.
I have been searching a lot to find the first picture of star trails I managed to take but I haven’t found it. So I can show you the one I have made 2 months ago:
Star trails @ Primož Cigler
For image like this you don’t need any special equipment. Almost every digital or analog camera for daylight photography is ok. Everything that is obligatory is a stable tripod where we attach the camera and remote control for expositions is useful too.
Analog cameras are more suitable for this type of astrophotography because they don’t have a digital noise. Exposition can last as long as we want and that don’t influence on image quality. We just set the length of exposition (usually between 30min and 3 hours), the field of camera (usually to the widest) and start the exposition. We generally use low ISO speed for capturing star trails – ISO100, ISO200, ISO400, rarely more. The length of exposition, ISO speed and aperture depend from the conditions, especially from light pollution. The more light pollution we have, lower ISO speed we should use and take shorter exposition.
If we use digital camera the process is little different. As I mentioned the digital cameras have a digital noise which grows as the length of exposure. To avoid this problem we take a set of continuous shots one after another where single show is long from 1 to 3 minutes. It’s important that between exposures in no more than 5 s of pause and that we don’t move the camera all the time during the exposures. At the end we also make a dark-frame (we cover the lens of the camera with a cap and make the “dark picture” just the same length and with the same settings as all the other pictures before), which we be needed after at processing.
If we done everything ok then processing is just the easiest part. We just download this software called Startrails and combine all the pictures. That’s all!
I hope that this article/post will help someone to start with astrophotography. Star trail can be really beautiful, just give them a chance!
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Great read and tips! Thanks for the link and info on StarTrails software. I am definitely going to give this a try next time I am out. OBTW, I admin the Star Trails group on Flickr here.
http://www.flickr.com/groups/startrails/