There are few things you need to make great Star Trail photos:
- Be as far as possible from light pollution and preferably during new moon or when the moon is below horizon. Apps for sunset/moon/stars: LightTrac, Sunrise, Star Walk, TPE (The Photographer's Ephemeris).
- The image below is a great example of light pollution. Bear in mind that I am at least 30 miles to nearest small town (population less than 700 and 3 miles higher)
- Be as close as possible to ozone layer without any clouds.
- Camera with very good image quality (low noise) at high ISO (1600 or higher)
- Cable release or intervalometer is essential.
- Tripod is extremely essential (mostly).
- Warm clothing, headlamp with red or green light, collapsible chair and refreshments.
- Fast wide angle lens is essential (2.8 or faster)
- All camera setting on manual including focus and color balance with image stabilization and noise reduction off; exposure drive is set to multiple exposures.
- Be on location 2 hours before sunset to find Polaris star, compose the image and include as much sky as possible.
- Photographing just the stars makes boring photos. Create scale by including foreground in the photo.
- LOCK the camera to make sure it does not move in the next few hours. Most tripods have a hook at the bottom of center column. I usually hook my backpack to it to make tripod more solid or bring a lightweight bag, fill it with rocks and fasten it to the hook.
- Be creative and take a photo/s of foreground before/during or right after sunset.
- Change the focus to almost infinity.
- Start photographing stars at least 2 hours after sunset Test exposure with different ISO to determine proper exposure.
- Keep exposures to 30 seconds or less.
- Take at least an hours’ worth of exposures. Two hours is even better.
- Believe in higher power that what you are doing will turn out OK because you cannot see it in the camera.
- I also need to mention that you need a way to bring your camera on the trail. If you are only hiking short distance to a location, this is not an issue. But if you are going to wilderness and going to hike for days, carrying your camera properly is very important. I tried ones to bring my camera on the trail while hanging it by it's strap over my neck. After 10 hour hike, I could not move my neck for several days. I also tried to carry my camera inside my backpack. I ended up not using my camera at all because of the effort it took to get camera out. Until I found ThinkTank product Digital Holster in conjunction with Digital Harness Here is the photo of me in Patagonia and the above mentioned products attached to my backpack:
Post Processing: Computer with lots of ram Bring all images to Lightroom.
- Select the first image from the series and adjust it but stay away from radial and graduated filters.
- Select ALL images from the series and batch sync to match first one.
- While all images are still selected, Edit in Photoshop >Open as Layers
- Blending mode to lighten and clean all planes and satellites lights.
- This was my very first Star Trail image. Total of 181 exposures. Exposure #1 was during sunset of your truly. This is where I positioned my camera to face North and found decent foreground.
- I left my camera on a tripod in the same spot and came back several hours later and took hour and a half worth of exposures at 30 second interval (total of 180 exposures). This is how star trail image looked like:
- I then combined the image I took during sunset with star trail image and called it "Loosing my religion".
- Here is the final image:
- Here are several more samples of Star Trail Photography:
