Shooting and processing star trails is a lot of fun. But it’s also a touch more complicated that shooting general landscapes. In this video tutorial, Tony Northrup, goes through the preparation and techniques necessary for capturing star trails as cleanly as possible.
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How To Capture Star Trails At Night
Great video and explanation. But I think you could have given another tip about Noise. Some cameras have Long Exposure Noise Reduction control (like my Canon 70D), and it´s good to make sure that it´s turned off. If we shot with it turned on, and with 10s, 15s, 20s, 30s exposure… (like your example), the camera will use another 10s, 15s, 20s, 30s to process each photo, requiring more time for the entire startrail process.
Excellent video tutorial, Tony, and one I’ll be sharing with others. I’ve been having a lot of fun with the new firmware update on the Olympus E-M1 that creates a composite time-lapse such that I can make these in camera, and it does the noise/dark image reduction at the beginning or end of the sequence. But for some situations, it’s still handy to do it the old fashioned way (can we call anything done with digital cameras ‘old fashioned’?) and process with Star Trax and this is the clearest explanation for photographers trying out star trail photography I’ve seen.