Learning more about Star Trails

I listened to a photopills master class with Gabe Biderman who is a part of National Parks at Night give a talk about Star Trails and learned a few things.

0. One trick is since you're in Manual Mode you can play with offsetting ISO vs f/stops vs Shutter speed. I guess I do that already. It's easy, but you can get the same amount of LIGHT, but maybe bend time. Use Photopills to see how that offset works - [I think it may be in the Exposure function].

1. One is that you can use Ps in place of StarStaX. It does some of the same things but the way in which you do it is: (this is a greatly simplified example). [Not sure about cleaning up satellite/plane errors and whether to use dark frames.] I am also not sure about how fast or slow this works, but it's a cool alternate method to try.

  1. Select your photos in LcR and Select Photos --> Edit In --> Open as layers in PS
  2. In PS, select all the layers and then change from Normal to "Lighten" in the Layers TAB.
  3. Before saving, Layer --> Flatten image.

Here's the result using PS with just 20 images.


2. Another thing I'm thinking about is using an external intervalometer with BULB mode such that I can take an image that is longer than 30 seconds with my SONY A7 III. Gabe sometimes uses 90-sec shutter speeds.

3. A third idea is to use an ND filter and take a Moon trail from dusk into darkness.

Other ideas: 

You can check out a Blue Hour Blend by watching a Tim Cooper class. (Look for it on YT). You can blend a Star Trail and blend it with a Blue Hour shot.

Urban Star Trails (Star Trails set against city lights). Get up above the city lights and take star trails.

Play with Comet setting in StarStaX to get a comet-like effect on the stars. 


Faster apertures will record more stars. If you lower the f-stop 1-2 stops you'll lower the chaos and capture fewer stars. For example  3-hour ST stack at f/5.6 ISO 1600  (f 4 - 5.6 is suggested)

ISOs:

  • ISOs of 200-400 will have more stars with color, but will show fewer stars
  • ISOs of 800-1600 will have a good balance of colr and brightness for darker nights.
  • Try to stay under 1600 ISO so stars aren't exposed. 

 

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