Star Trails Photography (astrophotography) How to take startrail photos at night
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- Опубліковано 28 лип 2024
- Today I show you how to shoot star trail photos at night. If you've ever wondered how people get those long lines in the sky, this is how!
www.boxheadmike.com/
There are a few different way to shoot star trail photography and in this video I show you two of those ways. One way produces lots of shots, but you can also get a timelapse and still shots from it. The second way is less data heavy but the only thing you can get from it are star trails.
Also Charles from NightSkyPix got in contact and they have an amazing resource for shooting star trails...lots of handy information on getting star trails all on one blog, check it out: nightskypix.com/how-to-photog...
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Thanks
Mike
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Nice tutorial.
One thing to point out: that moiré effect you're showing at minute 10:00 happens because you applied profile correction *before* processing the sequence in StarStax - if applied profile correction *after* StarStax you wouldn't get it at all.
You could also prevent the plane trail to appear in the final image using the spot removal tool in each original shot it appears on.
Thanks for the tips Gerlos,
I've had a couple of people tell me this, so I do need to do this tutorial again with the corrections.
I like the tip with the plane trail as well... Might have to give that a go. 😁👍
Incredible! Thanks for sharing the whole process of taking star trails.
No worries Kelvin, I’m glad I could help!! 😁👍
Just want to say thank you mike .. this video made it possible for me to create my 1st ever star trail last night .. awesome videos
Awesome!! That's great to hear!! It's fun when after all that time you see the end result isn't it!! ... just be aware that now you've gotten in to astrophotography, you'll always be chasing the weather and the stars...and will have lots of sleepless nights!! 😆
Thanks for watching!
Excellent tutorial Mike... thank you
Thanks Ian! Glad I could help. I really enjoyed doing these so I’m going to be shooting a lot more through the winter.
Thanks Mike for this incredible tutorial - this stepped up my astro photography game !!
Jens, that's great to hear! ...and thank you for watching and commenting, much appreciated! 😁👍
Thx Mike, a lot of very useful settings and processing info, excellent tutorial👌
No worries Tom, I'm glad I could help. 😁👍
To avoid strange corner patterns that you saw just apply lens profile corrections after stacking. 👌🏻
Hey Roman,
Thanks very much for letting me know. This was the one mistake I made in this one and I've been meaning to make a follow up on this video correcting it. It is amazing how one setting can mess up the whole outcome.
Thanks for watching 😁👍
@@mikesphotography because it's doesn't look like a mistake and not obvious at all. 🙈 It`s a good opportunity to learn something about processing, I think.
Thanks you for great content!
@@mikesphotography oh, and sorry to bother you, because I'm not the only one who figured it out, but I left a comment before reading. What a shame. 🤦♂️
@@svtlvsk Not a bother at all, it's always good getting critical feedback from you guys that are watching so I really do appreciate your comment. And it reminded me that I do have to make an update to this video ... just need to find some clear night skies around me now!! 😆
Thanks 👍
Excellent!
Thanks for sharing ;)
No worries! I’m glad I could help! 👍
Thank you sir.
Thank you. 😁👍
Nice! I've yet to try star trails and this is a great tutorial. Nice intro too!
Thanks Gabe! They’re quite time consuming but the results are pretty cool, and in shooting it like a timelapse following the first way I did it, you can get a timelapse, still images and.star streaks out of it, how productive is that!! 👍
The intro was good fun to make! I’ve been meaning to jazz it up for a while!! Are you getting any more luck with the night skies now winter is coming!?
Mike Smith No problem! Yeah hey, it's a nice combo. You get images for stacking, video clips, lots of different images from it. It's a very clean and nice intro, some intros can be a bit much but i don't feel that way about yours. Oh man, I finally had a perfect complete night under a dark sky, i had everything set up for a great night of deep sky imaging. But my autoguider failed, it's a problem with the firmware or the internals I think so I couldn't fix it on the scene. I tried some widefield stuff but I got screwed over again by frost, wind, clouds, and lens defocusing. A huge bummer but I learned lots and I'm ready for next time!
Awesome! That was the plan with the intro! 👍
Ah man, sounded like it was a battle through the night. Hope you get the autoguider working for the next clear night.
What was up with the defocusing issue?
Yeah frost and lens fogging isn’t a problem we get here, just long exposure noise from the heat.....and camel spiders!!
Mike Smith I remember I did a school report on camel spiders in grade school... freaky things hahaha. Generally my kit lens had treated me well in terms of sharp stars, but when I looked over the images that I hadn't lost due to frost, I had some disgusting defocused and triangular stars. My best guess for the cause of the astigmatism is differential cooling maybe? I'm not sure, but I've never had the issue before and I hope I won't have it again. I've been eyeing the sigma 50-100mm f/1.8 and 18-35mm f/1.8 for astrophotography, they've got sharpness comparable to primes and they're pretty versatile and fast, I think they might be the perfect fit for me!
Haha! They are really freaky, I had one come up to me when I was filming in the desert earlier in the year. I kicked sand at it to try and scare it away and it just stood there and looked at me, before trying to outflank me!! They're fast and pretty aggressive.....I've never packed my kit away so quickly!
Those zooms sound really interesting! I'll have to have a look at those. They are for crop sensors though aren't they?
Sounds like a temperature issue in the lens maybe. Do you use a hand warmer on your lens to keep the core temperature up? I hear that is meant to help.
One other thing, if you're interested, I'm starting a weekly email with all of my videos and any interesting photo news. If you'd like to sign up, head over to my home page, scroll to the bottom and sign up. It's www.boxheadmike.com
Thanks 👍
Have you done a video on dark frames yet ?
Hi...great tutorial.. i'm new to photography..does the method 1 can be apply in a6400 interval shooting mode?thanks
Hi Stan, yes it can, just make sure the interval time doesn't override your exposure time.
Thanks for watching 😁👍
@@mikesphotography got it..thanks
Prior to watching this video, I was watching one from Alyn Wallace (ua-cam.com/video/dJMZQgyP7Dc/v-deo.html), and in his workflow he specifically notes (at 7:25) to NOT check Enable Profile Correction in Lightroom on the raw image sequence, claiming it will produce a weird pattern in stacked image. You can do it after the stacking. Curious to know if you've tried this and/or your thoughts.
Thanks for the tip Joe! I really like Alyn's tutorials...he has a lot to offer and we can all learn a lot from him.
I'll have to try that again without the lens corrections to see if it makes a difference. 😁👍
hi mike! any idea why all my files are loading in the wrong order in star stax? thanks
Mike just to clarify, if you r doing 260 shots (Technically a Timelapse) your interval time would be exposure + interval + buffer time = total interval time. In the shorter exposure exmaple, total interval would be 25 sec. Don't know if your interval is including a buffer. Would this be your total shooting interval? Thanks
Good question. I use quite fast cards so the buffer time usually is completed within the interval time I set...and with the mkiii Sony’s they clear the buffer whilst the camera is taking the next shot.
I generally find with a decent camera, as long as you give the interval between the frame finishing and the next frame starting, there will be enough time for the buffer to clear.
Does that make sense?
GREAT video..what determines the length of time between each shot; you are using 3 seconds?? Why 3?? THANK YOU!!
You just want to keep the length down as much as possible. I was giving it 3 seconds so it had time for the buffer to clear...(my old school canon camera thinking)...but I think the A7iii will clear the buffer as the next shot is being taken.
So the less time your camera needs to clear the buffer, the shorter the interval needs to be.
Thanks
Mike Smith I understand... thank you!!
what location did you shot the footage?
This was down in the Empty Quarter in UAE, towards the Saudi border. 👍
Hi Mike. I use sony a6300, i stack 50 photos and the checkboard is extremely came. My questions is, why this checkboard came and how to fix it? Hope u help me. Thanks!
Hi Hafiz,
It is sometimes caused by making corrections prior to stacking.
Did you adjust the contrast, tone curve, clarity or sharpness?
Perform any kind of noise reduction?
Do any lens corrections?
Change the images into JPG or TIFF?
Downsize the images before stacking?
Sometimes when using a large amount of images these changes can cause subtle differences in each image causing this pattern.
I only learned about this after doing this tutorial so I’m going to do another video on this actual problem later in the year.
@@mikesphotography i think ya, i just correct the white balance, basic correction, lens correction, dehaze and clarity. Then i sync all my images, and the result are different (color)
Try doing the lens correction, dehaze and clarity afterwards and see if it helps.
@@mikesphotography oh yess, i only adjust the white balance and start to stack, and the pattern are reduce. I'm 16 so sory if my words are bad, i very glad to see u answer my question. Your video are great i love it. Thanks a lot, cheers from Indonesia :D
No worries, your English is great!! I’m glad I can help and thanks for watching! 😁👍
Hi Mike, why not try and remove the noise before stacking the photos?
That could work. There are definitely many ways to get the same result so the best bet would be to try it out and see if you get better results.
Thanks for watching 😀👍
Mike Smith thanks for the reply. I went out to Al Qudra Lakes this past weekend and shot my first star trails photo following the steps in your video. I tried noise reduction before and after stacking and preferred the results I got if I removed the noise first before generating TIFFs for StarStax. My only problem is that the camera I used has no way to disable long exposure noise reduction so I had rely heavily on the gap filling in StarStax.
Cool. Al Qudra is a great location. Have you tried liwa yet? Even better dark skies down that way, but a long drive!
That's interesting, I might have to try it that way as well. Thanks for the info!! 👍
No, I haven’t tried Liwa / Al Razeen yet...will wait till later in the month when the moon isn’t so bright and the galaxy core is visible. Hopefully it won’t be as cold! It was 12C the other night when we went out to shoot star trails and the Orion Nebula.
Good tutorial. You don’t need the music. It is distracting.
Thanks for the feedback Dick, noted. 👍
👏👏👏👏
Thanks Mauricio!! I had lots of fun making this one and am definitely going to be shooting more of these!! 👍
@@mikesphotography I just spent 2 hours testing StarStax with 250 photos from a milky timelapse. Awesome results and the foreground stack is great for reducing noice. Thanks 😎
Excellent!! It’s a brilliant bit of software isn’t it!! 😁👍
i'm also calling it "StarTrax" while the name is "StarStax" lol :)))
Haha!! I like it!! 😁👍