Night Photography by Adcuz

How To: Star trails - Stacking with StarTrails.exe

2009-06-26T00:02:34Z

How to take star trail photos like this:

The Camera Setup

Capturing star trails using the stacking method is much more demanding that the standard single exposure method. Mostly on your equipment, but also with the amount of work it takes to get the end result. It is usually worth it in the end though.

You should use the following settings as a guideline to get the best possible star trails:

Shutter speed: 30 seconds

You should take short 30 second exposures at regular intervals (with little gap as possible between the shots). It is advised that you a remote shutter release with the trigger locked on, and put the camera on “rapid fire” mode which will allow you to keep shooting without touching the camera for the duration of the shot.

Aperture: f/5.6

You will want to use an aperture that doesn’t let too much light in but not too little. Anywhere between f/5.6 and f/8 should be fine.

ISO: 800

Probably the most important difference here from the standard “keep the ISO as low as possible”. You will want to choose a relatively higher than normal ISO, this is because the short 30 second exposure still needs to be exposed properly. Adjust all your settings to make sure each and every shot in stack is correctly exposed. If you don’t do this important step, the end result will be dark, and not worth your time.

Image quality: Large JPG

This one is optional, but I prefer to shoot in “large jpeg” size when stacking. This makes the process a lot shorter. If you are a raw format shooter, you will find that on longer stacks (100+ shots) the process of batch exporting jpegs for the stacking software will be slow.

Of course, these settings will vary depending on the conditions, these guidelines are written assuming the sky is clear, and there is no haze which means there will be little light polution. If you require any further help on these settings, or if they aren’t working right for you leave a comment below and I will do my best to help you out.

The Software - StarTrails.exe

Before you go any further, if you haven’t already done so download StarTrails.exe now (link will open in new window).

Note: The link will prompt a download, once you have downloaded the file you will need to extract the .zip file to somwhere on your computer. StarTrails.exe does not need to be installed. Just open the extracted .exe file and it will open.

Step 1 - Load the files

To open the image selector, click on the button circled above.
Select the images you want to stack to make a star trail and then click open. This will load the images into the left-hand sidebar.

Step 2 - Get stacking!

Now you have loaded the files into StarTrails.exe, you should see something that resembles this:
You are very nearly done, all that’s left is the click the “Star Trails” button, circled below:

Once you’ve clicked this button, you might want to leave the computer alone to do its thing (it’s best to leave it alone, otherwise it’s trying to do a lot at once and will slow your stack down). Go and grap a cuppa, or go and take some more photos! Of course, it’s also quite interesting to watch the software stack, StarTrails.exe will update the image shown on screen as it adds each layer fromt he selected images for stacking.
When the StarTrails.exe has finished its stacking, you will see the end result on screen. DO NOT close the software at this point and expect it to be saved somewhere, you must save the resulting image yourself!
To save the image, click the button (circled below). When prompted, save the image to your location of choice.

That’s it! One thing to note is when you save the image from StarTrails.exe the EXIF data is stripped from the resulting image. This is a small annoyance if you upload your photos to sharing sites like flickr and like to share your settings. A possible workaround for this (if you are that bothered) is to take the EXIF data from one of the stack images, and then add it to the stacked image. A bit of a fiddle, but worth it if you need it.

If you need any further help, or clarification of the above please leave me a comment below and I’ll do my best to help you out.

Night Photography - Lighting cars at night

2009-06-02T11:42:20Z

One of the things I have been experimenting with and learning about lately is car lighting at night. I have found it to be very difficult to get right. Typically cars have a lot of angles on them coupled with metallic paint meaning getting the lighting you add to reflect in the way you want isn’t easy. I’m writing this really just to show them off as I’m quite happy with the results. There is still alot of room for improvement but I think I’m getting there.

Volkswagen Passat VR5

Lighting: Handheld flash gun at various points around the car body.

Vauxhall Corsa 1.2 SXi

Lighting: Again, hand held strobe. The dark bonnet is a common problem I seem to encounter.

Ford Zephyr

Lighting: Two bursts of hand held strobe from camera left and right.

Audi S3 Sportback

Lighting: Multiple bursts of flash to light the car, very low lower burst of flash on the grass.
Editing: Light vignette added to prevent the grass from distracting fromt the car too much, a bit contradictory to the original lighting!

Audi A6

Lighting: A short stick with LEDs placed at various points along it. I walked around the entire car during the exposure, causing the car to be lit and the trails in the background.

2009 Renault Laguna Coupé

Lighting: Diffused LED torch used to hightligh the rear end.

None of the above photos were edited outside of the camera unless otherwise stated underneath the photo.

I’ll be looking to write a tutorial on lighting a car evenly with a flash gun in the near future. If you like what you see, or have any suggestions please leave me a comment below.

EDIT: Just a random thing - check out these awesome Widgets!

Photography Tutorial : Star Trail Basics

2009-04-05T09:15:16Z

This article will cover the basics on Star Trail Photography. A technique which allows you to capture the effect that the rotation of the earth has on a long exposure photograph featuring the stars. I’ll expand on this at a later date.

Click the images to see them larger (in a new window)

Choose the right night

One of the key parts to taking a good star trail photo is choosing the right time to head out with your gear. To ensure a clean, clear and quality star trail you will want to wait for a night where there are no clouds in the sky and when the moon isn’t visible. When the moon is visible it illuminates haze that is almost always in the atmosphere which will cause your trails to appear a lot duller than they would if there was no moon.

Stay away from the city

A key part to star trails is stay away from any populated areas. After a few attempts at star trails you will probably see that even the smallest light on the ground can cause light pollution. If you aren’t aware of what light pollution is, It’s the glow in the sky you see when near cities or towns. This is much more evident when you are taking a long exposure photo. As a rule of thumb, it is best to head out into the country to get a good star trail.

Camera settings

A basic long exposure setup - Canon EOS 400D

I’m going to assume that you are using a DSLR/SLR camera as I’m unaware of any lower level camera that can handle long exposures (30 minutes or more). Aside from composition, it is very important that you set the camera up correctly, otherwise you will waste a lot of time.

As a basic rule of thumb, keep your aperture large (smaller number). This is important as the light from stars is weak at the best of times, and closing your aperture is just going to make the light weaker on your camera’s sensor. It is a common misconception that you should increase your f/stop to the highest number possible for star trail photography, this doesn’t work, and never will!

A common issue that people encounter when taking long exposures is sensor noise. This will usually be caused by the ISO speed being set too high, or simply a camera with bad noise handling. I tend to stick to the lowest ISO on my Canon EOS 400D, which is ISO 100. Don’t be scared to experiment away from there though. Two photos taken at different ISO speeds and the same settings (including shutter speed) will look a lot different. In some cases it will be the higher ISO shot.

Patience

Photo by AndWhyNot

If you are an impatient person, perhaps this isn’t for you. If you get really into it, you may spend anywhere over an hour on just a single photo. It’s a good idea to find something to do while you are exposing, otherwise you’ll get incredibly bored, very quickly and you’ll probably just end up shutting the camera off and moving on.

A deck chair and an iPod is a good combination, but always a good idea to keep all your senses fully aware when out at night, so maybe not the iPod bit :).

That’s all for the basics! The next post will cover stacking, a more advanced way to create a star trail photograph.