today I ask the question is it better to stack or to track in astrophotography
recently I've had the opportunity to use a star tracker in astrophotography so I
thought it would be good to see what was better stacking or tracking they are
both legitimate ways of shooting the Stars and they're both quite advanced
techniques if you're not sure how to shoot the Stars but you want to learn
more the best thing is to start taking single images of night skies stacking is
a process of taking a series of shots including things called dark frames and
then putting them into a dedicated piece of software that stacks them together
and reduces the noise in the image whereas tracking is where you put your
camera on a specific gadget and it follows the movement of the stars
cancelling out the rotation of the earth when set up properly you can have
exposure times of up to 10 minutes and this means you can drop your ISO and
play around with your aperture to capture some images that you will stack
later all you need is your camera a tripod and a good lens the software that
you use to stack your images is a lot cheaper than a tracker on a Mac if
you're using starry landscapes tacker it's just under $40 if you're on a PC
you can use sequitur which is a free piece of software as you only have to
set up your camera and tripod all you need to do is compose the frame and then
take the sequence of shots so the set-up time is a lot quicker than if you're
tracking the stars another advantage with stacking the shots is it gets rid
of all of that noise automatically including the long exposure noise when
stacking images you can also shoot a time-lapse so this means you don't just
get one use out of a single image you'll get lots of different uses so the main
advantage with a stacking is you can take a shot and then you can move your
camera frame up something different and then take that shot so throughout the
course of the night you'll end up with a lot more images when stacking shots it
does take quite a lot of time to stack the images together I stack TIFF files
and I've got quite a fast computer but sometimes I just have to leave it to
process the images if you are processing them on a Mac the software is $39.99 so
you do have to invest a little bit of money in the software but I think it's
well worth it I've left some links in the description below
- both sequitur for the PC and starry landscape stacker for the Mac moving on
to tracking this is a very different way to shoot the stars I've only started it
this year and one of my good friends Arun lent me his spare tracker it's a
really good system and he can take some really good images with it Arun is into
deep space Astro photography and he's got some amazing images so I'd suggest
heading over to his Instagram page and checking out the images that he's taken
the first advantage to tracking that I noticed straight away is that you get so
many more colors in your Milky Way and you can see them on the back of your
camera as you're shooting with longer exposures this means you can really drop
your ISO down and really soak up those deep colors in the milky way also with
the longer exposures you can play around with your aperture so if you close your
aperture down quite a bit you'll be able to make the stars burst a little bit if
i zoom in on this image you can see Jupiter has those starbursts coming out
of it you do get to buy more kit so if you're a gearhead and you love going out
and getting new bits of equipment this is the perfect excuse as it's a
completely different way of shooting the Stars it can be really fun learning this
new process as you can shoot with much longer exposure times this opens up the
opportunity not only to get really wide field shots but to get close-ups of
different parts of the night sky and if you really get into it you can get much
longer focal lengths and start picking out nebulas planets and things like that
one of the main advantages I see of using a tracker is that you don't
actually need really fast lenses I've tracked a few shots between f/4 and f/8
and got some really good looking images so with a kit lens you have the
opportunity to shoot the stars without getting lots of noise in your night
skies it does take quite a while to set up and you will need to see the North
Star which is Polaris obviously you will have to invest in a
tracker so there is a bit of an investment to tracking the stars you
will have to learn a new skill and this is getting your polar alignment correct
if you don't you'll find that you won't be able to get much longer exposures
than normal so do some research and find out how to line up your tracker
perfectly and then you can get four eight and maybe ten minute exposures as
well as buying the tracker you will have to invest in a sturdy tripod I've got an
old video tripod that I use with it and it works really well but if you have a
small tripod for your mirrorless camera you may have to invest in a bigger
stronger more sturdy tripod if you do end up shooting exposes between eight
and ten minutes you will be waiting around for that exposure time to finish
if you do have the foreground in the shot while it's tracking the stars over
those minutes of exposure it will blur the foreground out so you will have to
blend at least two images together to get a clean foreground if you live in a
hot country with these long exposures you'll get long exposure noise now you
can either turn on long exposure noise reduction or take a dark frame and both
of these take the same amount of time as it would to take the initial exposure so
both of them take a long time especially with these really long exposures there
are other ways to get rid of long exposure noise if you're not sure how to
do this but want to learn more click on the I on the corner or the link in the
description this will take you to another of my tutorials so you can see
there are both advantages and disadvantages to stacking and tracking
up until recently I've only shot single images of the stars but after using a
tracker and actually after having a go at stacking this has really opened up
what I can do and what I'm gonna do in the future looking at the images
tracking gives a really clear image and with the lower ISO levels it really
brings out the colors in the milky way as well as the nebulas with stacking you
don't seem to get the same amount of detail in the sky and the milky way as a
tracked image but you do get rid of the long exposure noise also when you have a
foreground in the shot it's much cleaner and there's a lot less
noise in it therefore you can bring up the brightness a lot more and really
bring out the details in the fog especially when it's really dark the one
main disadvantage with tracking is that once it's set up you can take shots and
you can move the camera around but if you go to move the tripod to a different
location you have to set up the polar alignment once again and that's about it
I think what I'm gonna do in the future is track the sky so I get those really
rich deep colors in the milky way and then what I'll do is I'll stack the
foreground so I'll turn the tracker off and then take a series of images for the
foreground I was pleasantly surprised at how stacking the images really reduces
the noise in the foreground if I'm in a bit of a rush I'll probably just stack
my images but what this process has taught me is that tracking and stacking
your images is the next step to astrophotography if this is piqued your
interest for a tracker or astrophotography check out the list of
equipment I have in the description below
they are affiliate links so if you do decide to buy your equipment through
these links I'll get a little bit of money with no extra expense to you and
this really helps me keep this channel going if you don't have the funds or
access to a tracker I'd suggest starting to stack your
astrophotography shots as well as getting a time-lapse you'll be able to
get a much cleaner single image for your portfolio and if you stack and/or track
your shots let me know in the description below how you've got on I'll
be interesting to hear your thoughts on both of these different processes as
always if you like what you see give me a thumbs up if you didn't give me a
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