Hey
what's up everyone!
Rafal here from opt and we are out in the mountains about an hour away from downtown
L.A. so that we can have some darker skies because in this video we are going to be going
over a unique form of astrophotography - star trails.
But before we get into that, if you guys are enjoying the content, and don’t wanna miss
out onthe upcoming tutorials, astro news, and OPT announcements, PLEASE take a minute
to give this video a like and don’t forget to hit that subscribe button AND ring the
bell for notifications.
It does help us spread the knowledge of space to more people.Now for the longest time I
always thought star trails were just some fancy style of photo manipulation, but then
I learned that it's actually happening in real life and can be done IN CAMERA.
Depending on where you point your camera in the sky, you’re gonna get different results
from your trails.
For example, if you keep Polaris in your shot, you’ll get more of a spiral look.
If you point away from Polaris, you’ll get more of a “wavey” look.
For those just getting into astrophotography, Polaris is more commonly known as the north
star,and it's the RIGHT next to the north celestial pole, which means it's the only
star in the sky that doesn't move.
OK that's not true, it moves a TEENY bit, BUT not enough to be noticeable.Every other
star travels across the sky as the earth rotates, which is how you're able to get those awesome
trails when you're taking long exposures with your camera.
Star trails can be pretty by themselves, but they are incredibly beautiful when combined
with gorgeous landscapes, which is why we chose Vasquez Rocks because of these beautiful
rocks behind us.
OK SO!
What do you need to get started with star trails?
Four things: A sturdy tripod, a camera that can shoot long exposures, preferably a wide
angle lens, and some PRE PLANNING comes in handy.
A huge thing about star trails is that once you start shooting, any hiccups in weather
like clouds, or fog, can mess with your session.
So make sure you have clear skies before you go out shooting.
A good app to use is something like Clear Outside, which tells you what kind of cloud
coverage to expect, and what phase the moon is in.
We will also leave links to other great weather tracking programs and websites in the description
below for you to check out.
The moon phase is also very important for your shots.
A full moon will make your shot look like daytime if your exposure time is long enough,
and a new moon can make your foreground look pitch black with no details.
I personally like shooting with a 20-40% illuminated moon, but you can play around and experiment
for yourself because this is just based on preference.
Planning is the first thing to make or break a night of imaging.
Now talking about gear, you want a camera that can take long exposures.
Almost any DSLR or mirrorless camera will work.
If your camera doesn't have a built-in timelapse feature, then you'll also need an intervalometer.
You never wanna touch the camera after you start taking pictures.
For lenses, generally you want a wider focal length like 14mm up to 24mm.
You also want a nice open aperture like 1.8 to 2.8.
If your lens doesn't get that open, don't worry, just shoot as open as you can.
In fact more advanced star trails are shot around F4-F5.6.
Depending on the type of lens you have will determine your camera settings but we're gonna
help you out with that as well.
Finally, you want a nice sturdy tripod that won't move once you start your imaging.
We're gonna be using our Radian Carbon Fiber tripod, and since we're shooting in the dirt,
we've replaced the rubber feet with the included spikes for more security.
Once we start shooting we can't have any movement on the tripod and camera, so we are going
to add an extra layer of security by hanging some weight on the bottom of the tripod.
OK!
So now that we have our shot, it's time to set up our camera.
As I mentioned earlier, you generally want a wider lens when shooting star trails if
you're incorporating it with a nice landscape.
So here we have a Rokinon 14mm f/2.8 lens that we’ll be using on this Canon 60D.According
to the 500 rule, because we’re shooting at 14mm, we can shoot our exposures up to22
seconds before we get star trails.
In this case, it's perfectly ok to go longer, because star trails are what we are trying
to achieve.
That being said, you COULD shoot trails all in one exposure.
BUT, the thing about shooting in one long exposure is that it can take an hour to a
few hours to get a nice shot.
That means you're running electricity through your sensor for an hour or more!
Your sensor will heat up, and you'll introduce more noise and hot pixels into your image,
which you'll need to edit out with dark frames or in Photoshop with the healing brush.
Also, If you're doing one long exposure, every plane or ISS that travels across your shot
will all be recorded on one frame.And let's say you're an hour in on one exposure and
something happens... like your battery shuts off, or someone turns on a light, or your
tripod moves, then you've just lost an hour of time.
So it's best to just take multiple shots, and if anything happens you can just remove
that one shot and fix the minor gaps later.
Focusing is pretty simple, basically, you wanna get the star as small as possible.
If it starts to bloat, that means you're losing focus.
A little bit of fine tuning will get you right where you need to be.
What I like to do is first make sure the focus on your lens is set to manual, then use the
digital zoom to punch in on a bright star or planet and move the focus ring until your
star is as small as it can be.To help set up your composition, you can bring your ISO
much higher than normal, and take a quick photo so that you can see your framing.
Yes, your image is completely noisy, but this is just to get your composition right.
Once you're ready to start shooting, you can bring that ISO down again.Alright!
So we're almost ready.
The last thing we're gonna do is set up our time lapse.
Whether your camera has a built in time lapse feature or you're using an intervalometer,
the steps are the same.
We're gonna make sure our aperture is completely open, set our shutter speed to 30seconds (because
we're on a 14 mm) and take a test shot.
It's not bad, but I want my stars a little brighter, so I'll bump my ISO to 800.
You USUALLY don't wanna shoot higher than 3200.Generally 400 or 800 is the sweet spot.
But this will change depending on your camera, moonphase, light pollution and environment.
Shooting with a lower ISO and a more closed aperture will give you slightly sharper stars
with more star color, but like everything in photography adjusting your settings will
always have a trade off, in this case, it will be losing the details in our foreground.
So...
I'm going to use, ISO 800OK one more test shot, and I'm pretty happy with that!
So our exposure is set to 30 seconds,f/2.8, and 800 ISO.
The last thing is the interval length, which is the amount of time between each photo.
I'm gonna tell the camera to take a photo every 31 seconds.
The reason why I'm doing 31 is because I want to give the camera enough time to finish WRITING
the data onto the card before it starts taking a new image.
If your images are taken too close together, you run the risk of"hitting the buffer" which
is when your camera can’t take another photo until it's finished writing the previous one
onto a card.
So 1 second is long enough for the camera to finish writing the image before taking
the next one, and avoid creating gaps in our star trails.
Oh!
One last thing!
MAKE SURE that your camera's Long exposure noise reduction is turned off!
Some cameras have this feature, but it eats up a TON of time and we don't want that.
It's usually labeled as "Long exposure/shutter NR".
Great!
We're all set, now it's time to let the camera run, kick back, and enjoy the stars!
(Quick pan to the left/right to show Mack setting up another rig) or... set up your
next rig for more imaging, either way!
ALRIGHT!
So now that we have our images, it's time to stack them together and create our final
shot.
There are different ways to stack your images.
You can use something like Photoshop or Landscape Stacker, but for this video, we’re gonna
be using StarStax.
I'm here in Lightroom and I'm just gonna tweak the settings on this photo to make sure my
stars are as bright as possible without introducing noise into the image.
Once I'm happy with that, I'm gonna copy the settings by hitting ctrl+shift+C on a windows
(cmd+shift+c on a mac) and selecting all my other images.
Then I'm gonna click on sync, and let those settings get copied onto each image.
From there, I’m gonna export all these photos as JPEGs, and then we’re gonna switch over
to StarStax.
You can download StarStax from this link.
Once you have it opened, you’re gonna click the first toolbar button to open up the images,
head to your folder that holds them all and hit CTRL+A on a PC or CMD+A on a mac, then
hit open.
They’ll all line up right here on the right.
If you took dark frames during your imaging, you can hit the second button here and import
your dark frames the same way.
Once you have all your images imported, you’re gonna come overhear to the preferences tab,
and set the blending mode to “gap filling.”
And if you did import some dark frames, you’ll check this box that says “subtract dark
images.”Once all that’s done, we’re gonna come up here to the button that says
“start processing” and watch the magic happen!
Check that out!
Now we’re not done yet.
The software did its best to fill in the gaps but you can help it a little more by
moving these sliders so that the green only hits the stars.
The closer your image is to the horizon, the more green you’re gonna
see there.
So try to get that green as minimal as possible.
Then this bottom slider will adjust how much gap filling you have.
Once that’s done, head up to the save icon right here, and save your image!
And there it is!
Star trails are an excellent way to get into astrophotography and once you start developing
your skills you can create some amazingly incredible images!
If you enjoyed this video, go ahead and just smash that like button and make sure you subscribe
and ring the bell for notifications because we have videos coming out every week and we
want you guys to be the best astronomers you can be.
Also if you have any questions leave your thoughts in the comments below.
My name is Rafal with OPT and we'll see you in the next video.
Clear skies!