Comments on: 4 Steps To Creating Star Trails Photos Using Stacking Software

By: Gavin Treadgold

Gavin Treadgold — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 22:27:14 +0000

Re: Using the Southern Cross – that is a very approximate solution to find the South celestial pole. Check out the more details instructions here for using Crux (Souther Cross) and the Alpha and Beta Centauri (Pointers) to more accurately find the point that stars will rotate around.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_pole

By: Susheel Chandradhas

Susheel Chandradhas — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 19:13:39 +0000

Love this… Unfortunately where I live, the sky goes pink every night… I’d have to drive out about 2-3 hours before I can get a dark sky. Very likely that it’s worth the trouble.

By: Tami

Tami — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 19:23:29 +0000

Great article. I’d love to see the post on image stacking in Photoshop too.

By: Patrick Anderson

Patrick Anderson — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 19:07:21 +0000

I’ve been fascinated with star trails since I was a boy – saw my first in one of those old “Time-Life” nature books.

I read about a similar technique in Sky & Telescope magazine a number of years ago. I would love to do these more often.

Here’s an example I shot earlier this summer at Devil’s Tower in Wyoming.

http://pjaphoto.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!CB835C39033EE67F!434.entry

Thanks for posting this – I love to see how others accomplish this!

By: evan johnson

evan johnson — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 10:29:28 +0000

I’ve been doing a lot of long exposure shots lately and have the star swirl shot on my list but I’m procrastinating and keep moving it down the list.

Thanks for the article though, very helpful.

http://photoexpose.blogspot.com/

- Evan

By: Chris Luckhardt

Chris Luckhardt — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 04:48:33 +0000

Great article and thanks for using my photo (the last one, credited to “motionblur”).

I would like to clarify that my image is a single shot without the use of stacking software. I did use Noise Ninja to clean up the image a bit. For the record, I used my old Rebel XT body, the exposure time was 771 seconds, an aperture of F/3.5, 200 IS) and my 28-135mm lens, set wide and using the infinity setting.

All of my star trails photos are single exposure images. At one time I had considered the stacking technique, but once I purchased the Rebel XTi, I found there was no need, thanks to its mostly noise free captures.

For another example, using my Rebel XTi in a single capture with *no* Photoshopping, please see this image: http://flickr.com/photos/motionblur/2476300145/

By: batman

batman — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 21:37:48 +0000

this is great – just what i’ve been looking for.

keep it up – ill be keeping tabs.

kind regards

By: Suzanne

Suzanne — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 21:08:14 +0000

Just Amazing. I was living in San Diego so getting away from the lights was difficult. I now live in northwest Montana in the mountains, just rural enough. Tonight I’ll try it. Simple instructions, just like I need. Will keep you posted. Thanks!!!!

By: Ross Goodman

Ross Goodman — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 20:20:22 +0000

I managed to get this shot:

the other night using my Nikon P5100.
I used the software provided here : http://startrails.de/

Ross

By: kimrose

kimrose — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 17:22:31 +0000

Very interesting! Came about 2 days to late though :P I went out to the desert and took some star photos Sat. night and they came out pretty awful… At least I learned something from this article and now I want to go try it again!

Question… how long should you wait between shots? Like if you have a longer exposure… and how much does this kill the battery?