![]() ![]() One last thing to check – make sure there are no sprinklers set to run while you are out there. You’ve got the camera settings set, you’re location picked out and your shot framed. But be sure to bump your ISO back down – the lower you can get it, the better. If it’s too dark outside to see your framing, up the ISO on your camera as high as it will go so you can do a shorter shutter speed to snap a photo until you get the framing you desire. Once you’ve found your spot, you’ll need to frame your shot. I use The Photographer’s Ephemeris app ($8.99 USD) on my iPhone, which is a very handy app for night photographing. You’ll also need to pick a time when the night will be at its darkest and when the moon won’t be making its way through your framed shot. I think photos work better when they have something terrestrial in them – a photo of just the stars doesn’t help put the beauty of the heavens and the earth into perspective. ![]() You want to get away from city lights if possible, as you will see more of the stars and have less light pollution. One of the trickiest parts will be selecting your location. Photo Quality: I prefer RAW, but you could go straight JPG.Here are the settings I used for my photo: So you’ll want to maximize everything you can to have a 30-second exposure capture enough light to make it worthwhile. With the end product in mind, you’ll essentially capture as many 30-second photos as you can and later combine them together to create the star trails. iPhone (because it can get pretty boring with nothing to do).The Photographer’s Ephemeris App for iOS.A sturdy tripod (Manfrotto is what I use).I hope I made sense in explaining that, but I found it to be a pretty neat celestial capture (if I do say so myself).īefore even heading out to the location of your choice, you’ll need a few things. The point in the middle of these curves would be the equatorial line. On the right, you’ll notice they curve to the top and right edges of the photo. If you look at the star trails on the left side of the photo, you’ll notice they curve to the left and bottom of the photo and become more noticeable the further you get to the outskirts of the photo. While this was a pretty amazing outcome for my first attempt at this technique, and I thought I would share with others the steps I took to create it so that you can, too.īut first, I want to point out something in the photo that I think is really cool, and was only possible to capture to this degree using a wide-angle lens (10-22mm). Here’s the final outcome from my hour-long, 120-photo adventure. So I did some online photography research before heading up to the lake, and once the moon moved behind the cabin (roughly 12:30 am), I set up my gear and a camping chair and went to work – at least until the sprinklers came on one hour later. The lights from the cabin would have become washed out with a 10-15 minutes exposure, and I wanted to go a lot longer than that. But while vacationing at a family cabin along the shores of Bear Lake, I had to take a different approach. Up until now, I always took one long exposure photo to capture the nightly movement in the heavens, and it’s worked well for me on previous occasions (Arches National Park). I’ve always been amazed with photos of star trails, more specifically circumpolar ones. ![]()
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