How to photograph the starry sky.

The magic of the stars: how to capture the night sky on a smartphone?

Capturing the beauty of the night sky in a photo is not an easy task. You need good optics, thorough training and some knowledge. So, it’s not worth getting involved with a smartphone like this? Not at all. Thanks to high-aperture optics, modern camera phones are capable of producing good shots. How to photograph the starry sky and not end up with a gray mess? Let's find out with the help of HONOR 20 Pro.

The key to a successful photo is careful preparation. Therefore, even before leaving home, it is better to take care of finding a location. For a night landscape, a place that is far from extraneous illumination of megacities and large objects is suitable. Of course, it’s not difficult to go out onto the balcony and click on the moon, but the result is unlikely to please you. The best option is a cottage in the wilderness or any place remote from civilization where the sky is clearly visible.

In addition, it is worth checking the weather forecast. It’s a shame to drive a hundred kilometers and find that the Milky Way is covered in clouds. It is important not to miscalculate the phase of the moon. If she is not the main subject of the photo, a new moon is ideal, because this way the stars will be visible better.

When getting ready to go, you will have to take, in addition to your smartphone, a couple more things: a tripod with a mount and a flashlight. Even a small tripod is suitable - one that fits in a jeans pocket or backpack. The main thing is that it is stable on an uneven surface and allows you to securely fix the device. A pocket light source is also sufficient.

When the flashlight is in your backpack, the camera phone is screwed to a tripod, and the city is far behind you, the last stage of preparation remains - choosing a good composition. As photographers know, the closer you are to your subject, the better the results. And since Elon Musk has not yet helped us get closer to the stars so that we can take out a smartphone and film our masterpiece, we will have to find the foreground on Earth. Anything will do - grass, sunflowers, trees, unlit houses. It is important that they complement the surrounding picture and fit into the idea of ​​the photo.

So, it's time to start shooting. A good result, of course, cannot be obtained without knowledge of the nuances of the device’s camera. Therefore, it is better to understand his tricks in advance. Our tool - HONOR 20 Pro - is equipped with a main module with an impressive 48 MP resolution and f/1.4 aperture. This is very useful in the dark: the higher the aperture value, the more light the sensor captures. This has a positive effect on the detail of the frame. The numbers here are comparable to those of professional lenses, which promises good results - but how to apply this in practice?

We select a composition by eye, aim at the object and turn on manual mode. We set a long shutter speed - about 15 seconds. All this time, the device will shoot continuously to get one frame. Therefore, fixation is important: even the slightest fluctuations will give a blurry picture. If you set the shutter speed faster, the image will become too dark. If you choose a longer one, the rotation of the planet will affect it - the stars in the photo will turn into white stripes instead of dots. However, with proper skill, this is also not difficult to use, creating the effect of a meteor shower. To avoid the camera moving when you press the button, you should set the timer to delayed shutter mode - a couple of seconds is enough.

Crap! We missed an important detail: the flashlight remained in the pocket. It’s not for nothing that photography is called light painting. We take out our “brush” and press the shutter again - this time we don’t stand with our mouth open, but point the flashlight at the object chosen as the center of the composition. There are many options for creativity: for example, drawing on surfaces, highlighting details, filling an object with light. Experiment by photographing yourself or your silhouette - a person against a background of stars always enlivens the frame.

On the other hand, strong light sources, such as headlights or windows of a nearby building, can ruin the picture by creating overexposure. If the full moon is the brightest spot in the frame, you need to set the exposure to negative in manual mode to balance out its glow.

An interesting result can be achieved by adjusting the color temperature, which is available in Pro mode. Here you should focus on your own taste. The artistic effect can be adjusted later in the editor - HONOR 20 Pro allows you to save images in RAW format without losing the original information.

How to photograph stars and meteors

First, we need to take care of the camera. Almost any modern SLR camera with a kit lens is suitable for photographing stars. We won’t judge digital compacts with non-replaceable optics; that’s a separate topic.

Advanced devices will have one significant advantage - high permissible photosensitivity (ISO). For example, the photo below was taken at ISO6400, which is unacceptable for cheap cameras.

Lens for night photography

As for the lens, for shooting meteors and stars, aperture is extremely desirable, which, as you know, cannot be too much. f/2.8 is quite enough. f/3.5 - it’s already a little dark, but you can still live. The width of the angle is also of great importance: stars are constantly moving, and this must be taken into account. If you have a lens with a focal length (FR) of 18-24mm on a full-format camera (or 12-16mm on a cropped camera), then the shutter speed that you can set does not exceed 20 seconds.

Take a test frame, look at 100% magnification, and you will see star tracks (stars instead of dots take on the appearance of lines). If you do not need high resolution of the final image, you can increase the shutter speed to 30 seconds, and subsequently reduce the size and publish it on the Internet - no one will guess that the shutter speed was long. for example, frames with a 30-second exposure can be shot with a 10mm fisheye attached to a full-frame camera, which will avoid the appearance of tracks. Or rather, they are there, but they are visible only at 100% magnification.

For convenience, a table has been compiled. If you don't know what camera you have, see the third column

Focal length - Shutter speed for FF - Shutter speed for crop

• 10mm - 40s - 30s
• 14mm - 35s - 25s
• 18mm - 25s - 15s
• 24mm - 20s - 12s
• 35mm - 12s - 8s
• 50mm - 8s - 6s

How to use the table? Very simple. Find the focal length of your lens in the left column (for example, 18mm), then if you have a full-frame camera (if so, then you already know this), then look at the second column - this will be the maximum shutter speed for you. If you have a cropped camera (Nikon d90, d60, d3000, d5000, d7000, etc., Canon 1000d, 50d, 7d, etc.), then look at the third column, your maximum shutter speed will be indicated there.

But you don't have to blindly follow the rules described above! If you want to capture the movement of the stars, then the shutter speed, on the contrary, should be increased up to 60 minutes. Accordingly, the ISO will have to be lowered and the aperture closed so as not to overexpose the frames.

Elbrus at night, exposure 10 minutes. The sun has recently set

Now let's talk about light sensitivity (ISO) for photographing the night sky

The higher it is, the better. But don't be silly! Explore the camera's capabilities! For Nikon d7000 you can safely set ISO3200, or carefully 6400. For my Nikon d600 you can safely set it to 6400. Almost all the shots of the Bermamyt starfall were shot at ISO6400. But every camera has its upper limit, when the amount of noise begins to grow faster than new details of the starry sky are added. For example, on d90, never set the sensitivity above 1600, otherwise you would then have to thoroughly reduce noise. Low ISO can be compensated for by wider angles and slower shutter speeds, so go for it!

Aperture when shooting stars

When shooting starry skies, and especially meteors, we need to get the maximum amount of light in the shortest amount of time, so we have to open the aperture. All lenses have their own maximum aperture value, usually f/1.4, 1.8, 2.8, 3.5, 4 - if you don’t know what this is, then take a close look at your lens. It's written there =)

The lower the number, the more light hits the matrix. BUT! For all lenses, at the maximum open aperture, the image quality is worse than at a closed one. For example, when shooting the sky at f/1.4, you can be very disappointed: instead of stars you will get sad blurs. After taking one frame, enlarge it by 100% and study it carefully. If the stars are blurry and look like blurs, then first check the focusing accuracy, and only then close the aperture, for example, to 2.8. The pictures will become darker, but the picture quality will increase. If you have a cheap kit lens, then don’t worry, set the maximum allowable 3.5 and shoot! You can't do anything worse.

Focusing when photographing the sky

There are problems with this, and big ones. The fact is that for most lenses, the position of the “infinity” icon on the focus ring does not correspond to real infinity. It’s very easy to verify this: on a sunny day, go outside, find the most distant object or horizon, focus and look at the focus ring. You will be surprised that the infinity symbol does not line up exactly with the mark. Remember this position, or better yet, stick a strip of adhesive tape on the lens and make a mark on it with a marker. In the dark, you won't have to take thirty-five thousand frames, frantically turning the focus ring from side to side, trying to get sharpness and missing falling meteors. And don’t expect that in complete darkness the camera will be able to focus on the machine gun. Only with pens!

You will also need a tripod and a remote control (or at least a delay release). But I hope you already guessed this. However, you can shoot stars without a remote control and not use a shutter delay: you will need a very rigid tripod, steady hands, and even when shooting a black sky, small vibrations of the camera during the first second do not affect anything at all.

Well, we have studied the technical part of the issue, now let's get down to practice.

Where to photograph stars and the milky way?

First of all, when planning to photograph the stars, remember: there is nothing to catch in the city. The city creates a lot of light, which highlights the moisture and dust suspended in the atmosphere. This phenomenon in itself does not prevent us from seeing the brightest stars, but it is impossible to see the Milky Way from the city (unless an energy disaster occurred with a total shutdown of everything). Therefore, first of all, take care of the shooting location. You need to go as far away from populated areas as possible, further, and even further. Even from Bermamyt you can clearly see the light pollution from the cities of the KMS:

As you can see, the lower part of the sky above the horizon was illuminated by city lights (and in cities there was generally haze, and the stars were almost invisible, ha ha). Although in Bermamyt such a phenomenon can no longer interfere, but only decorates the frame. In the city, with the same shooting parameters, we would get a bright yellow sky without a single star.

When is the best time to photograph the starry sky?

When there is no moon in the starry sky!

Yes, the moon can really ruin your night life, especially the full moon at Zenith. Therefore, when planning to go on a star hunt, familiarize yourself with the lunar calendar. For example, during a trip to Bermamyt, the month was very young and hung low above the horizon, and then disappeared completely, leaving only an interesting orange stripe on the horizon and a beautiful reflection on the slopes of Elbrus. And this is good.

View from the top of the plateau after sunset

In addition to the moon, you will have to take care of good weather. How you will do this, no one knows. For some, it helps to make a sacrifice to the gods, for others to pray, for some, petting a cat helps their luck, and some eccentrics even use weather forecasts. But the fact remains: we need clear skies!

In what area of ​​the sky should we look for shooting stars?

They say that the best part of the sky for photographing falling meteors is 45 degrees from the zenith. This is somewhere in the middle between the horizon and a line going straight up (may astronomers forgive my denseness). However, interesting results can be achieved if you take pictures vertically upward with a wide-angle lens. And if you are shooting the Perseids, then it would be logical to turn the lens towards the constellation Perseus, here is an example:

The above frame was shot on Nikon d7000, ISO6400, shutter speed 15 seconds. BUT! Make no mistake, not all meteors were captured in the frame at once. More on this below. This is where you definitely shouldn’t look for falling meteors—on the horizon. Firstly, the optical properties of the atmosphere will not allow you to see almost anything, and secondly, the horizon is usually bright.

How to find the constellation Perseus? Here's a picture from the Internet:

How to find the constellation Perseus

How to catch a meteor in the frame?

Point the camera at one point, make it shoot continuously, and wait, and wait, and wait. Sooner or later, meteors will begin to fall into your lens, and you will have to select from thousands of frames those same 30 pieces with tracks of falling space debris, and bring them together. And it's not a joke! In the example above, the author took about 1200 frames, selected 38 of them with meteors, and then stitched the pictures together. This is possible if you are shooting in the direction of the North Star. Then, when the frames rotate around an imaginary center - the North Star - they will precisely align with each other. Let’s cut off something unnecessary, and what’s left is this rosette of a meteor shower.

In any case, patience, work and a broken shutter will grind everything down!))

Ushakov Mikhail

How to photograph the starry sky

Many amateur photographers, admiring the bright stars at night, want to capture this sight on their DSLR. Your first attempts in 100% of cases will be doomed to failure. This photography lesson is about night photography, it will allow the amateur photographer to master simple technical training and acquire the initial necessary skills.

Night Photography Basics

If an amateur photographer has only experience of daytime photography, he is sometimes completely confused and does not know how to get a decent result in difficult lighting conditions. And if it's night photography in winter, the situation becomes even more complicated. Despite the apparent complexity of the task, it is not at all difficult to obtain beautiful photographs of the night sky.

It is worth noting that this article will not talk about professional astronomical photography, but about amateur night photography, with the camera and lens that most amateur photographers have. Many have seen photographs of the night starry sky; they usually have three ways of implementation:

1. Photograph of a starry sky with clear star points;
2. Photo of a starry sky with moving stars along a radial trajectory;
3. Photograph of a night natural landscape against the background of a starry sky.

In this photograph of the starry sky, the foreground is enhanced by the snow

How to prepare

For night photography without additional lighting sources, long camera shutter speeds are used; their duration can reach up to several minutes. If you want to capture a photograph of a dynamic starry sky, a long exposure is what you need.

In order to get clear photographs of the starry sky, you need a faster shutter speed, but to reduce it you will have to raise the ISO value in the camera. Too high ISO values ​​(from 1200) will lead to noise. They can be removed during subsequent processing in a photo editor, or you can turn on the noise reduction function in the camera.

In this photo of the starry sky, there is stray light in the background. The foreground is not very informative.

What kind of camera do you need?

For night photography, you can use any camera that you have. The technical parameters of even inexpensive cameras allow you to get decent results. It is desirable that the camera has a large matrix.

There are inexpensive cameras Canon 5d and Nikon D700 with a full-size matrix. They can be purchased on the secondary market at a very reasonable price. Inexpensive amateur cameras with a small matrix will not cope with night photography. All details of the night sky will disappear in the noise and turn into an indistinguishable mess.

For our purposes, a crop factor of 1.5-1.6 will be optimal. Modern digital cameras with crop factor 2 can also be used for night photography. They have high ISO values ​​and do not produce much noise in the image. However, a camera with a larger sensor area has an advantage.

A DSLR camera is preferable without a DSLR. An optical viewfinder will allow you to take photographs in any lighting conditions, while an electronic viewfinder will make it difficult to frame in the dark.

What lens do you need?

Wide-angle optics allow you to get the most spectacular pictures of the starry sky. Long-focus optics will not suit us for this purpose, unless the task is to photograph the moon. Any amateur camera has a kit lens at its disposal; it will be quite enough to take a photo of the starry sky.

High aperture ratio is not important in this case. But if you have a lens with a fixed focal length at your disposal, the detail will be higher than with amateur optics. In addition, an aperture ratio of 1.4 - 2.8 can allow you to reduce the camera's shutter speed by a couple of steps. For shooting the night sky, the optimal focal length of the lens is 15 mm. up to 24 mm. When using wide-angle optics, you need to be aware of the possible geometric distortions it can introduce.

Fixed focal length lenses will give better resolution

What else do you need for night photography?

• A tripod, it is important that it is stable, it must support the weight of the camera and withstand strong gusts of wind.
• It is advisable to have a cable release or remote control for the camera. This will prevent camera shake from pressing the shutter button. If they are not there, then I recommend using the mirror pre-raising function.
• If you are photographing for a long time in winter, you will need a spare battery for the camera or a power bank for recharging.
• For night landscapes, take a flashlight with you, even a cell phone may come in handy. They will help you illuminate the foreground if necessary.

How to choose a time and place

For night landscape photography, excess light will be a big hindrance. To avoid stray light, you need to shoot the starry sky outside the city. The light of street lamps, houses, passing cars - all this will not have the best effect on the result.

As a rule, a night photo shoot in nature is planned in advance. You need to find a place during daylight hours. This will allow you to correctly navigate in the dark, you will know the access roads, you will be able to arrange the composition of the frame in advance and know whether you will need an additional light source.

Take into account the weather forecast, what is the point of going for a night shoot in cloudy weather? A bright moon can also be a problem, so look at the lunar calendar and choose a moonless night or not a full moon phase. A not full and not bright moon can be a beautiful decoration of the night starry sky. To avoid wasting time, check what time the sun sets. Check the route and travel time in advance.

How to create a composition in the dark

If you intend to make a masterpiece, then you cannot do without a preliminary test survey of the area.

• Make test takes, estimate the height of the horizon point at which you want to place the starry sky;
• Select the approximate boundaries of the frame based on landmarks, these could be tall trees or bushes, this will balance the composition of the landscape;
• If you want to make a panorama, mark the scene into several frames.
• Do not exaggerate the horizon line in the frame; the foreground should also be filled.
• To highlight it, use additional light sources - a flashlight, light from car headlights or a cell phone.

Remember, a foreground that falls into black can ruin the frame

How to set up your camera

Now let's discuss how to configure camera settings for night photography. If you try to use the camera's auto mode to photograph the night sky, you won't succeed. Automatic mode will try to measure the average density and you will not be able to get rich blacks. What should be done?

1. Switch the camera control mode completely to manual mode; to do this, on the camera mode control dial you need to combine the icon with the letter “M” with the mark on the camera body.
2. Disable autofocus on the lens and manually set the infinity distance on it. Before night shooting, make sure under normal lighting conditions that when you align the infinity mark, you do not lose sharpness.
3. Set the initial aperture value on the lens in manual mode, test at F-5.6
4. Set the ISO value to 800 for the first samples and gradually change it up or down depending on the task:
5. Set the camera shutter speed to 1 sec. Then select the desired exposure value using trial methods.

An example of a correctly constructed composition of a landscape with a starry sky

If you want to get a photo of the sky with clear stars, then the shutter speed should not be too long. To do this, you will have to raise the ISO value and open the lens aperture to the maximum possible F-1.4. A – 2.8. If you need a trail that the stars will leave on the sky, then in this case the shutter speed should be as long as possible, and the aperture will have to be closed to F-8.

There is no universal ready-made parameter for the correct exposure for night photography. The desired exposure will have to be selected using a trial method. In conclusion, I want to share my personal experience as a professional photographer - before winter photography, place the camera along with your bag in the home refrigerator for several hours. This will avoid the formation of condensation on the camera and lens when leaving a warm room outside.

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5 Comments

The starry sky always instills romantic feelings and gives inner spiritual peace. I often watch sunsets and the night sky with beautiful constellations. Good equipment with an expensive lens produces beautiful photographs. After the article, I’m tormented by thoughts about whether to buy a professional camera? Beautiful landscapes are my weakness =)

Good optics remain liquid much longer. New camera models are constantly updated, and major lens updates occur once every 10 years.

I often took pictures at night, but never tried to photograph the starry sky. It always seemed to me that nothing interesting would come of it. However, after reading the article, I realized that with good optics and the necessary training, you can capture interesting footage.

To photograph the sky and stars you only need a good camera because... an ordinary camera or phone camera cannot convey all the beauty of the starry sky without Photoshop. And the tips are great for those who have a good camera, but don’t know how to use it.

In modern digital cameras, a stabilizer is a great help; it is especially effective on cropped matrices. The Olympus stub is capable of compensating for up to six steps. But for a stock photo or photo bank it is still better to use a full-format camera and a tripod; for commercial photography there are completely different requirements. For yourself, you can take a beautiful picture of the starry sky with your phone, the main thing is to find a fulcrum to avoid blur or movement.

How to photograph the starry sky

There seems to be nothing difficult about ordinary photography. We just take the camera, point it at the object we are interested in and press the shutter. But there is a category of photography, and I hope you will agree, that requires knowledge of the basic principles.

In this article we will focus on something more advanced. Let's learn how to photograph the starry sky. This process is also known as astrophotography .

To photograph the stars, we dig much deeper. We will learn how to use manual camera control, which aperture, shutter speed, ISO, etc. to choose. By the way, for this purpose, be sure to select night shooting mode . This will give you more options when editing the final image. If you still have doubts, let's take a closer look.

Let's start with what we need:

Tripod - We're going to be dealing with exposure times of tens of seconds, so something like this is more than useful.
We need to stabilize the camera. Manual Camera manually setting the ISO and shutter speed, which makes a big difference when photographing the stars.
Wide aperture lens a lot of light and f/2.8 will do. Seems like a blur zone for astrophotography. When paired with an ultra-wide-angle lens, depth of field won't be an issue.

With this set you can already start. But of course there are many things left that we have to discuss.

Location!

So, it’s not enough to just collect all the equipment, you need to find the right place to successfully photograph the night sky . a major problem for astrophotography .
If you live within a large city, you will have to drive at least an hour to get away from the light. As we can see in the image below, even a city with a population of about 30 thousand people a few tens of kilometers away can still result in some disturbing light pollution.

Let's not forget that we are going to photograph the sky, so to successfully choose a location on earth, we also focus on the position of the stars and constellations in the sky. This has a great effect on the visual perception of the photograph. You can use an app called Starwalk on your iPhone to track celestial bodies. For example, a photograph of the Milky Way can produce an amazing visual effect.

basic settings

When photographing these tiny points of light, we need as much light as possible. Therefore, it is important to use a combination of high ISO , wide aperture and long shutter speed .

For the photo of kayaks under the stars, I used ISO 1250 at f/2.8 and a shutter speed of 30 seconds. As you can see, there is some light pollution on the lower right side of the photo from the city, which is about 30 minutes away.

To minimize light pollution , you need figure out where it 's coming from . The best way to do this is to take several consecutive shots across the horizon using the highest ISO setting. We simply reduce the time spent on each frame. We will not use these images at the final stage, but they play an important role in letting us know which parts of the horizon are off limits.

As for exposure time , it is better to maintain as little as possible. As much as possible. Otherwise, given the rotation of the planet, the position of the stars will change. For example, if you look closely at a photograph taken with a 30-second exposure, you can see some movement in the stars.

Below we see a somewhat exaggerated photograph of star trails.

Photo processing

Processing images of the night sky can be a little intimidating. Don't expect amazing results from your first try. As we have already noted, use the RAW format in your camera, if it is provided for, when you are going to shoot the starry sky.

The image above is specifically presented in two versions to clearly show the difference before and after processing. LR4 instrument settings used. The experiment continues until you are satisfied with the result.

How to photograph the starry sky?

The starry sky has always attracted people with its beauty and mystery. Imagine how fun it is to photograph it! What is needed for this? Camera with wide-angle lens, tripod and flashlight.

Clear and moonless nights are ideal for shooting stars. It’s better to get out into nature, moving away from the city, because within its boundaries the stars are almost invisible.

Since the stars move across the sky, at a very long shutter speed they will blur and turn into arcs - “star tracks”. To make the tracks long and beautiful, you need to take a very long shutter speed (tens of minutes), for this you will need a special cable release.

Canon 5d mark 2, Canon EF 28 1.8 USM
20 sec, F2.0, ISO 2500, stitching three horizontal frames.

If you want to take pictures with a real, sharp starry sky, you will have to limit the shutter speed. To determine it, there is the “rule of 600”: dividing the number 600 by the focal length gives the maximum allowable shutter speed.

For example, a lens has a focal length of 30 mm. Then 600/30=20 seconds. This means that at a shutter speed of 20 seconds at a focal length of 30mm, the stars will remain quite sharp. Shutter speeds are limited, and this is when there is insufficient light. In such conditions, it is necessary to use the highest aperture optics, shoot at the widest apertures and increase ISO to 1600-3200 units.

When shooting the starry sky, you must use M mode, fully controlling the process. The camera's automation and exposure meter will not work accurately; you should not rely on their data. Determine the correctness of the selected exposure experimentally - test shots.

Shoot in RAW format, it gives the best image quality, which is especially important in the context of such difficult lighting conditions and shooting at high ISO values. Choosing this format will allow you to set the white balance with maximum accuracy after shooting.

How to focus in a dark night? Autofocus will not work in such darkness; you will have to switch to manual focusing. The sky and stars are infinitely far from us, so the focus is on “infinity”.

Wide-angle lenses allow you to obtain a huge depth of field even at an open aperture, and their “infinity” starts from a few meters. This allows you to sharpen not only the sky, but also the foreground, if it is included in the frame. In this case, it is necessary to compose the frames so that even the foreground is far enough away from us so that it remains sharp.

If there is a foreground in the photo, you can highlight it with a flashlight. Give free rein to your imagination, think about what kind of lighting, at what angle and what intensity is best for your plot. With a narrow beam of a flashlight, during the exposure time you can have time to “outline” and gradually illuminate everything that is needed. Imagine that your plot is a children's coloring book, which you color with a flashlight marker. If you light objects a little from the side, you can better show their volume. You should not use car headlights or other powerful light sources to illuminate the foreground - they will most likely just illuminate everything. You can also try using a flash to illuminate the foreground, setting the pulse power to the minimum.

How to photograph the starry sky.

To come in

How to shoot the starry sky

Shooting the starry sky has become very popular and since we are talking about shooting at long exposures, let's talk about shooting the starry sky.

Here are a couple of tools and tips for shooting starry skies and star trails. Don't forget that you will need a lot of time to shoot. To photograph the starry sky, the night must be clear, dark and cloudless. Moonlight is not good for shooting stars. A large number of stars can be seen in particularly dark places where there is no light pollution from the city or street lighting. In such places you can even see the Milky Way in the night sky. By the way, during our photo tours to Spain, you will be in such a place. We will live in a real Andalusian house (finca) in a nature reserve, surrounded by almond trees and flowers. Near the house you can see hares, lizards, eagles and other birds and animals. There are no towns or villages around the house within a few kilometers. Therefore, from the roof of the house or from the terrace you can shoot Star Trek with almond trees in the foreground.

The North Star is located at the point in the direction of the imaginary axis around which the Earth rotates. If you include the North Star in a photo, you will have a fixed point in the sky around which all the other stars will revolve. In order to capture beautiful star trails, you need to know roughly where everything is in the sky. You don't need to know every constellation in the sky, but understanding where the important stars or constellations for your photography are is very helpful.

The North Star can be found very easily in the night sky. It - as we have already written - is located at the point in the direction of the imaginary axis around which the Earth rotates, passing through the North Pole. Contrary to many claims, Polaris is not the brightest star in the night sky. This is a fairly inconspicuous star, but with a few tricks it can be easily found in the sky.

Even if you don't know anything about the stars, you can easily find the constellation Ursa Major. The North Star is next to him. Mentally extend the imaginary line of the front of the Big Dipper 5 times, and you will see the polar star located in the constellation Ursa Minor.

You can quickly and easily find the North Star using applications for your iPhone or smartphone, such as Google Sky Maps. There you can get information such as names of stars, planets, direction of the North Pole, etc. If you place the polar star somewhere in your photo, it will be the core of all the surrounding stars.

If you arrive on location in the dark, you will need some time for your eyes to adjust to the lighting conditions. If the sky is clear, then you will quickly see a huge number of stars. Especially in mountainous areas, the sight of the starry sky takes your breath away. Set up a tripod, select the shooting direction and foreground. Depending on the shooting direction, you will have different shapes of star tracks. From the side of the polar star, round tracks will be obtained; when shooting to the south, the tracks will be more likely to be straight.

When shooting with wide-angle lenses, even with a shutter speed of about 40 seconds, you still won't see any star trails. And you will see them if you shoot with a telephoto lens.

Even with a shutter speed of 30 seconds, short trails of stars can be visible in the photograph. If you want to get interesting, impressive shots of star trails, your shutter speed should be much longer. The stars move very slowly across the sky (more precisely, the Earth rotates slowly), so plan on shooting one motif for at least 2 hours. It is better, of course, to have even more time for each motive. The longer you shoot in one place, the more impressive the star trails look in the photo.

Star Treks can be shot with multi-minute/multi-hour exposures, or can be created from multiple exposures. When shooting with a 2 hour exposure, the disadvantage is that it is almost impossible to evaluate the result in advance. Often the photo turns out too bright and noisy. Therefore, it makes sense to take several pictures and combine them either in Photoshop or using, for example, the Startrails.de program

In order to correctly determine the shutter speed, you can use the calculator that we talked about yesterday.

The camera settings for this type of photography are quite simple. Aperture to suit your creative needs (typically f8 to f11). ISO no more than 100, otherwise the pictures will be very noisy.

Exposure time is 5-10 minutes, preferably 15 minutes for individual shots. You can easily calculate how many shots will be needed to shoot for about 3 hours.

You can use a programmable remote control where you can set the number of shots and the shooting interval. Press the start button once and then wait until everything is over.

In complete darkness, it is often difficult to find a suitable focus point. Focus on some distant light point or use a flashlight (i.e. create a focus point yourself using a flashlight). Once you have found the focus point, be sure to turn off autofocus, otherwise the camera will again try to focus on the black sky.

If you can't find the focus point, set the focus manually to infinity. However, remember that many lenses do not have a sharp range of infinity, so for optimal sharpness, go back to 1-2mm.

Camera with manual settings and “Bulb” function
Tripod
Remote control

Star trail photography takes time and patience. If you do everything right, you will be rewarded with excellent results.

Here are some photos by Australian photographer Lincoln Harrison for inspiration:

How to photograph the starry sky. Instructions for Beginners

When I first saw photographs of night landscapes with a sky in which thousands of stars are visible, I immediately wanted to learn how to shoot the same way. I took my camera, went outside... and, naturally, I didn’t succeed the first time. I had to read a little and practice. But everything turned out to be much simpler than I thought. In my article I will give some simple tips that will help happy owners of DSLRs understand the issue.

What will you need?

By the way, we will not start with technology. For me, capturing some piece of the night sky is not an end in itself. This is an activity for an astronomer, not a photographer. Stars for me are a spectacular way to decorate a landscape. And landscape photography always begins with choosing a place and time. Over time, everything is very simple: you need a cloudless night. Summer or winter outside - the difference is not so great. Of course, in cold weather the matrix heats up less at long exposures, and there is less noise in the photographs. But the photographer freezes too quickly. As a result, I would not give priority to either summer or winter.

The location should not only look spectacular, but also be as far as possible from towns and cities illuminated by lanterns. They create light in the sky, against which the stars are simply not visible. So it’s best to do such filming somewhere at a dacha in the suburbs, and ideally, go a hundred kilometers from civilization.

Now we come to the issue of technology. It's better if you have a DSLR. But you can achieve good results with a mirrorless camera, you just have to face the problems of focusing in the dark. Wide-angle optics are most often needed. I often use 14mm and 16mm lenses at full frame. But the kit lens that comes with your amateur camera is also quite suitable. What you definitely can’t do without is a tripod. Shutter speeds will be long and the camera needs to be held securely. A cable release would also be useful. Although the first time you will be able to do without it. It is enough to use a shutter delay so that camera vibrations from touch have time to calm down by the time the shutter opens. Don't forget to dress for the weather, and also get a flashlight - the more powerful, the better. We charge the batteries and head out into the night...

Exposure parameters

This is where beginners have the most questions. Let's start with the simplest case - shooting a landscape on a cloudless moonlit night. We put the camera on a tripod, lower the ISO to 200 units (most often this is just enough). Try not to close the aperture too much, no stronger than f/4-f/5.6. And select the shutter speed in manual mode experimentally so that the brightness of the photo matches your creative idea. Warning: the shutter speed may be too long! If your camera cannot handle such a long shutter speed in manual mode (in some models the shutter speed is limited to 30 s), carefully increase the ISO.

Focusing

The next problem is focusing. At night, it is not automatically possible to focus on a dark sky. And in the viewfinder, most likely, nothing is visible at all. We do this: we find distant lights on the horizon (they are almost always and everywhere) and try to manually focus on them. You can take several control shots and, if necessary, adjust the focus. If the foreground appears in the frame (and what is a landscape without a foreground?), then it makes sense to focus on it, having previously illuminated it with a flashlight.

She's spinning!

In the stream of endless affairs and everyday worries, we often forget about such simple things as the rotation of the earth. The stars in the sky never stand in one place. They are constantly moving relative to the ground. Although every rule has its exceptions. The North Star still moves the least during the day. And approximately we can say that it stands still. And everyone else revolves around her. This is not visible at short shutter speeds, but at long shutter speeds it is clearly noticeable! If you want to get dotted stars in your photo, try to shoot at relatively short shutter speeds. If you want dashes instead of dots, increase the shutter speed.

"The Rule of Six Hundred"

There is a rule of thumb that allows you to determine the shutter speed at which the stars in the frame, due to the rotation of the earth, will begin to turn from dots to dashes. It's called the "rule of six hundred." Divide the number 600 by the equivalent focal length of your lens and you will get the corresponding shutter speed length in seconds. For a 16mm fisheye, for example, you can use shutter speeds up to 37s. And for a kit lens with a wide-angle position of 18 mm, it is better not to exceed a value of 20 s.

When it's completely dark

In some cases, we manage to move away from civilization to such a distance that the light of its cities is not visible in the sky at all. In this case, we have a chance to capture the spectacular Milky Way. Feel free to set the maximum allowable shutter speed, open the aperture a little wider and try increasing the ISO. Where the human eye saw just a dark sky, the camera sees much more!

Adding light

Have you forgotten about the flashlight yet? You can use it to highlight foreground details. You can use colored filters to achieve multi-colored lighting.

Star Tracks

Just above I wrote that with a long shutter speed you can capture the movement of stars. What if the shutter speed is very long? In fact, this will cause many problems: from overheating of the matrix to the need to close the aperture too much. And if you want to film the movement of stars across the sky, it is better to take several dozen frames from one place with a shutter speed of about 15-30 seconds, and then stitch them together automatically into one shot using the simple and free Startrails program, or using the famous Photoshop/