Quick question about stacking star trails...

Hello all...

I've always done star trail photography the old-fashioned way: 1 frame. But, I'm thinking about giving this whole stacking business a shot. I downloaded the Startrails.de software, and hoping to go out in a few days to shoot (the Moon won't be around to mess things up).

I usually like to have something in the foreground (like a temple, statue, etc)...do I expose every frame perfectly as if I was only going to take ONE shot? Or is there any trickery to be done with compensating or anything?

Thanks...

By the way...here's the spot I'm thinking about returning to...it's a Buddhist temple built INTO the mountain (what you see are only the entranceways). Unfortunately it was almost full moon, so I couldn't do any truly decent trails...11 minute exposure:

Wow...3 days and no replies. But if someone starts a thread about UV filters or "so-called professionals with Facebook pages," it'll get 500 replies in the first 10 minutes, even if it's the 5th such thread that week. I'm a little disappointed, guys.

Anyways...as it turns out, the foreground should be underexposed, just as I suspected (though, I didn't actually do it that way this time). Thankfully I could pull the highlights back enough to make it work, but I'll definitely know for next time...as will anybody else, hopefully, who searches this forum from now on!

Happy shooting.

PS: The shot came out amazing. I went up to the top of a mountain and found a Buddhist temple in the middle of a pond. Using that as a foreground, I shot 273 frames (for 2.5 hours) of star trails...I'm still processing it (got a bit of light in from the side...pretty sure it's lens flare), but I'll post it up in a day or two.

Hey LowRiderS10, the photo is very nice, looks like a beautiful place to visit and photograph. Unfortunately it seems to me that recently the Astronomy Sharing Knowledge Section has been slow recently, don't know why. Perhaps if you post this in the Astronomy Photo Sharing Section, there is more traffic there.

Thanks! I'll try that next time!

I just converted the frames I shot into a time-lapse AVI as well! Kind of cool how many things you can get out of a single shoot.

So far, I've processed some of the individual images (stars are just dots), processed the whole batch into one startrail image and processed them as an AVI for a time-lapse movie...this could get addictive!!!

curious to see the picture!!

Thanks! Here's a still grabbed from it! I sent the original off to my dad (who's a Photoshop whiz) and asked him to remove a faint red smudge on the right hand side. At first I thought it was lens flare...then, when I looked at each individual shot, I realized that it was a small cloud drifting by...it ruins the picture (for me, anyways, as it's unrecognizable as a cloud in the stacked picture), but I think it actually adds to a single frame...anyways...this is one of the roughly 280 shots...little teaser:

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So, star stacking.
Everyone has there own way. I personally like to timelapse so I do 900 or so stills over 2, 3, 4, 5, 6... hours depending on the time of day/night.
You can then compile these into avi for motion video, 0.02 seconds per picture which gives fluid motion or you can load into your program of choice, mine being photoshop, layers (via bridge) and then select all and use lighten.

http://www.youtube.com​/watch?v=LpmQuNll9ak
This was my first attempt, as you can see during the video progression it does get better. So practice in this does make you better.
I'll never be up there with the pros and serious amateurs but I enjoy it.

Try to take a few practice pictures, look at them, do they look good for just one exposure, if so imagine that 700 times. They do come out excellent. Just remember your gaps between shots, I use 1 second and 20-30 seconds of open shutter at iso 800, f5. Feel free to bump up the iso to get milkyway. My camera is good but it's not cutting edge int he slightest but it does the job for what I want.

Get some more pictures up! That location looks stunning, i'd be there all the time after that perfect night.

Thanks for the reply, but yeah, I figured it out on my own haha...for some reason even though the SINGLE images came out well exposed, when stacked (through the Startrails.de program), the temple was a bit hot. Next time I'm going to underexpose slightly to counter that program. I can always pull shadows on a single image...that way the sky will be slightly darker too.

It's really funny, when you look at the individual shots, you can see that the moon was starting to rise, as the sky starts to lighten!

I'm definitely going to be back there...and a few other places as well!

LowriderS10 wrote in post #15886555
Thanks! Here's a still grabbed from it! I sent the original off to my dad (who's a Photoshop whiz) and asked him to remove a faint red smudge on the right hand side. At first I thought it was lens flare...then, when I looked at each individual shot, I realized that it was a small cloud drifting by...it ruins the picture (for me, anyways, as it's unrecognizable as a cloud in the stacked picture), but I think it actually adds to a single frame...anyways...this is one of the roughly 280 shots...little teaser:

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Beautiful shot.

IT'S DONE AND POSTED!!!!



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