During the last photo outing with friends that are into photography, we had a little talk about staying out at night shooting star trail. I did saw some photos of star trail before; thanks to FlickR, you can see any type of photograph there. As for today, I’m still waiting for the night session with those friends of mine.
Anyway, I did some test on shooting star trail right from my home. I realized my house located next to the main road so I can expect the light from the lamp post in my images. I don’t care; this is just a personal test – to get that feel of shooting star trail.
So, the things you need to have are a sturdy tripod and a remote shutter. You can use your camera bag to low down the gravity by hanging it at the center of the tripod – that can give you extra support for your tripod. As for the camera, I use the Sony A200 and the SAL18-70mm lens (kit lens). The next thing you might need, a cup of coffee.
This following image was taken at 7 October 2008. If you note the bright white light on the center, it was the moon. Yeah, I shot a moon trail together with some star trail. I started shooting from 7.17 pm and it last for approximately 28 minutes. You might note that there was like a haze at the bottom part of the image. That was a light from the main road.
18mm, manual exposure, f11, ISO 100, approx. 28 minutes exposure.
This was taken at 11 October 2008. This time I changed the camera direction towards the area where I can get away from the light pollution a bit. I guess this time I managed to get a bit decent photos (though still very far away from satisfaction). But still, I got light pollution.
18mm, manual exposure, f5.6, ISO 200, approx. 48 minutes exposure.
This last one, I took four exposures of 15 minutes each. I started shooting sometimes around 7 p.m. You can see the moon trail is not smooth as I’ve stacked those four images into one. I am still wondering why I got such ‘haze’ in my image. Was that a heat or something?
Four 15 minutes exposure stacked together, 18mm, ISO 200, manual exposure and f8.
There is still room for improvement. I started to like shooting star trail, though waiting for 45 minutes is killing me. Some people don’t wait; they just let their camera open shutter for 3 to 4 hours.
Another thing is your preparation. You might want to check with the weather forecast to check if you can get a clear sky. Besides that, start shooting after 11 pm, as most aircraft doesn’t fly after that.
I will do this again so to improve certain aspect that will ensure the proper understanding on the technique and some other factor that I need to consider. This is fun, you guys should try this.