Hello! I’m in touch with you, Timur Mustaev. I often see images of stars in the sky from professional photographers. They are filmed differently and with different angles, in different places, but certainly beautiful: a landscape against the backdrop of many stellar objects, the Milky Way or a real starfall created by the movement of luminous celestial bodies. Do you want to have such shots in your portfolio? My article is at your service.
Photographer's focus
The main question: how to photograph the starry sky? How to convey exactly the splendor that we see or how we wanted it to look? We can create miracles in Photoshop, but it will not be so valuable, because there will be no documentary or real reality in the photo.
Therefore, I advise you to be fully armed at the time of the photo shoot and try to get an almost perfect shot. To do this, you need to consider the following factors:
- Composition. Contrary to the possible idea that shooting the sky with stars is only about stellar bodies and the firmament, you should also concentrate on the surroundings. As with any type of photography, you need to think about what objects will be included in the picture. For example, trees unusual shape, mountains, valley, interesting natural objects, beautiful architectural structures- choose for yourself.
- Time. It is clear that you will have to take photographs at night, but when - when the stars are clearly visible and presented in maximum quantity. The night should be without clouds. It is advisable to monitor the phase of the moon: how bright it is and where exactly in the sky it will be at a particular moment. The time of year is strong of great importance does not have.
- Terrain. Firstly, you should choose a location that is more or less picturesque, since you will probably want to photograph the landscape, at least partially. Secondly, going out into nature is useful not only in search of beauty, but also in order to avoid light from city lights getting into the frame. Artificial lighting illuminates the sky; in principle, it will be superfluous in the picture.
- Technique. And there are two points here: the camera itself + optics. Of course, it’s good to have a high-quality camera that allows you to shoot in high resolution, do clear pictures, and it would also not hurt to have a separate noise reduction function. But don’t be upset if you don’t have a very advanced and modern camera. Even with Nikon d3100 you can take a good photo.
Pay more attention to the selected lens. If you plan to increase the illumination of the photo due to the open one and play with the f indicator, then you can’t go without high-aperture optics. Also, the device should be wide-angle, say, 16, 24 mm, etc. With such data, you can cover a very large part of the sky and the rest of the landscape.
- Additional accessories. Any illuminator you have will be useful, even a basic flashlight or flash, which in capable hands capable of a lot. Light will most likely be needed to illuminate nearby objects that could be more easily focused on. At this point you can also remember about colored ones in order to create original lighting.
But something else is more important when photographing the sky at night - a good one. It must be high enough and stable. It is he who will fix the camera when you set the long one. Why did I mention endurance? Find out below where we will talk about the settings.
How the professionals do it
We will, of course, talk about camera settings.
- Manual control. The camera can be almost any one, of any brand (for example, Canon or Nikon). But what it definitely should have is a manual mode, with which you can adapt as much as possible to rather difficult external conditions.
- Low ISO. Perhaps beginners may be surprised: we are shooting in almost absolute darkness, without high sensitivity we will only get a black picture! This is not true: the light sensitivity should be no more than 200 so as not to create noise. When photographing the sky and stars, the emphasis should be on shutter speed. And read about it further.
- Diaphragm. You shouldn’t open it too much, we need the largest one, since we want to capture the entire landscape. A large aperture, by the way, in such circumstances in any case will not give a noticeable increase in illumination.
- Excerpt- is of paramount importance. It is on this that all the lighting depends, and how the stars turn out, that is, either clear (short shutter speed) or blurred in motion (long shutter speed). It is better to select a specific value yourself, already at the filming location. Remember that the earth rotates, so at average time intervals the stars may also be blurry. Remember that many low- and mid-range cameras have the most large values equal to 30 seconds. This is enough to show stellar movement, but within a small range. Thus, a long shutter speed will both brighten the photo and turn dotted stars into dashed stars.
- Focus. The hardest thing with him is: what to focus on in the dark? Turn off auto mode immediately, it simply won’t help you at all. Using sleight of hand and a natural eye, we will have to adjust the focus. There's unlikely to be much visible in the viewfinder, so it's worth finding at least some lights and focusing on them. There is an option to illuminate the foreground of the scene, for example, with a flashlight, and focus on it.
When photographing with an amateur camera or an expensive professional camera, in any case, the image of the starry sky will have to be retouched to a certain extent. So don't worry if something doesn't turn out right, but don't get carried away with post-processing either! Rely on yourself and actively use the acquired knowledge.
If you want to understand your SLR camera better, to better understand what it is capable of, then the video course will be your assistant - Digital SLR for a beginner 2.0. Why this course? It's simple. It is intended for beginner photographers. It tells and shows everything in such a way that everything will become clear from the first viewing. Many beginners, having watched it, are already talking to their DSLR on a first-name basis!
Bye! Look for new things, set goals, grow, and above all, improve yourself! Don’t forget to visit my blog – the blog of your faithful guide in the world of photography!
All the best to you, Timur Mustaev.
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 a house or from a terrace you can film Star Trek from almond trees in the foreground.
polar Star
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 take off beautiful star treks, you should 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.
Preparation
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 see quickly enough great amount 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 shape star trails. 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.
Lens
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.
Excerpt
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 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 program Startrails.de
In order to correctly determine the shutter speed, you can use the calculator that we talked about yesterday.
Camera settings
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.
Focus
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.
Equipment
Camera with the ability to set manual settings and function"Bulb"
Tripod
Remote control
Photographing star trails 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:
© 2018 site
Altair, Vega and Ras Alhage
Many people admiring the starry sky on a clear night have a desire to photograph the spectacle they see. Unfortunately, these attempts are not always crowned with success, especially since a person who is accustomed to photographing exclusively during the day with plenty of light often has no idea how to approach photography in such seemingly unfavorable conditions. However, getting a beautiful night shot with rich colors, clearly visible constellations and a whitish streak of the Milky Way across the sky is easier than it might seem at first, and in this article I will try to cover the practical side of the issue as clearly as possible. Let me note that we are not talking about high-level astrophotography, but rather about ordinary shooting of the starry sky in the context of landscape photography. Detailed photography of deep space objects (galaxies, nebulae, quasars, etc.) requires very specific skills and tools, while decorating night landscape general plan Everyone can explore the Milky Way.
There are two types of photographs with the starry sky. In the first case, the stars are represented as individual points, i.e. approximately the same as we see them in real life. For getting similar photos relatively short (by night standards) shutter speeds are used - up to 30 s. In the second case, very long exposures are used - up to several hours (or a series of short exposures are stitched together later using a special program) - and due to the rotation of the Earth, the stars manage to trace long luminous trails in the sky, twisting around the celestial pole. Such images look very unusual, but personally I prefer the first type of photographs, as they are more realistic and at the same time more artistic. And since they are also much simpler technically, it is about obtaining such images, i.e. depicting the stars as conditionally motionless, we will talk.
Equipment
Camera
You will need a camera with a large sensor (crop factor no more than 2) and manual exposure settings, i.e. DSLR, mirrorless or, at worst, an advanced compact. A point-and-shoot camera with a small sensor is useless even with manual settings, since any stars will be drowned in noise, up to complete indistinguishability. A mobile phone can only be useful as a flashlight during a night photo shoot.
I hate to write about this, but shooting the starry sky is one of those rare cases when a full-frame camera has an objective advantage over cropped models. All other things being equal, a full-frame matrix provides a gain in noise by approximately one step compared to an APS-C format matrix, and in conditions of acute light deficiency this is quite a lot. However, as practice shows, moderately cropped devices also allow you to get pretty good pictures of the night sky - the picture will just be a little less clear.
DSLR cameras are preferred over mirrorless cameras due to the presence of an optical viewfinder. The electronic viewfinder of some mirrorless cameras sometimes goes blind in the dark, while a traditional optical viewfinder allows you to somehow compose the frame even in the light of the stars.
Lens
Take the widest and fastest lens you have at your disposal. Wide-angle to fit more of the sky into the frame and reduce the blurring effect of the stars due to the rotation of the Earth, and fast-aperture because there will be really little light, and the ability to open the aperture an extra stop will seem more valuable to you than ever before.
The ideal option is a lens with a fixed focal length of 20-24 mm (35 mm equivalent) and an aperture of f/1.4 or f/1.8. A zoom or prime lens at f/2.8 is acceptable, but not nearly as good. However, even if all you have is a kit zoom 18-55mm with a maximum aperture of f/3.5 at wide-angle, don’t be discouraged: that will do.
I usually don’t favor fisheye lenses, but for shooting starry skies they (if you know how to use them) are quite appropriate.
Tripod
Any tripod that can support the weight of your camera will do.
Remote release
A remote control or cable release is convenient, but not required. We'll be using shutter speeds so long that any vibration caused by the shutter release will only take up a small portion of the total exposure time and will have virtually no effect on the sharpness of the final image.
Flashlight
A flashlight is needed so that in pitch darkness you don’t fall into a ravine or step into a cow pat, and also to make focusing easier. In addition, the flashlight allows you to highlight elements of the landscape if required. artistic design. The more powerful the flashlight, the better.
Place and time for shooting
The further you are from the city, the less exposure there is from street lighting and the better the stars are visible. Light pollution is the main and most difficult obstacle when photographing the night sky. It is because of this that the sky in night photographs often looks brown or even orange instead of black. In a word, the more remote place you choose for shooting, the better. It is advisable that the nearest populated area with minimal street lighting be at least a couple of kilometers away, and the distance to major cities should be measured in tens of kilometers. If you wish, you can use the Blue Marble map to estimate the extent of light pollution in your area.
By the way, Moonlight It also illuminates the sky quite well, and therefore, if your main goal is the stars, and not the moonlit landscape (which, in general, is also beautiful in its own way), then it’s worth shooting on moonless nights if possible.
Obviously, the sky should be clear, so it's a good idea to check the weather forecast so you don't get caught off guard by overcast skies. On the other hand, the presence of minor translucent clouds in the sky can sometimes even brighten up the photo. In fact, even the glow of light from cities lying at some distance can be used in artistic purposes, if you still can’t escape from him.
As for the shooting time, at least two hours should pass after sunset (true for 54° north latitude, where I live). The closer to midnight, the better (by the way, in Belarus, astronomical midnight occurs at approximately 1:00). The most dark nights with stars as bright as gems usually happen in winter. It’s just a pity that in winter our weather is most often cloudy and you can’t see the stars in the sky, and the rare cloudless winter nights are always accompanied by severe frosts.
Composition
Composition, you say... It’s good if, when looking through the viewfinder, you can distinguish the sky from the ground. However, sometimes you can still see something. In this case, it usually makes sense to place the horizon line as low as possible. The earth is most often too dark to be of serious artistic interest, but starry sky, for the sake of which, in fact, everything was started, I would like to make it the main area of interest. You can, for example, run the Milky Way across the entire frame from corner to corner, you can find familiar constellations, bright stars, planets (for those who want to improve their knowledge of astronomy, I recommend Stellarium), and if there are individual clouds in the sky, use them as structure-forming elements. Frames with vertical orientation work well.
You shouldn’t completely exclude the earth from the frame - the photo will become too abstract. It is better to look for objects that have an expressive silhouette (trees, boulders, old buildings) and place them at the bottom or sides of the frame. The main thing is that they do not take up too much space. If there is a lake nearby - great - you will have the opportunity to show not only the starry sky, but also its reflection in the water.
If you really want, you can highlight foreground objects with a flashlight if you are not afraid that they will distract the viewer’s attention from the starry sky. As a rule, this is justified when the night is not too dark (light or moonlight interferes) and the sky does not look expressive enough to become the main compositional center.
Camera settings
RAW or JPEG?
I refer the reader to the corresponding article. In my opinion, RAW is preferable, since night photos almost always require quite intensive processing, but by shooting in JPEG you can get good (albeit less controllable) results.
Focusing
If you point your camera at the night sky and try to use autofocus, nothing good will most likely come of it. The brightness of the stars is usually not enough for the autofocus sensors to catch on to them (it happens with planets that it does). It is also unlikely to be possible to manually focus in the traditional way, since when using wide-angle optics, individual stars are practically invisible in the viewfinder. Therefore, the lens must be forced to focus at photographic infinity. How to do it?
Old manual lenses allowed you to aim at infinity blindly by simply turning the focusing ring all the way. Modern autofocus lenses not only lack a stop, but also the focusing distance scale, to put it mildly, is not very accurate. In principle, such a scale can be used (if you have a flashlight, of course), but first you will have to carry out some kind of calibration by studying which values on the scale correspond to real photographic infinity. In daylight, allow the autofocus to focus on some object as distant as possible near the horizon and, looking at the scale, remember or write down desired value, to use it when autofocus is powerless.
Some budget lenses do not even have a primitive focusing scale. In this case, you will still have to resort to autofocus, even if it does not want to focus on the stars. Look around for any fairly bright object located at the maximum distance from you (most often these will be distant lights of some populated area), and try to focus on it. If everything works, turn off autofocus and try not to touch the focusing ring in the future. If there are no suitable light sources nearby (which is generally not bad, for the reasons described above), use a flashlight. Place the switched-on flashlight on the ground, a stump or a stone, then move away as far as possible and focus. If you don’t suffer from excessive pedantry, then, on average, for wide-angle lenses, everything that is more than ten meters from the camera can be considered infinity.
Exposition
The exposure meter is even less useful in the dark than autofocus, i.e. none at all, which is why the camera should be switched to manual mode and set the exposure by touch. Assessing exposure will be difficult for a number of reasons. First, the camera screen appears very bright in the dark, so underexposed photos may look normal, and normal ones may look overexposed. Secondly, expose according to the light (as I usually advise doing) in in this case Not best idea, because stars are too bright objects and, trying to prevent clipping in the highlights, you will drown the frame in darkness. Therefore, you will have to accept that both shadows and highlights will be outside the camera's dynamic range. Thirdly, long shutter speeds make the experimental selection of exposure parameters an extremely labor-intensive process.
Below I will try to show how, without further ado, to obtain a more or less correct exposure, without resorting to the help of an exposure meter and without doing tedious selection.
Diaphragm
Open the aperture to the limit, i.e. Set the minimum aperture number available for your lens. Every photon is precious to us now, and this is exactly the situation when, for the sake of a less noisy picture, we can sacrifice a little sharpness.
Excerpt
The longer the shutter is open, the more light will fall on the matrix, which, of course, is good, but the more blurred the stars in the image will be due to the rotation of the Earth, which is not so encouraging.
For such cases, there is a popular “rule of 600”, according to which, by dividing the number 600 by the equivalent focal length of the lens in millimeters, you can get the maximum allowable shutter speed in seconds. For example, for a lens with a focal length of 20 mm, the shutter speed will be 600 ÷ 20, i.e. 30 seconds. For a longer 35mm lens, a shorter shutter speed was needed: 600 ÷ 35 = 17. Since not every shutter takes 17 seconds, the result can be rounded up to 15.
However, my experience is that even using shutter speeds one and a half times slower than dictated by the 600 rule (call it the “900 rule” if you like) produces pretty decent photos. Yes, near the celestial equator at 100% magnification the stars will be slightly blurred, but this effect will be so insignificant that it can easily be ignored.
For those who are just starting to master night photography, I would recommend an even simpler and more liberal approach: if you are using a wide-angle lens (or a standard zoom in the wide-angle position), set the shutter speed to 30 seconds and do not fool yourself, especially since for many cameras 30 seconds is the maximum shutter speed available in standard modes, and you don’t need to set a lower shutter speed.
ISO
If you, following my advice, set the shutter speed to 30 s and opened the aperture completely, then, depending on the aperture of your lens, you should set next value ISO sensitivity:
| Diaphragm | ISO |
| f/1.4 | 800 |
| f/1.8 | 1250 |
| f/2 | 1 600 |
| f/2.8 | 3 200 |
| f/3.5 | 5 000 |
| f/4 | 6 400 |
The values indicated in the table should be taken as starting guidelines, from which it is permissible to deviate upward or downward if such a need arises.
Noise reduction
If your camera allows it, turn on Long exposure noise reduction, provided, of course, that you have the patience to wait an extra half minute after each exposure for the camera to take a control shot with the shutter closed. A photo taken at high ISO values will still turn out quite noisy - you need to be prepared for this, but if there is an opportunity to improve the image quality at least a little, this opportunity should not be neglected.
White balance and image style don't make any difference when shooting in RAW, but in case you shoot in JPEG, or just want your photos to look decent on the camera screen, let me give you a couple more recommendations. .
White balance
Automatic white balance when shooting a starry sky is absolutely unacceptable, unless, of course, you deliberately strive to give the sky a dull gray-brown-crimson tint. You can set the white balance for incandescent lamps (Tungsten or Incandescent), i.e. approximately 3000 K, but in my opinion this makes the picture too cold. The best ready-made presets are, as a rule, settings for fluorescent lamps, for example, “White fluorescent lamps” (3700 K) or “Cool-white fluorescent lamps” (4200 K). If your camera allows you to set the color temperature manually, then start with 4000 K and shift the Tint slightly towards Magenta. The final values can be determined experimentally.
Picture style
For the starry sky the best way Vivid style or something similar is suitable, i.e. with the most saturated colors and high contrast, and the color saturation can be further increased by adjusting the Saturation parameter. Unlike daytime landscapes, here you don’t have to be afraid of getting unrealistic rich colors, since the scene will look very unusual in any case, and additional colors will not harm it in any way.
Thank you for your attention!
Vasily A.
Post scriptum
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Photographing the night sky may seem like an impossible task and a real challenge for beginners, but I assure you that it is much easier than you might imagine. Modern camera settings feature incredible ISO speeds, allowing photographers to dramatically increase their sensors' sensitivity to light, and harness starlight like never before.
In that vein, I want to talk about the equipment you'll need; how to install the camera correctly; I’ll also talk a little about composition and light painting. If you're ready to level up your star shooting, let's get started!
What equipment will you need?
At the most basic level, all you will need is: a camera (DSLR, mirrorless, point-and-shoot) capable of taking photographs in manual mode, a wide-angle lens, and a tripod.
However, most amateur cameras are unable to shoot well at long shutter speeds and do not have good dynamic range. To get stunning photos of the Milky Way, try investing in the class of equipment described below:
Selecting a camera
The best cameras on the market for photographing the night sky are those with full-frame sensors. This is because they are able to work at high ISOs and at the same time obtain results that are acceptable in terms of noise, which is impossible to achieve when shooting with some primitive camera. The higher your ISO, the brighter the night sky will look, and you just want a camera that shoots cleanly, without any noise.
Good cameras would be:
Nikon: D810A, D750;
These recommendations are top brands and they are indeed not cheap, but they are not at all necessary to get great photos. For example, the photo below was taken with a Sony DSC-RX100, which can be purchased for less than $500. To choose a camera, you need to decide what budget you are targeting and go from there.
Lens selection
Just like in landscape photography, you'll want to have a wide-angle lens that can capture as much of the sky as possible. The faster the lens, that is, the smaller its f/ number (f/2.8 or smaller is great), the more light you can let in over a given period of time to get a good photo. Personally, I prefer the Tokina 11-16 f/2.8 (for cameras with APS-C sensors); For its price, its sharpness satisfies me.
Selecting Camera Settings
You'll start to notice that your settings for long exposures at night tend to stay the same. This is because the first rule of photographing the night sky is to find a dark place that cancels out muddy colors and allows the camera to pull out maximum amount light from the sky; to do this, our camera's specs are simply maximized to produce the best possible image. Rule #1: Shoot in manual mode!
Aperture selection
Becomes much less visible at night, and in order to take in as much light as possible, make sure your aperture is wide open.
Excerpt
This characteristic is very important because most lenses begin to notice star trails after an exposure of 25 seconds. I used to shoot with a shutter speed of 30 seconds, but the movement of the stars was noticeable, so the faster the shutter speed, the sharper the stars will appear.
ISO
The choice of ISO value depends on what kind of camera you have, or what kind of camera you want to buy. For example, the Sony a7S shoots cleanly exposed up to ISO 12,000, while my Canon 6D can shoot up to ISO 6,400 with minimal noise, which can then be leveled out in Lightroom.
Focus
One of the biggest challenges people face is focusing images when shooting at night. Many lenses have an “infinity focus” (manual focus), which is a point at an infinite distance at which the lens will focus. This is ideal for night photography as it is very difficult to see what you are focusing on in the dark.
Composition and light painting
Once you understand the exposure process, the fun part is creating dynamic compositions and using light painting techniques to bring foreground objects to life.
Similar to landscape photography, you want viewers to feel separate from the painting. When shooting stars, it would be ideal to capture the landscape around you, which makes the night sky look even more incredible.
To do this, find a good place, so that you can focus on the object in the foreground. Next, using a flashlight or even a smartphone screen, you can “draw” the object that you planned to highlight in your photo. This only takes a few seconds, as the reflected light is exposed very quickly in the case of night photography.
Tip: If you use the services of , place it in complete darkness, or shoot with a short exposure to ensure it comes out clearly. You can always superimpose 2 exposures on top of each other and thus mix different ranges of light.
What to do after taking photos
Of course, process them! Photos of the night sky change dramatically with even small variations in white balance or contrast.
I edit almost every night sky photo twice (once for the sky, once for the foreground) and then blend them. (Some photographers use the remote control to make the exposure much longer than the camera is capable of, and use this for the foreground to add shadows there.)
Ultimately, enjoy yourself and develop a style unique to your preferences. Coming home with photographs of stars, you experience an incredible feeling!
With a sky filled with thousands of stars, I immediately wanted to learn how to shoot the same way. I took the 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 several simple tips, which will help happy owners of DSLRs understand the issue. I’ll say right away that filming other galaxies and spectacular nebulae will not be described here: the technique of such filming is too complex.
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 take such filming somewhere in a country house 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 for 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 from the very beginning simple case- shooting landscapes in cloudless conditions 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 like 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, then try to shoot at relatively short shutter speeds. If you want dashes instead of dots, increase the shutter speed.
"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 human eye I just saw 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
I wrote a little higher that long exposure 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 picture using a simple and free program Startrails.
