Taking Looong Sky Exposures

At the photo-meeting today we talked about a bunch of things. One of the things was that we would all post some cool tip about photo-taking. Taking star-trails photos for several minutes is one cool thing to try.

You can set your camera to manual settings [M], set your aperture to f/8 or f/11. Set your ISO to 100. From your camera menus turn on "Long Exposure Noise Reduction" (Canon people, go to Custom Settings and you will find it there, Nikon people, find it buried under picture menu). Put your camera on a tripod and use a remote shutter release to trigger it. You need to set your shutter speed to BULB (will be open for as long as you want). Start with a 15 min exposure. When you get things right, you can move on to longer exposures. It is not practical to take long exposures with a digital camera beyond 30-45 mins. You will probably run out of battery. One more thing, start out with a fully charged battery.

Film cameras are much better for this purpose. First of all, the film doesn't accumulate noise. The film has just grain, and grain is visually pleasing anyways. You might need to jam the shutter button on your camera with some object and tape. Here's a photo I took in my grandma's village this summer (~1hr long exposure, film).

PS: You need to be away from city lights, in the middle of nowhere, or in a forest, to avoid light pollution. It might not work the very first time, so keep trying. Good luck. [Ghe]