Basic Tips for Photographing the Stars

This guest post was provided by Laura Charon of BeyondMegapixels.com

Where I live, in a suburb of Phoenix, Arizona, the stars are all but invisible in the night sky.  I grew up in an isolated area of Maine, and the stars were always my friends.  I’d lay for hours and hours in the front yard, just gazing upward at the Milky Way and trying to identify constellations.

Yeah.  I miss the stars.  The only way to keep them with me, always, no matter what the glow of city lights does to the night sky, is to take a picture.  I hear it lasts longer, anyway.

Here are some tips that I’ve learned, to photograph stars and star trails.

Exposure: 1063.7 seconds (17.72 minutes)

Aperture: f8.0

Focal Length: 18mm

ISO: 200

One – A lens with a wide aperture is best to capture the dim light coming from the stars, and allows for a shorter exposure time and ISO, to reduce the noise in the picture.  However, it also results in a shallower depth of field, so striking a balance here is key.  Start with f/5.6 and tweak from there.  High-zoom lenses aren’t really necessary to capture adequate composition – a medium range, around 80mm, works very well for this application.

Two – There really is no automatic or “default” setting that will correctly capture in an image what your naked eye is seeing.  So you’re going to have to get familiar with some of your camera’s more advanced settings.  One is “mirror lockup”, which locks the camera’s internal mirror in the “up” position for a moment before the shutter fires, to reduce camera vibration and increase image sharpness.  Also, become familiar with your camera’s timer function, or use a remote shutter release.

Photo taken with an LX10 Meade fork and an Astrocamera Baker-Schmidt, using a Canon EOS 300D

Exposure: 253 seconds (4.21 minutes)

Aperture: f2

Focal Length: 400mm

ISO: 200

Processed with Deepskystacker 2.6.3

Three – “Star trails” capture the movement of stars as they rotate in the night sky (yes, I know, it’s really the Earth that’s rotating, the stars stay put). This requires a very long exposure – sometimes up to an hour or more.

• Be sure your camera’s battery has adequate juice, or hook your camera up to an external power source if it has that capability.
• Use your camera’s “bulb” setting, which keeps the shutter open for as long as the shutter release button remains depressed and gives the photographer complete control over the length of exposure.
• Choose a time when the sky is clear and the moon is new, or just a sliver – exposure times will differ depending on how much light the moon is casting. During a new moon you can expose for over an hour.  A half-moon exposure time will be not longer than about 20 minutes, or the shot will be over-exposed. The longer the exposure time, the longer the “trails” will be.
• Keep in mind that air traffic is practically nonexistent in between midnight and 3:00 a.m.
• Set your camera up on a tripod, compose the shot, and set the focus to “infinity” (looks like the number 8, lying sideways).
• Experiment with the ISO – start with 100 or 200, but if you’re having a hard time finding the right exposure, keep bumping it up until you’re satisfied with the quality of the shot vs. the level of noise produced by the higher ISO.

Four – Taking a photo of stars in clear focus (no trails) is very similar to taking a photo of star trails, though it’s a bit more difficult to capture a shot in which the stars really show up brightly, but without trails.

• If you can mount your camera with a telescope (beginner’s models start at under $100), then you can take incredible shots of trail-less stars, and even distant celestial bodies such as planes and nebula.
• If you don’t have a telescope mount, you will need a very dark night when the stars are very bright.  Since exposure time is shorter, your camera will need all the help it can get to capture the slight cast of light that stars emit.

• Use a wide aperture (say, around f/2.8) and expose for anywhere from fifteen to thirty seconds.
• Try using an increased ISO and monitor for noise levels.

Above any other tip I can give you, I encourage you to practice, practice, practice.  Fiddle with settings, exposures, and composition until you find a combination that works for your conditions.  It might make for a late night or two (or three), but the end result can be extremely rewarding.

For more great articles on photography from Laura Charon head on over to BeyondMegapixels.com

Photo credits (in order of appearance):

• North Star Circa RMNP by Cpt. Spock on Flickr Creative Commons
• Big Andromeda Galaxy by Xamad on Flickr Creative Commons

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