How To: Star Trail Photography - Stacking

An introduction to creating Star Trail photos by stacking multiple images in StarStaX and Adobe Photoshop CS5 using Russell Brown's Stack-A-Matic script.

Learn More in the Ebook by Jim M. Goldstein

Photographing the 4th Dimension - Time
Slow Shutter & Video Techniques for High Impact Photography
http://www.inspiredexposure.com

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• star trail
• Photography
• how to
• stacking
• night
• photo
• Adobe
• Photoshop
• StarStax
• demo
• lesson
• technique
• tutorial
• Adobe Systems
• Russell Brown
• script
• Jim M. Goldstein
• Jim Goldstein
• Inspired
• Inspiration
• InspiredExposure
• JMG-Galleries

[xsjad0man]

AMAZING!

[cassoneservices]

Hi Jim... we should talk sometime. I'd like to show you the custom intervalomter that my friend just developed for us which allows for the interval between shots to be reduced to as low as 0.010 seconds... no more gap to remove...

[aodes83]

I got a question for you:

What's the specifications of your super powerful machine !

[Theokondak]

What i do in order to get rid of plane trails etc, is to remove the frames that got affected.Works pretty well.

[medirs]

10.8GB?! :O jesus

[tmigot]

I tried 30 min but it was then too long/bright/ my take would be 10min max. i was using bulb mode since the TV (Canon only lets you do 30sec). I used f/5.6 and the combo worked great. Let me know if i make any sense.

[tmigot]

Obviously i do not know the answer to your question since i am not the one who took the shots. However, i have been shooting night pix tonight and playing with some stars in clear winter sky.my take is that the longer you expose the longer trail you will get in one shot however, the BIG draw back is that your image is getting brighter and brighter until being over exposed. i have been shooting at 2 min and 5min and i get about 0.5cm star trail (viewed on my 17'' screen to fit).

[magicentral]

I'm wondering the same thing as mathew, what are the exposures of these several hundered images that you are layering and how far apart are they taken?

[mathewteague]

Hey, Nice video!

Was wondering what sort of shutter speed you were using for these images? also what focal length you were using? and finally, if you were using long exposure noise reduction?

I going to try some and im getting some people saying to do one image at 1 hour duration and use long exposure noise reduction to get rid of a lot of the noise. But other are saying the stacking method and not using the long exposure noise reduction... which might you recommend?