Trying my hand at star trails

[Space Oddity6]

Hey all,

As the title suggests I want to have a go at emulating some of the great star trail pics I've seen on this site and was just wondering if anyone could help me.

I recently inherited my Grandpa's old tripod and thought I'd put it to some use. My camera probably isn't the best for this type of photography but it's the best I can do; it's a Ricoh CX2.

So how do I actually take these pics? What Time exposure do I need and what's the best shutter limit speed? I've got a choice between 1/2, 1/4 and 1/8 seconds. What ISO setting is best?

Any advice would be great and there's no rush; I probably won't get round to giving this a go for a couple weeks.

Thanks

[Photosbykev]

with a maximum of 1/2 sec shutter spped you will struggle to capture anything but the brightest stars even at max iso. Ideally you should be using shutter speeds of 30 seconds or longer with the lens aperture closed down 1 or 2 stops from fully open and a high iso and then shoot continously for several hours or more so you would also need a decent sized memory card.

Last big star trail I did was 2016 raw images taken over 6 hours and captured on a 64Gb CF card.

[Space Oddity6]

Ok scratch what I said about the CX2 being the best I've got, my dad's got a Sony a200 that I'm sure I could borrow. I've checked the settings on that and its got a max ISO of 3200 with shutter speeds that can be set to 30 secs. I'm guessing that would do the job?

Just by the by, would my CX2 be completely useless then or?

Also, do star trail pics have to be centred on the pole star because I've got a place I'm thinking of with trees framing the scene but it's facing SW?

[Psychobilly]

Nope... point it where you like to get some foreground interest.. but Polaris (NCP) is good if you want to have the Circular arc effect...

[Photosbykev]

Foreground interest can turn a 'so-so yet another star trail yawn' image into something special

Stay with the Sony and shoot at say iso 800 with the lens almost fully open. Use the continuous drive option if you have it and if necessary use an elastic band to hold the shutter button down.

While the Sony is clicking away have a play with the other camera but realisically don't expect to see much.

[Space Oddity6]

Well, gave it a go tonight but couldn't figure out how to set the Sony a200 to take pictures at intervals of 30 secs. The best I could do was a shot per second on continuous drive which was highly annoying. I set the ISO at 800 as well.

Whilst I was packing everything away I set my CX2 up on the tripod and, zooming in on Arcturus, set that on a 30 second interval and left it for about 10 minutes. When I flicked through the pics I have got it moving across the sky, so what programme do I need to stack the images together so tonight wasn't a complete waste of time?

[Psychobilly]

Manual mode, continuous shooing, shutter speed aperture and iso set depending on sky conditions i wlll dig out the user manual later and see if i can be more specific

Billy on the San Fran

.....

[Psychobilly]

Ok now I am onthe PC ratehr than the phone...

I download the USER Manual from here...

ftp://ftp.vaio-link.com/pub/manuals/consumer/DSLRA200EN.PDF

Relevant sections and pages...

Exposure Mode (48)

Shutter Speed Selection (61)

Aperture Selection (63)

ISO Selection (82)

Drive Mode Selection (89)

Image Quality/Size (106)

Long Exposure Noise Reduction (102)

You will probably want/need a remote for continous shooting and timed/interval shooting should be able to get a programmable remote off ebay...

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Timer-Remote-TR-90-S6-Sony-A100-A200-A350-A700-A900-/200446689664?_trksid=p4340.m263&_trkparms=algo%3DSIC%26its%3DI%252BC%26itu%3DUCI%252BIA%252BUA%252BFICS%252BUFI%26otn%3D15%26pmod%3D380197354930%26ps%3D63%26clkid%3D8767551421857034366

Might get it quicker but at higher cost from a UK seller...

The cheaper option is a simple cable remote...

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Remote-Switch-S6-Sony-A100-A200-A300-A350-A700-A900-/200504318896?_trksid=p4340.m263&_trkparms=algo%3DSIC%26its%3DI%252BC%26itu%3DUCI%252BIA%252BUA%252BFICS%252BUFI%26otn%3D15%26pmod%3D380197354930%26ps%3D63%26clkid%3D8767565884346083351

Again you might get it quicker but at higher cost from a UK seller...

Peter....