time lapse with SW star adventurer catch 22

[Astroblagger]

Hello

Im wanting to start timelapse with my sky watcher star adventurer, with a bit of foreground scenery, so if the mount is tracking the night sky for crisp images with no trailing then surely the foreground is getting blurred? or if you want a focused foreground the stars will be trailed? so is there anyway round this without dropping the exposure times down? I don't really have any fast widefield lenes??

[Alien 13]

Some mounts let you run half speed which is a compromise but in theory will allow twice the value given by the 500 rule..

Alan

[PhotoGav]

What lens are you thinking of using and what exposure length are you aiming for?

[Astroblagger]

widest I have is the kit lens, iv been doing 30s exposures to pick up enough light.

[Owmuchonomy]

My feeling is that the answer to this is more about processing skills than mount operation/exposure.  Combing separate foreground and background images maybe?

[Marci]

Nail on head ^^^

[PhotoGav]

At 30 seconds and wider than 50mm, which I presume the kit lens offers, you will barely notice any blur in the foreground once the sequence is played as a video. In fact, a bit of blur will help give the motion a more natural look and feel. Give it a go and I think you will be pleasantly surprised. You can even up the exposure to 60 seconds and still get a great result. The only problem then is that as exposure time increases, so the total time to make a decent length clip increases. I look forward to seeing what you produce.

A long focal length would be a totally different story, where the movement of the foreground would be far greater per exposure and might well start to look plain blurry!

[Jonk]

Depending how you go about this, you could fire a low level flash at the end of each exposure so the foreground is lit up and a lot clearer?

They key is experimenting with all sorts of values and ideas, there's no 'one answer' to it.