How is this done? Night sky timelapse.

CaveDweller

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Check the video out on the link below and have a look at 0:30. How does he get the timelapse but as star trails? I know how to do timelapses and I know how to get star trails, but both together I haven't got a clue lol.

I think I may know roughly how to do it but I'm finding it hard to find a way to explain it. Say you have 1000shots of the night sky just as normal stars, for example would you stack say 50shots at a time to get the star trails then put the finished star trails pictures in a sequence for a timelapse? Those numbers are just for an example. As I said i'm finding it hard to explain lol

Nice video and some great work, it's the second picture down on the page.
http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/blog/meteor-shower-time-lapse-looks-like-a-real-life-starry-night
 
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There's an interesting bit of trickery going on here. The flim would be 'jumpier' if the time-slice per frame went up but the frame rate stayed the same. For the star movement to remain constant but still produce trails which track correctly over time there's something else going on. I suspect a sequence of frames of trails stacked separately and then incorporated into the film rather than a sequence straight out of the camera. Very clever. Very nice.
 
markmullen said:
I'm not an expert but if you timelapsed 30 second exposures would you not end up with them trailing anyway?
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No you wouldn't get them trailing doing it like that, but more of a simple timelapse like before 30seconds in the video.
 
ChrisGilbert said:
There's an interesting bit of trickery going on here. The flim would be 'jumpier' if the time-slice per frame went up but the frame rate stayed the same. For the star movement to remain constant but still produce trails which track correctly over time there's something else going on. I suspect a sequence of frames of trails stacked separately and then incorporated into the film rather than a sequence straight out of the camera. Very clever. Very nice.
Click to expand...
Witchcraft! Lol. Do you understand why I was find it hard to explain now. Will be Interesting to work it out. Ive done a lot of timelapses but nothing like those trails.
 
You just build up the trails as individual images and add them as frames.

For the normal star-trail you would stack all your individual images to make a one single image. With this you make multiply star-trail images using different amount from all of your still images for each stack. Each frame contains the same number of images as the previous one but then the next frame contains a percentage more. Not very good at explaining sorry.
 
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It looks to me that they just changed to a slower shutter speed from a certain point, which gives the streaking effect, but has the fade of the star trail.

I've seen something similar where each frame is added to the previous frame so the star streaks are built up, but you get a solid trail with that technique.

Of course they may have done it a totally different way. ;) :LOL:
 
momoka said:
You just build up the trails as individual images and add them as frames.

For the normal star-trail you would stack all your individual images to make a one single image. With this you make multiply star-trail images using different amount from all of your still images for each stack. Each frame contains the same number of images as the previous one but then the next frame contains a percentage more. Not very good at explaining sorry.
Click to expand...

That's what I was thinking of in my original post but couldn't quite bring the words out lol. A lot of time in editing before you even start with making the timelapse. I'll have to try it some time, I have enough night sky shots to play about with.
 
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