Shooting star trails?

ian-83

ian-83

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Ian
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Looking to try taking some star trail photo's. From what I can find looking about a good location with a clear sky and no light pollution is ideal. I also have a nice stable tripod.

I only have a general zoom lens which is variable aperture of 3.5-5.6. Would this be ok at its widest setting at 3.5 or do I need a faster lens? Also what iso is best to use?

My camera has a built in interval time I can use. Then hope stack shots in Photoshop elements after
 
Certainly your lens will be suitable to get started, a faster lens will always be better, but if you try it first with what you have, you can then decide if it would be a worthwhile investment to get a better lens later.
For ISO, it will depend a lot on your camera and how it handles higher ISO's. Stacking images will do a bit to reduce noise, so you should be able to go a little higher than you would normally be comfortable using. Something around 1600 ISO would be a reasonable starting point and work from there. Funnily enough too high an ISO can show too many stars so you get little separation between trails.
Not sure about using Elements for stacking, probably better to go for purpose made software like these:-
http://startrails.de/
http://www.markus-enzweiler.de/StarStaX/StarStaX.html

Hope this helps.
 
Thanks for the help. I have a Nikon D7000 which for my eyes doesn't seem to be too bad with noise at an ISO 1600. Just need to find a suitable location now with some good foreground interest to put into the photo.
 
You should be good to go then.
I'm not a Nikon shooter, but I believe on the interval timer, the minimum interval is one second and you will need to turn off any in camera noise reduction.
You are probably aware of this, but just in case, try and find a north facing location, the stars rotate around Polaris, the north star. That way you will get the classic curved trails around the pole star.
Anyway, have fun.
 
Cheers thank you for the help. Will post some results up when I have had time to have a try.
 
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