Star Trails

Dionysus

I'm going to try my first star trail shot tonight. I'm doing the stacking method. So far as I understand it:

1. wider angle lens so that more of my photo will be in focus at wider apertures
2. around f/4-f/5.6 to allow more light in, but still have things in focus
3. tripod of course
4. multiple exposures at about 2 minutes each

accuweather's astronomy forcast says tonight in my area will be perfect for star gazing.

My question is file format. When I shoot all these shots, do I shoot them in RAW or JPEG?

CWSkopec

Dionysus wrote: »

I'm going to try my first star trail shot tonight. I'm doing the stacking method. So far as I understand it:

1. wider angle lens so that more of my photo will be in focus at wider apertures
2. around f/4-f/5.6 to allow more light in, but still have things in focus
3. tripod of course
4. multiple exposures at about 2 minutes each

accuweather's astronomy forcast says tonight in my area will be perfect for star gazing.

My question is file format. When I shoot all these shots, do I shoot them in RAW or JPEG?

The couple times I've tried star trails, I shot a couple raw exposures while I tried lightpainting a subject in the foreground, then switched over to jpg and just let the camera go for the trails.

If you're looking for a silhoutetted subject, I would image you'd be fine with just jpgs, but you can coax a little more detail out of the foreground with a raw. I'm sure if you shot them all in raw, you'de get better noise reduction, but my most succesful star trails shot to date (this one) shows very little noise so I'm not sure it matters much unless you push the iso past 400.

HTH and hope the night stays clear for you!