The Workflow
The Idea
Very simply, a background silhouette, lots of clear sky and a foreground object. Richmond Park has little to choose from in terms of foreground, a tree, bench, road or maybe a pond for some nice reflections. I chose this location as I have sat there many times looking out over London, the picture to the left shows roughly what the location looks like... But much darker!
The Research
Research the weather, clear skies with very little cloud cover if none, humidity high but not essential.
The phases of the moon are very important as the moon sheds a lot of light into your scene and most of the stars will not be visable.
North. Face the North star if you want that spiral effect.
If you can, scout the locations you have in mind during daylight, make sure everything works. One big problem I had was planes.. 5-6 of them constantly flying around!
The Timing
Timing your shot is what will make it. What you have in your mind, be it dark landscape star trails or in the city, taking your shot 6 hours after sunset or before sunrise would yeald the darkest skies and more prominent stars, but anything 2-3 hours each way will still be good but have a faint orange glow of the sun.
The Shot
What you read online regarding star trails photography is just a basic guide. Your settings are completely independent on your shot and your equipment.
I used an ISO of 1600 at f/4 with a 3.2sec exposure time. In manual mode I set the camera to multiple shooting, did a few test shots and then using a shutter remote I could let the camera do its work as I wondered around trying to pass a couple of hours. Problem was that after 45minutes my card was full with 500 shots so it was probably better to increase the aperture to compensate for the exposure time.
Focusing on the stars at night is never easy, lucky enough I had the London skyline in the far distance to use as my focus point which was close enough to infinity. If you don't have any distant objects to use then setting your lens to almost infinity should be perfect. Always take a test shot to be sure!
The planes, something I never thought about until I started the shot and just saw them all flying around. The final blend was littered with bright lines across the image which I decided to edit in every shot before combining.
The car headlights. Even though the only car that pasted that night light up the scene and the bench, it also produced a bright hue in the sky. You wouldn't think it would affect the final merge so much but it did. It produced a tight banding across the entire image as you can see from an early render I did. |