HOW TO MAKE STARTRAILS

A quick and easy way to make unreal looking photographs

Startrails are a way to capture the earth's movement, and the length that the stars travel over a certain period of time. In these types of images, the must be a STILL subject in the foreground, to show the movement of the stars. On a regular DSLR camera, you can use Manual Mode to adjust how long the camera is taking a picture. In order to make a startrail, you need to use an exposure that is at least 10 seconds. The materials required for a startrail include a tripod, a Shutter Release (Continues to take pictures), and a computer program names StarStax (Free). To make a startrail, set up the shot with correct aperture (Usually as low of a number as it can go) and an ISO between 400 and 800 for lowest possible noise. Then, once it is correctly focused, start the camera taking pictures at about 15 second exposure. If you leave the shutter button pressed on the shutter release (About 7 dollars on Amazon), the camera will continue to take pictures, recording the movement of the stars, until you stop it. You then can stack these images for your final result in StarStax on a computer. 

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