Astrophotography
If you want to capture stunning photographs of the sky at night, you’ll find a tripod is an absolute essential for astrophotography
Technological advances in ISO and star-tracking equipment has meant that astrophotography is more popular than ever, and it’s not difficult to see why. I have had some great experiences shooting astrophotography: hanging out on a rooftop overlooking the ruined kasbahs of Ait Benhaddhou in Morocco; photographing star trails amidst the temples of Bagan or in The Siq of the ruins of Petra in Jordan; even photographing the Milky Way in my own back garden in Somerset! I confess it is often as much about sitting around under the stars enjoying a couple of drinks with friends as it is about the photography. If both work, then it is a bonus!
Essentially there are two distinct styles of astrophotography: where the stars appear move relative to the camera, creating long star trails, or where you keep the stars stationary in the frame – which is how you would photograph the Milky Way. Stopping stars from trailing during the exposure can either be done with software emulation in an app such as Starry Landscape Stacker, or using a star-tracker device, which moves the camera to compensate for the rotation of the Earth (it is actually the rotation of the Earth that causes the stars to appear to move). Either of these styles of astrophotography, combined with an iconic foreground, will give you a stunningly unique shot.
There is no way that you can shoot any sort of astrophotography without a tripod – another reason to always take one on your travels. I will always go on a trip equipped to shoot star trails – which basically involves having a tripod and a locking cable release. Sometimes I will also pack a Moveshootmove star-tracker too, which will allow me to photograph the Milky Way.
Photographing star trails is easier than shooting the Milky Way. Set up the camera on a tripod and photograph repeated 30-second exposures using
a locking manual cable release. So long as you have manually focused the lens, and made sure that Long Exposure Noise Reduction is switched off, then using the Continuous High-speed (CH) shooting mode will leave the camera taking endless 30-second exposures – until you either stop it or run out of battery! All you have to do is find something enjoyable to do whilst you are waiting…
The advantage of this method over a super-long single exposure is that if something goes wrong after, say, half an hour, you will still have all of the previous shots to work with. I have also had someone walk past the camera with a torch – something that would have ruined a single long exposure, but in this case I just omitted two of the frames – giving a small gap in the trails, but still giving me a usable image.
Once you have all of the images processed with the same settings in Lightroom, you can load them in a stacking program, such as Starstax, and assemble the tracked image. Starstax can also automatically retouch out the tiny gaps in the trail between exposures.