How to shoot the starry sky?

Looking up, always so eager. Endless exploration and discovery, but he can always maintain the same mystery.

The starry sky at night is beautiful, especially in summer and early autumn. There are many stars and the Milky Way is boundless. In every trip, we always encounter such beautiful scenery, but some friends don't know how to shoot it. This paper introduces the skills and operation of shooting starry sky in detail. In fact, our shooting process is very simple, mainly the scene selection and the operation of the camera in our hands. So what should we pay attention to? Below, Mr. Xie Chao lists the shooting skills and operation requirements for everyone.

First, the basis of shooting

Lens focal length: 15mm fisheye, aperture: F4.0, shutter: 25 seconds, iso:5000.

1. Shooting equipment: digital SLR cameras, film SLR cameras, etc. As long as the camera with B door can shoot. Camera, cable release. A tripod with good stability.

2. Shooting lens: To shoot the starry sky, we'd better use a wide-angle lens, and the wider the better. Fisheye lens, wide-angle fixed focus and wide-angle zoom are all good choices. From 14mm focal length to 35mm focal length is a good choice. The wider you are, the more sky you can photograph, and the more imposing it will be, so use it reasonably according to the focal length of the lens in your hand.

3. Shooting season: Summer and early autumn are the best, because the sky is long and the moon rises late in this season, so it will not affect the light of the stars.

4. Shooting time: The best time is between 10 and 2: 00 midnight.

5. Shooting location: The darker the place, the better, and there is no place with messy light, so that the picture taken will be cleaner and will not be affected by other light.

6. Looking for stars: Shooting the starry sky, there are three iconic stars that we can all see with the naked eye. We must find the positions of these three stars. First, the Milky Way, the Milky Way is an indispensable ornament in shooting starry sky works. Second, if you shoot in the northern hemisphere, you must find the North Star. When shooting the trajectory of stars, all the stars walk in circles around Polaris. Polaris is the brightest star five times to the right of the first star in the dipper. Third, if the shooting location is in the southern hemisphere, you should be able to recognize the Southern Cross, just like the North Star.

Second, shooting skills.

Lens focal length: 35mm, aperture: F2.8, shutter: 550s, iso:400.

1. camera settings: put the camera firmly on the tripod, plug in the cable releaser, and adjust the camera to the position of door B. If the camera has the function of lifting the mirror in advance, we will try to open it. Regarding the use of B-door and the use of reflector pre-elevation, the operation of different brands of cameras is slightly different. Please refer to the camera manual.

2. Lens setting: If it is a digital SLR camera, adjust our autofocus lens to the M position, that is, the manual focus position, and screw the focus ring to infinity. Most of the lenses of film cameras are manually focused, and the focus ring is directly adjusted to infinity.

3. Foreground application: When shooting starry sky works, never look for some prospects in the picture. A tree, a temple, a road on the ground, etc. Can be a bright future. It's not nice to shoot the starry sky alone, even if there is a little prospect, it will make the picture perfect.

4. Use of fill light: Some foreground remains dead and black after long exposure. When the photographer is not showing the silhouette effect, he can fill the foreground picture with a high-light flashlight and car headlights for one or two minutes before the end of the exposure, which can make the foreground picture more layered.

5. Parameter settings: iso 100- 10000, aperture 1.4 to aperture 5.6, shutter from tens of seconds to two hours.

6. Detailed explanation of parameters: Maybe you don't quite understand the above parameters, so I will focus on explaining why the above parameters are used.

Iso: The low iso of starry sky shooting is prepared to increase exposure time, make the picture delicate and reduce noise. Long exposure will lengthen the trajectory of stars and form circles and semicircles, while high iso is prepared to reduce exposure time. In the case of shooting stars, you should use high iso to reduce the exposure time, so that the stars will not pull out of the track. Some people think that high iso will make the picture noisy. In fact, when your machine is not very old, the picture noise is completely acceptable.

Aperture: Isn't it necessary to shoot the scenery with a small aperture? Why use such a large aperture as 1.4-5.6? In starry sky shooting, in fact, the aperture does not control blur and depth of field, because we have set it to infinite focus, and the depth of field is already very deep. The main function of the aperture here is to control the thickness of the star trajectory. The larger the aperture, the thicker the trajectory of the stretched star we see. If the aperture is small, not only the exposure time is long, but also the lines of the star trajectory will be very thin, so that the picture is not shocking.

Shutter speed: the long shutter speed is the star orbit of the circle, and the short shutter speed is the star. How to show these effects is shown in the picture through the combination of shutter speed, aperture and iso.

Third, the graphic parameters are explained in detail.

Through pictures and detailed parameters, this paper lists several pictures that the photographer wants to show in shooting.

Lens focal length: 35mm, aperture: F2.0, shutter: 40s, iso:2500.

Stars and dots: show the starry sky effect seen by the real naked eye at that time, using high iso, large aperture and short exposure technology.

Lens focal length: 15mm fisheye, aperture: F4.0, shutter: 900 seconds, iso:400.

Orbital circle: It shows the shocking effect of the stars surrounding Polaris, and adopts the technology of low iso, large aperture and long exposure.

Lens focal length: 28mm, aperture: F4.0, shutter: 600s, ISO: 100.

Short-lived orbit: it shows the short-lived star motion effect, like a meteor shower, using medium and low iso, large aperture and medium-time exposure technology.

Lens focal length: 35mm, aperture: F2.8, shutter: 40s, iso:2500.

Special starry sky: Showing the illusory effect of fantasy starry fairy tales, adopting high iso, large aperture, short exposure and defocusing shooting technology.

Fourth, about the later period.

Lens focal length: 28mm, aperture: F4.0, shutter: 2000s, ISO: 100.

When we finish shooting the starry sky works and import the digital photos into the computer, we can do some post-production, which can make the photos look better and more brilliant. How to modify them depends on the photographer's behavior. According to the author's experience, I recommend several simple adjustment settings. It can be operated in various softwares such as Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom.

1. Reduce the color temperature: appropriately reducing the color temperature according to the shot picture will make the starry sky bluer.

2. Contrast: It can make the stars more prominent and the brightness more prominent.

3. Saturation: It can make the color of stars in the track of stars more prominent. Many people think that the track of a star is a bright line. In fact, according to different light performances, the stars can be colored.

4. sharpness: it can make the lines of the star trajectory better and clearer.

Summary of shooting experience:

Lens focal length: 35mm, aperture: F2.8, shutter: 4000s, ISO: 100.

Actually, shooting the starry sky is very simple. When you hold the camera steady with a tripod, plug in the cable, find a good shooting time and make a composition, then you have succeeded more than half. Then, according to the way the photographer wants to express the starry sky, find the North Star, set the camera parameters, and then make a long exposure according to the composition position.

Lens focal length: 24mm, aperture: F4.0, shutter: 200 seconds, ISO: 100.

I hope this article will be helpful to tourists, photographers and astronomy enthusiasts.