How to shoot the starry sky orbit with a micro single camera

Starry sky and stellar orbit have always been photographers' favorite characters, so how to take a good picture of starry sky or stellar orbit? The following is a tutorial I compiled for you to shoot the starry sky with a micro-single camera. I hope you will like it!

The course of shooting starry sky and orbit with micro single camera 1

1. Timing: Cloudless weather in Wan Li around the first day of the lunar calendar is generally the best choice for simply shooting the starry sky. If the air is clear, you can photograph the Milky Way. At other times, it is ideal if the sun goes down for about 2 hours and the moon hasn't come up yet. If the foreground is to be arranged, the moon will rise in the first half of the month.

2. Equipment, tripod and wide-angle lens are essential. It will be more convenient to release the cable.

3. Parameters, maximum aperture, high iso, and exposure time less than 20 seconds. The reason for using high sensitivity is to shorten the exposure time, because the stars in the starry sky are all moving, and if the exposure time is too long, it will drag out the virtual shadow. It is strongly recommended to use raw mode, which will enrich the colors and make it easier to adjust the white balance.

4. Focus, it is difficult to focus in the night sky. When there is a moon, you can manually focus on the moon by enlarging the focus, and then aim at the stars again after completion. If there is no moon, you can compare the lights in the distance. Of course, if your lens is powerful, it is also possible to aim directly at the brightest star in the night sky. After focusing, it is necessary for Shoot to zoom in to ensure the focus is correct, otherwise he will be depressed after tossing around all night and taking a bunch of blurred photos.

5. exposure. Manual mode is generally selected for shooting starry sky, and automatic exposure often leads to overexposure in the dark. The exposure time is about 15 second, and the maximum available aperture is fixed. Exposure is controlled by iso, and appropriate parameters are determined after shooting. It is also difficult to control the light ratio in the promising starry sky. If the moonlight is too strong, the foreground will suppress the brightness of the starry sky. At the full moon, it rises from the beginning of the moon to the zenith in the middle of the night, which is too bright to shoot.

6. Composition, in composition, the foreground is generally arranged, and the starry sky without prospect is monotonous. Dead trees, giant antennas of the Observatory, sculptures, mountain peaks and outlines of ancient buildings are all good choices. Suitable for high-altitude shooting, which can avoid ground stray light.

A tutorial on shooting stars and orbits with a micro-single camera II

In short, shooting the starry sky is actually quite simple and won't take long. If you are shooting the star orbit, it is more complicated.

1. method selection, in fact, with SLR, most people will choose a single long exposure mode, and the typical parameters are 40 minutes exposure, small aperture and low iso. Exposure in this way is difficult to control, even for people who have a lot of practical shooting experience. It is difficult to grasp the moonlight when there is a prospect. After half an hour of frequent shooting, I look at the photos, which are overexposed and invalid. And the maximum exposure time of my camera is limited to 4 minutes. In this case, the star does not move far enough and can only pull out a negligible orbit. Then, we can only take another recently popular shooting method of stellar orbit, that is, multi-lens stitching method.

2. Multi-lens stitching mode and parameter composition are similar to single starry sky shooting mode. Typical parameters of SLR users are 1 minute exposure time, maximum aperture and iso controlled exposure. Shoot continuously for at least 30 minutes. If you want to pull out the ideal star orbit, you can shoot 1-2 hours or even longer continuously. But in actual shooting, I want to solve the continuous shooting problem under such parameters. The fuselage is set to continuous shooting mode, and the connecting cable is released. After the first photo taken by ordinary cable player is exposed, lock the cable player. The machine will automatically shoot continuously every 30 seconds. If it is electron beam release, you can set the extended time exposure mode and set the single time to be longer, such as 3 hours. You can stop shooting manually at any time anyway. After shooting, the screen will always open at the same time as the first shooting. Don't worry about your battery. From the second shooting, the machine will automatically close the screen. Thank god.

3. Selecting raw mode can get better image quality, and the post-processed star track color is richer than jpg. But splicing software can only accept jpg files. So you need to use software to convert raw into jpg in batches. Here are several techniques. One is to use the synchronization function of lr to synchronize all photos at the same time, such as white balance, contrast, brightness and so on. But in the case of a large number of photos, the speed of each operation is extremely slow. You can adjust a single photo to your satisfaction before synchronizing all photos manually. The next step is to export jpg, and it is suggested to reduce the pixels of the picture appropriately, so that the operation time can be greatly shortened when stitching.

When all these are ready, we will start splicing. Download star-orbit synthesis software startrails online. The software is in English, with only a few buttons.

Click the first "Open Image" button, select all photos except dark photos, and input them into the data area.

Click the second Open Dark Frame button and enter all dark frames into the dark frame area.

Click the fifth Startrails button, and the software will automatically start to superimpose the star tracks to reduce the noise.

After all the processing is completed automatically, click the fourth Save Image button to save the superimposed star orbit map, and that's it! Remember to save it in jpg format.

5. As for the dark frame, cover the lens and expose the 5- 10 dark frame without changing the exposure parameters. This is to photograph the thermal noise generated by the long-term exposure of the machine separately and throw it to Startrails for later noise reduction.

6. In the stitching process, the length of the star orbit can be controlled by importing different numbers of photos. If you finally match a picture of Hou Lian flashing synchronously, you can take a picture of yourself and the starry sky, or fill the foreground with light.