How to shoot the starry sky

Lead: The shooting of starry sky, milky way and stellar orbit is a kind of shooting subject between celestial photography and landscape photography, which has become popular rapidly in recent years. Because of the harsh shooting conditions and high requirements for equipment and hardware, the shooting of starry sky has always been shrouded in a mysterious veil, which fascinates everyone. In fact, starry sky shooting is not technically difficult, and it can even be said to be very simple. You can also use the technique of shooting before and after to shoot a starry galaxy blockbuster.

How to photograph the Milky Way in the starry sky 1. The influence of natural conditions

1, first you should be able to see the stars.

Like all landscape photography, the first element of starry sky photography is that you can see the stars. In order to make a good work of Xinghe, you must watch it. This harsh natural environment directly kills the desire of many photographers living in big cities to shoot the starry sky. Domestic cities are pursuing night lighting projects and air pollution, and it is basically impossible to photograph the stars around the city. Therefore, for domestic photographers, if they want to shoot the starry sky, they must go further, away from the city and light pollution.

2. No clouds and the moon can see the beauty of the starry sky.

The second important factor is the weather. Rainy season is often not suitable for shooting starry sky. In 20 13, I collected wind in the Qinghai-Tibet area of Sichuan, but I didn't see a perfect starry sky on the plateau for 15 days. Just show you some stars through the clouds, because it was rainy season and it was often cloudy at night. My friend told me that winter is more suitable for shooting the starry sky in Tibetan areas. If you want to shoot the starry sky when traveling, it is necessary to do a survey of the weather around the destination over the years, so as to be aware of it.

3. There are few stars on the moon.

The third important factor is the interference of the moon. Is the moon star rare? , very straightforward, right? Full moon day, bright landscape, few stars, new moon day, dark landscape, many stars? . We will explain this in detail later. We can shoot different content on different lunar days.

A lot.

Second, the starry sky photographic equipment

Many times we say that the head behind the camera determines the success or failure of shooting, but when shooting in the starry sky, the camera often directly determines the quality of a work, and even determines what you shoot.

1, SLR fuselage

An excellent SLR camera with high sensitivity, such as Canon's EOS 6D and 5d3, Nikon's D7 100, D700 and D800, is enough. Of course, it would be better if there were top flagship machine D3s, D4 or 1dx.

2, wide-angle lens

With a super wide-angle lens with a large aperture, a large aperture of f/2.8 is standard, and a super wide-angle lens with 16mm or 14mm is better.

Step 3: tripod

A tripod combination suitable for vertical shooting is necessary, which can be exposed for dozens of seconds or even hours and is stable. Note that many spherical ptz need to buy L-shaped brackets to be suitable for vertical shooting.

4. Cable release device

Wired release (built-in in some Nikon models) can be shot regularly. It is best to use wired remote control instead of wireless remote control. Because of long exposure or automatic shutter interval, the stability of remote control is much worse.

Third, matters needing attention when shooting

Use the weather forecast website to query the meteorological information of astrophotography. You can find a website and look at the astronomical weather forecast, which can tell you clearly and intuitively whether it is suitable for stargazing today. The weather suitable for stargazing is relatively suitable for shooting stars. Take Shanghai as an example:

Obviously, the difference in the above picture is not suitable for shooting, and Excellence is the best shooting time. Then we have to consider the phase of the moon and the time when the moon rises and sets. However, this is only considered from the weather. In fact, it's no use watching this in Shanghai, because there is light pollution in the city that never sleeps, and it's hard to see a few stars in Shanghai in the best weather. New moon days, such as the 30th day of the lunar calendar and 1 day, are always the most suitable for stargazing and shooting stars. If you just shoot the starry sky and don't shoot the track, it is very appropriate to shoot when the moon is not rising or has already set. As shown in the picture below, the moon only rises at 2: 45 in the morning, so in the absence of light pollution, we can think that it is a good time to shoot after 10 at night and before 2: 30 in the morning. Compare whether there is moonlight contrast when shooting at the same time in two adjacent positions.

The last touch of moonlight (1 1: 50) before the setting of the moon illuminates the whole plank road, but the effect is better and more natural than flashing lights or flashlights.

The following picture was taken on the same day 12: 05, which is only 15 minutes different from the above picture. However, the moon has completely set, and the prospect is bright through exposure, but it is very dull due to the lack of light and shadow.

Fourth, consult the map to understand the shooting point.

If you are shooting at the target for the first time, I suggest you use the map software to check the surrounding buildings and roads first, so that you can know fairly well.

As shown in the picture below, this is where I filmed. You can see that apart from expressway, there are only rails and no buildings on the basic lake, which is very suitable for shooting stars.

Five, about low light focusing

Focusing is extremely difficult when shooting at night. In the viewfinder, it is often dark and you can't see anything. If the common manual infinity method is used, sometimes it will be out of focus, and the photographed stars are still very weak.

If you enlarge the details of the above picture to the following picture, you can clearly see that the stars are out of focus, which is an obvious example of incorrect focus.

Correct focusing method:

Brighten the foreground with a flashlight, and then the camera uses Live View real-time focusing mode to zoom in 10 times and focus the foreground manually. This method is suitable for most situations, the depth of field of wide-angle lens is very large, and the Jiao Wai is basically clear. As shown below, I just focused on the tree on the lower right. The foreground is very clear and the galaxy is very clear, so the whole picture looks much more comfortable than the above picture.

Composition and distortion of intransitive verbs

The foreground part of composition can be assisted by flashlight or car light, but in most cases, we can only take one picture, see the actual effect, and then adjust it, and the advantages of digital camera will be fully reflected. When shooting the starry sky, you should still pay attention to the distortion of the foreground. The stars are high in the night sky. We all try to shoot the Milky Way or shoot more stars, so we always try to shoot with our heads tilted at a low angle, which often leads to extreme deformation of the landscape, collapse of houses and horizontal growth of trees.

Of course, many people will say that I am shooting stars, and the prospect is just a reference, not a theme, so I don't need to care too much. In my opinion, horizontal and vertical, and proper proportion are an aesthetic basis. Good works are often not brilliant, but often poor, because disharmony often appears very prominent, even in the works of some respected domestic star photographers.

There are several ways to solve the distortion problem:

The simplest thing, of course, is to choose a more suitable foreground and avoid some vertical objects, such as houses, cypresses and pine trees. Try to choose things that won't have much impact even if they are twisted, such as wave stones, tents, or cars. Although the Land Rover in the picture below has obvious distortion, it highlights the front part and makes people feel more domineering.

Another method is to consider moving the axis lens if possible, and its phase field is not lower than that of the fisheye lens. By shifting the axis, as many stars as possible can be photographed without distortion of the landscape. Of course, the disadvantage is that the first stop is lost and the ISO sensitivity needs to be doubled. The above picture was taken with Canon TS-E 17mm shift lens. The head is almost not tilted, and you can see the boundary pillar standing upright in the scene.

Seven, the prospect of fill light

Foreground is always an important factor for the success of starry sky photography. How to brighten the foreground and blend it into the whole starry sky scene is an arduous challenge. Common ways to fill the light are moonlight, flashlight, flashlight, car lamp, lighter and all available light sources.

Moonlight is most suitable for illuminating large scenes when shooting the orbit of stars, because few artificial light sources can illuminate the whole ground, and the light of the moon is the most symmetrical and natural. If I shoot the orbit of a star, I like the sky with a little moon best, even on a full moon day. Although there will be fewer stars, it is actually enough to become a star orbit.

Flashlight is the most convenient way to fill the light of distant trees and small houses, but it is difficult to control because of its small lighting range.

Flash is best for illuminating small prospects such as cars, tents and stones. The advantages of flash lamp are uniform illumination and controllable output intensity, and the color temperature can be adjusted through color film, which is most suitable for blending into starry sky scenes. In the picture on the previous page, Land Rover borrowed the light pollution from expressway street lamps as the side light source, and used a flashlight to supplement the light at the left, front and right angles with the output of 1/64 respectively. The light source in the car comes from the LCD screen in the car.

All you have to do is aim inside the shutter 20 and press the test button on the car. You don't need to consider the set top, flasher, front curtain or Hou Lian, but you can try to aim at 10 to fill the light after exposure.

Car lights are often the most unforgettable light source, as long as you drive.

Lighters are generally used to fill the faces of some starry portraits, which can create a relatively hesitant atmosphere. As shown in the first picture, the lighter is the only supplementary light source, thanks to Xuedai for providing the picture. In the second picture, a flashlight and a lighter work together. You can see that the parameters of the two photos are exactly the same, but because of the different lighting effects, we get two completely different works.

Eight, star orbit shooting

1, before shooting

Shooting the star track is actually an advanced version of shooting the starry sky. In a sense, it is advantageous for a film camera to shoot the orbit of a star, because the thermal noise generated by a digital camera under high sensitivity and long exposure is difficult to remove, and the film camera has no battery pressure, so it is actually no problem to shoot for several hours. However, movies have gradually withdrawn from the historical stage and are inconvenient to use. I won't say much here. Let's focus on shooting the orbit of the star with a digital camera. There are generally two methods to photograph the orbit of stars, single long exposure method and multiple superposition method. Single sheet long exposure method is more suitable for film machine. If the digital camera is exposed for one hour, the high-sensitivity noise caused by heat is definitely uncontrollable, so here we only introduce the superposition method to shoot the star orbit and the post-processing method.

The method of multiple superposition is very simple. The same exposure combination (high sensitivity ISO 1600 ~3200, larger aperture f/2.8, longer exposure time, no more than 60 seconds, preferably no more than 30 seconds), the camera lens is aimed at the North Star (northern hemisphere), and the star rotates about 15 degrees for one hour. Theoretically,

One of the core issues here is automatic photographing every second. You can't control this manually. Your accuracy and endurance are limited, so it is necessary to buy a cable release with timing function. Generally shoot more than 100, and the time is longer than 1 hour. According to the number of stars, a star orbit can be superimposed. Pictures 16- 12 were taken 167, about an hour and a half. In fact, it only turns about 20 degrees, but you look like a complete circle. Why? Because the stars are scattered in the sky. Although each star is only 15~20 degrees, there are stars at every angle, which looks like a complete circle.

2. Advantages of superposition method

Noise. The superposition method only takes 30 or 60 seconds for each shot, so the relative thermal noise is better, and each shot after superposition will not be too bad. Moreover, it is said that the noise will be smoothed out when superimposed, and there is a one-second interval between shots, so the machine still combines work and rest. Electricity. Although the superposition method will also be affected by battery exhaustion, as long as the battery is changed quickly, it will only affect for a few seconds, and the long exposure method will stop directly. Exposure. The superposition method can make every photo correctly exposed, without worrying about overexposure of the foreground, so more stars and normally exposed foreground can be photographed, and the superimposed star orbit effect is better. Delay. The same star-orbit material, if you make a time-delayed video, a shot has two effects.

Endurance is the foundation of large-scale star orbits. If the orbit is more round, it will be smoother and more comfortable only if it takes longer to take more pictures. Lincoln? Some of Harrison's track blockbusters were filmed for more than ten hours, and some domestic track experts also filmed in the wild all night in winter. Sometimes you feel that your orbit is not good enough, that is, you haven't run far enough and haven't run long enough. In the final analysis, your endurance is not enough. I'm not a person with particularly good endurance, so my orbit work is really not very good, just one lap, but from a technical point of view, there is basically no big difference.

9. The northern hemisphere faces Polaris and the southern hemisphere faces due south.

The biggest difference between star orbit shooting and star setting shooting is whether you are aiming in the right direction. Now that we have smart phones, we can install some star map APP software to help us locate Polaris, such as the famous China version of the star map. If the northern hemisphere faces the Polaris, then your lens is a stellar orbit. If you have enough time, it will become a circle. If you don't aim, it will become a star setting. It's better to be out of round than out of round, because sometimes you have to consider it according to the actual situation. Is the foreground suitable for you to shoot the orbit of stars? Do you have enough stars to shoot the track? If you really can't find the North Star, aim due north, just like I was shooting due south in the southern hemisphere. Due south and due north, you can locate it through the compass of GPS unit or digital compass.

Let's take a photo of a star's orbit as an example to introduce the superposition method and post-processing. The picture shows the orbit of the port of Virunga. In terms of foreground and image quality, it is actually the best star track I have ever photographed. Unfortunately, it didn't face south, and it didn't take long to shoot, which was not professional enough.

The picture below is one of the 70 star orbits that I shot during the full moon for one hour, and then superimposed in the Startrails software. It can be seen that there are really not many stars.

This shot is obviously different from the general starry sky shooting. I only used ISO 400 and f/5.6. Because it was a full moon at that time, the brightness of the foreground was similar to that at sunset, so if the usual starry sky setting of ISO3200 f/2.8 is adopted, it will definitely be overexposed, so it is most reasonable to choose exposure according to local conditions.

Many people say that the full moon is not suitable for stars. I think so too. During the full moon, there will be fewer stars, but the foreground illuminated by natural light is much better than that illuminated by flash lamps and other artificial light sources. The color temperature is also natural, ISO 400, and the noise is much less. There are fewer stars, so you can't shoot the starry sky, but it's enough for the stars to shoot an orbit together, so now I recommend shooting some orbits on half-moon days and full-moon days, because there are too many stars on new moon days to shoot an orbit, and dense discs are not good-looking.

You can decorate a film in Lightroom first, and then set it to all films synchronously, or you can stack it first and then process TIFF. I choose to stack this film before processing it, because I think there are not many places to process, so I export JPEG directly. At present, Startrails does not support the overlay of RAW format, but it can support TIFF, but I think TIFF full-size file is a bit large, and it is still a great burden when using hundreds of files. Generally, we use the German free software StarTrails to superimpose the orbits of stars. The download address is http://startrails.de/startrails.zip,, so it can be used without installation and decompression.

X. processing steps

1. As shown in the figure below, open the file to be superimposed in the star track. There are 64 gears here, each shot is 60 seconds, about an hour. Startrails supports dark field, that is, taking a picture in all black with the same exposure time. You can take a picture with the lens. I don't have this good habit, I will develop it in the future.

2. Click the fifth icon in the figure below. Generally, I choose the default setting of light-screen-mixing, and then click? Okay？ Button to start superimposing. The speed of superposition depends on your computer. My computer is very good, so it will be fast. If there are many movies and the speed is slow, have a cup of coffee and have a rest.

3. When the progress bar below is full, it means that the superposition is complete, and then click the third icon to save. Finally, there will be a pop-up window to adjust the compression ratio. The default value is 90. I usually choose 100, and the picture quality will be better. Click? Okay？ Press the button and save. My original picture is not rotated, so it is not vertical. All you have to do is adjust it in Photoshop or Lightroom, and that's it. Isn't it simple?

If you want to get a track with a star-studded effect as shown below, you can consider using the StarSpokes Pro filter to process the first photo or the last photo to make it have the effect as shown in the figure.