Star Trail Stacking - Raw or JPG?

I shoot in RAW, make whatever changes I want to make, replicate that on the pictures and the convert to jpeg for the stack.

Same reasons as shooting RAW in the first place, flexibility.
 
I can't see the point of raw either.... jpeg for me.
 
Raw all the time. I'll take one representative image and manipulate it to get everything optimised, then copy the same settings to the rest of the files and export all to jpeg.
 
All depends on your memory card imo. I did one with 216 30 second shots. Shot it in RAW purely because i had enough space on my 4GB card. Give the choice id choose RAW every time, no question. Mainly because im the type of idiot that will forget to put it back to RAW afterwards and then potentially not be able to correct any future shots.
 
gnirtS said:
RAW for me then develop to TIFF before feeding into startrails software.

JPG compression combined with possible ISO noise and pinpoint stars going square doesn't appeal.

I can also alter the white balance before combining that way.
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Hi Richard

The OP is asking about star trails :thinking: therefore pinpoint stars would be pretty useless as he would be trying to capture arcs of light. Not sure why ISO noise would be any different with jpeg over raw and I've never had a problem with jpeg compression especially on its highest setting. Raw just seems a clumsy way of doing something simple and it's perfectly easy to set white balance in camera before he starts, just my opinions of course.
 
RAW does seem a little overkill to me when you're gonna run it through startrails software which by its very nature destroys a lot of detail (not a fault of the software, it's an inherent feature of what it does). Any white balance issues can be corrected on your final image afterwards anyway.
 
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Splog said:
Hi Richard

The OP is asking about star trails :thinking: therefore pinpoint stars would be pretty useless as he would be trying to capture arcs of light.
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Ive tried jpg and depending on the shot sometimes those smooth lines become jagged.

Not sure why ISO noise would be any different with jpeg over raw
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Again ive had issues with noise which in a raw you can process out gets made more ugly by jpg compression even on ultra-fine settings.

Id rather have RAW so i have far more scope to repair and adjust than have the limitations imposed by a JPG by its in-camera conversion and the restrictions after it in terms of image manipulation.

It'll only take 20 mins or so to batch process RAW to TIFF for the star trail photo and cards these days have more than enough space.
 
I shoot RAW, manipulate and batch process in Lightroom, convert to JPEG, stack in startrails and finish off in Photoshop.
I don't have any issues with noise as I tend to find that all the noise seems to cancel itself out during stacking.
 
Either format will work fine

RAW will give more data to work with when you start out though.

Shoot with whatever you are used to
 
sturousephoto said:
Startrails is for PC only, right??? What software does the same thing on a Mac???
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Nothing for Mac that I'm aware of. Startrails doesn't need to be installed/ will run from a memory stick so nip round a mate's house and stack on a borrowed
PC whilst you drink free coffee :thumbs:
 
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