Star trails - Can this be done using 18-55mm

Badger8

Badger8

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Tim
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Good Morning,

I am very new to photography and I'm very keen on star trails. I've been itching to attempt in for the past week and finally my new Nikon D3100 arrived yesterday :love:. My question is, can I use the kit 18 - 55mm kit lens to take a decent star trail? And is it best to use the 18mm or 55mm end of the lens (if that makes any sense?
 
Badger8 said:
Good Morning,

I am very new to photography and I'm very keen on star trails. I've been itching to attempt in for the past week and finally my new Nikon D3100 arrived yesterday :love:. My question is, can I use the kit 18 - 55mm kit lens to take a decent star trail? And is it best to use the 18mm or 55mm end of the lens (if that makes any sense?
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Also, you might want a remote trigger release, think my D3100 only has 30sec max shutter opening. It does have blub mode but you don't want to be shaking the camera by pressing the camera button.
 
You can shoot trails at either end of the focal range, but at 55mm the trails will be longer for any given length of exposure due to the extra magnification that 55mm gives compared to 18mm.
 
Thanks everyone for your replies. I've got a tripod and cable release so I think I should be ok. Other questions I have is:

In some photos the object in the foreground looks like its been "light painted". If you want that effect do you do one exposer of it? Or do you have to light paint the object on all of the exposers?

In my head if you're using something like f/4.0 and you set your camera to infinitely, surely the object in the foreground will be out of focus? Am I thinking about this too much?
 
You can easily do star trails with that lens in fact you can get some quite stunning results with practice, if you check my signature you can find my guide to star trails which should answer your questions and guide you on doing star trails if you've got any questions still having read through the guide please do ask and I'll be happy to answer them for you (y)

Matt
MWHCVT
 
MWHCVT said:
You can easily do star trails with that lens in fact you can get some quite stunning results with practice, if you check my signature you can find my guide to star trails which should answer your questions and guide you on doing star trails if you've got any questions still having read through the guide please do ask and I'll be happy to answer them for you (y)

Matt
MWHCVT
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Thank you Matt I really appreciate that. Did you read my other post on the thread?
 
pete.rush said:
http://www.nickt.co.uk/naturalworld...star-fields-chesterton-windmill-warwickshire/
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Thank you very much for the link!

I'm pretty much always at the wide end of my 17-40 when out doing star stuff.

The more you do it, the more you just instinctively know what settings to use when you attempt it. I went out the other day to do a timelapse and guessed at 20 seconds, f/4, ISO 800 which ended up being spot on.

It was the same with the below (very short) timelapse...

[vimeo]54980916[/vimeo]

But sometimes I go to 30 or 40 seconds. It depends how much ambient light there is in the location and how 'pin sharp' you want the stars. There's a 'rule' that to get pin sharp stars your exposure time should be 600/focal length on full frame or 400/focal length on crop - so with a 17mm lens on FF then you want to aim for 35 seconds max, with an 18mm on crop then 22 seconds.

So, you'll see that really, the 18mm end of your kit lens is ideal.

Don't be afraid to up the ISO to 800 or 1600 on modern cameras to get your shutter speed where it needs to be :)

Enjoy playing!
 
Badger8 said:
Thank you Matt I really appreciate that. Did you read my other post on the thread?
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No I hadn't :exit:

Point 1: No you don't have to light paint each and every frame (y) my suggestion is do the light painting that you want in the first few frames of the exposure, then at the end do something else light painting wise, that way you get to different photo's out of one star trailing outing with with the first including the start light painting but excluding that end light painting and second photo obviously doing it the other way around (y)

As an example..

212/365 by mwhcvt, on Flickr

This was made up of about 60 x 15 second exposures, with the first 6 exposures featuring light painting the first two exposures were for green on the foreground, the 3rd was for the blue in the arch, the 4th was for the green in the background on the lock and the the 5th and 6th were for the red on the bridge, nothing else was done on the other exposures and this was the end result after stacking, I could have done something different at the end to create a second image but for the fact that it was already getting light :(

So basically try and break your light painting into sections of the scene so as to not over light paint a single part of the scene :D

Point 2: You'll be shooting at f/4-5.6 usually, so focus on the foreground as the scene will look really silly with an out of focus foreground but pin sharp stars where as the stars are only tiny points of light so if they're a tiny bit OOF it's not really an issue IMO there are exceptions to this as if your focusing on something very close to the camera then DoF would effectively totally blur out the stars in this instance you'll need to do an exposure with focus on the foreground and then change focus to the stars and then blend to two plains of focus together but that's really a very specific situation :D

Hopefully that clears things up for you (y)

Matt
 
Thank you all for your help. I actually decided to bite the bullet before I had the chance to read any replies as the sky was clear and looking at weather apps I only had an hour and a half window here in Bournemouth. So I tried it an considering this is only my 2nd day with a DSLR and 4th picture ever, I'm pretty happy with it. Please critique it!!! I know its way off perfect or even close to it. Thank you so much again you all played a part in it with advice.

This was shot over an hour period using f/4 and ISO 800. 30 frame shutter speed over an hours worth of exposures. BBRRRRRRRRRRR it was cold.


Alderholt Field Star Trail by TimDicks, on Flickr
 
nickjohnwatson said:
Errrr.............well done!

Great first attempt :-D a little bit more forground interest is all it'll take and if you get trails like that every time you are on to a winner!
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Thank you Nick, I really do appreciate your time. I was thinking the same, but below the tree was a small country road and the farmer (I think) was having a party so cars were coming up and down the road! half of me was thinking great, i can get the tail lights at the bottom too!!! But the other half was scared and the aim for me was the star trails as I'm only 2 days old into photography. Maybe as I get a bit more confident I will be more creative. :nikon:
 
Yeah. Small steps. I'm still a small fish in the big wide world of photography compared to a lot of the folks on here lol, I'd try and find something along the lines of a landmark such as a church/castle/windmill/statue and compose as you would have In the day but allow a little more sky than a daytime photo for the stars. Its good fun though!
 
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