Star trails on film

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mark_farrell

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I've been musing about resurrecting my old film camera for a while now. One thing I was quite keen on trying out to avoid digital noise was star trail photography. What speed films and apertures have people been using to do this?

Also, do you have any tips on scanning very dark slides? My rather flaky epson scanner seems to miss 'underexposed' frames when using it. My experience of developers putting them on photo CDs hasn't been much better. I doubt I'd ever shoot enough film to warrant buying a decent film scanner...
 
Hello there.

Star trails?

I would try doing the Google as there is a fair few threads around that cover this subject.

However if I were doing it I would use 100 or 400 iso film, at the end of the day when you see the star trail images which are nearly all round in a circle you are looking at a 6-8hour exposure time, so film speed become a little irrelevent.

As for scanning, it will be a little tricky as you will have lots of black in there, so could cause the scanner to underexpose. You could try sticking the image into photoshop and playing either with the levels or duplicate layers and some of the blending modes (I forget which one).
 
In the past, when I used film, I used to shoot a few trails. I used 200 or 400 ISO film and an aperture of f/4 or f/5.6 on a 50mm f/1.8 lens. To help with frame alignment when scanning, I would shoot a flashed shot of a hedge or just the ground every so often so there was a "normal" shot to get aligned in the film carrier of the scanner. (Keep your eyes shut when taking these lit frames to avoid kneckering your night vision and get away from other people who may be star gazing so you don't wreck their vision or shots either). Of course, with very long exposures, light pollution will give you a good clue as to where the edges of shots are anyway.

When scanning, you should be able to force the scanner to scan what it thinks are empty frames but it might take some fiddling with the settings to get the scanner to expose correctly.
 
Thanks for your help. I ordered some Kodak ASA100 earlier today (before checking in here). I think It's going to be a case of nifty-fifty on the front, and leave it for a couple of hours, then repeat. What exposure lengths were you looking at (and corresponding apertures) for either very dark, non-light polluted sky (partner's parents on Anglesey), or more polluted skies of the moors above Manchester...

Am in correct in thinking that reciprocity failure of films may work to my advantage here, cancelling out increased clouding from city lights, whilst only reacting to the 'new' light as the stars 'move'?
 
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