It’s impossible to set an interval of 0, so I just set it at 1 second and then the number of shots to 150. In the second screen of the Menu, I selected Interval Timer Shooting, and then in the next screen selected the interval between shots and the number of shots. The X-T1 (and other X series cameras) have a really intuitive intervalometer which is easy to set up and start. I then set the shutter dial to T and set the shutter speed to 30 seconds with the aperture opened on the lens to f2.8īefore started shooting the images with the intervalometer I ensured that Noise Reduction was turned off (I always keep it turned off, but it doesn’t hurt to check) as this slows down the camera and stops the shots from being continuous. When the camera was composed and focused exactly where I wanted it to be and the tripod was completely secure and stable, I set the ISO to 1000, which I knew would be enough as the stars were so bright In other situations without such a dark sky I would probably use a higher ISO of around 2000. I ensured that I had lots of sky in the frame as I wanted the star trails to dominate the image. It also meant I could check the focus, although the only thing I could do here was switch to Manual focus and set it to infinity. The resulting image gave me a clear silhouette of the peaks so I could orientate my composition, and through trail an error I was eventually able to make sure my camera was pointing where I wanted it to be with nothing obstructing the view. I upped the ISO to 3200 and took a 30 second exposure. When I arrived at the location I’d scouted the day before, although the stars were incredibly bright I couldn’t see anything of the caldera in the darkness of night which made composing a little difficult. I aimed to start the exposures around two hours before sunrise, which meant while the majority of the images would be taken in complete darkness, the last images would be in the blue hour of pre dawn giving me some colour in the sky and a little indirect light on the volcanic peaks. I was a little concerned about the battery running out, so I made sure I had a freshly charged battery (as well as a couple of spares just in case) and to save as much power as possible I switched view mode to EVF only with eye detection, so the camera wouldn’t use the LCD, and would only activate the EVF if it sensed my eye close to it. Just to make sure though, I arrived a little earlier to give myself time to shoot 150 exposures. As I was planning to shoot exposures of 30 seconds with no interval between each image, that works out at 120 exposures. To get the trails to have a decent length you need to capture at least an hour of the stars moving across the sky. I decided to use the XF 14mm f2.8 lens as it would allow me to shoot at a slightly lower ISO than I would with the 10-24mm f4, and therefore have slightly more quality in the final image file. The secret to any night time shot is to get as much light onto the sensor as possible using a combination of a wide open aperture, a long shutter speed and a high ISO. Last year however I went to Indonesia and was planning to shoot the volcanic caldera of Mount Bromo, which is a long way from any light pollution and also isn’t freezing cold (although despite being on steamy Java is still high enough to be pretty cold at night, and I was thankful to have layers and a lightweight down jacket). I’d wanted to do a star trail shot for quite a while but never really got around to it as the only places I’ve been to where the sky is dark enough and I have been far away enough from light pollution have all seemed to be freezing cold, and not really the kind of places you want to spend an hour or two waiting around to record the stars moving across the sky.
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