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Creating Star Trails with Fujifilm

Learn to reveal the passage of the stars across the night sky with this thrilling astrophotography technique

Astrophotography is considered one of the more difficult areas of image-making to get started in. Why? Well, from the outside, it appears to be a confusion of mathematics, star-tracking tripods and weather forecasts. But for those looking to dip their toe in the water, star trail photography is a simple introduction to the craft. What’s more, it doesn’t require any specialist gear either.

What is a Star Trail Photo?

A star trail is a stack of exposures of the night sky, depicting the movement of the stars relative to the earth’s surface as long streaks of light.

This phenomenon is visible because of the rotation of the Earth through the celestial sphere. Due to the axis of rotation, different star trail effects can be achieved depending on where you are positioned in the world, and which direction your camera is aimed.

Point your camera towards one of the pole stars – Polaris if you are in the northern hemisphere, or Sigma Octantis for the southern hemisphere – and your star trail image will depict star circles (also known as circumpolar star trails).

Point your camera away from the nearest celestial pole, or straight up if you are near the equator, and you will get more gently arcing star paths.

Photo Equipment for Star Trails

Despite the impressive results possible when carrying out this technique, star trail photography can be achieved with a fairly simple set-up.

To get enough movement for a good star trail effect, you will need at least an hour’s worth of images – preferably even more. FUJIFILM X Series and GFX System cameras can make a single 60-minute exposure, but the best way to create a star trail is by compositing lots of shorter exposures – each around 30 seconds to a minute.

Working in this way means any visual issues – like somebody walking in front of the camera halfway through, for example – won’t ruin your only image, and can potentially be removed by not including the offending frames in the final composite. This also provides control over how many exposures you want to include, which will affect the final length of the star trails in your photo.

The easiest way to create hundreds of exposures consistently is by using a camera with an intervalometer. X Series and GFX System cameras have an intervalometer function built in. If using a body without this setting, you’ll need an external intervalometer to connect to your camera.

As with most forms of long-exposure photography, the quality of a star trail depends on maintaining perfect stability for the whole procedure. For that reason, a good-quality tripod is a must.

In terms of lens selection, you will want a wide-angle optic with as large an aperture as possible – for example, FUJINON XF16mmF1.4 R WR or FUJINON XF18mmF1.4 R LM WR.

A battery grip, loaded with freshly charged cells and attached to your camera, is also recommended. The body will be in constant operation for a matter of hours, so a battery grip will ensure you have enough power to see you through without having to touch the camera and risk upsetting the framing.

Be prepared with storage, too. You’re going to be recording a lot of data, so bring along a spacious enough card.

Finally, keep in mind that you’ll be sitting around in the dark waiting for the camera to finish – so pack accordingly. Dress for the occasion, bring a flask of something warm, think about having somewhere comfy to sit and bring something (or someone) to keep you entertained.

Planning for Star Trail Astrophotography

A good star trail is made in the planning stage, long before you set off the intervalometer. Consider the weather, local light pollution, the phase of the moon, the direction of your photograph and your foreground.

First, you will need a perfectly clear night. All that should change throughout your exposures is the position of the stars – so do all you can to avoid having any clouds come floating through. There are many resources available online for checking cloud cover forecasts. Start with the Met Office’s cloud cover map (UK only) and windy.com.

To photograph star trails, you want the stars to be as clearly visible as possible. For that reason, head to a location with minimal light pollution. Once again, online light pollution maps will help you find an unpolluted area to set up.

Once you’re away from artificial light pollution, you’ll need to consider the moon. Compared to the stars, the moon is incredibly bright, so will ruin your exposure if it drifts into frame. Even if it isn’t in frame, the ambient light pollution from a full moon on a clear night will make the stars much less visible. That’s why the best thing to do is work on a moonless night. Lunar cycle websites tell you what time the moon will be in the sky, as well as its current phase.

If you are planning to depict star circles, you will need a way to find the pole star and make sure it’s framed up. There are many ways to do this, including with the naked eye, but a stargazing app can help make certain on the night.

Finally, with all the above in mind, consider a nice foreground. Star trails alone are visually pleasing, but another subject for context goes a long way. Whatever you choose, make sure it’s entirely static. Any movement will be recorded.

Star Trail Camera Settings

Once you’ve found the perfect conditions for making a star trail, the hard part should be over. Make doubly sure your camera and lens are set up correctly, so all that planning doesn’t go to waste.

As noted earlier, to achieve a good effect you will want at least an hour’s worth of photography – but realistically, you should keep going for as long as you can. For this example, we will set up the camera to make images for just over two hours.

First, make sure long exposure noise reduction is turned off in IMAGE QUALITY SETTING > LONG EXPOSURE NR. When on, this setting causes the camera to take one photo with the shutter closed for every normal photo, recording only image noise and hot pixels. It then automatically subtracts the noise profile from the initial photo. This is useful for single exposures, but in this context it would add a long gap between each photograph, causing dotted lines rather than smooth star trails on the final composited image.

Start establishing a correct exposure by setting your shutter speed to 30 seconds as a benchmark. On a Fujifilm body, select T on the shutter speed dial and use the rear command dial to choose the setting.

ISO should remain low, to avoid digital noise. Don’t go higher than ISO 1600 if possible.

While you want as much light as possible through the lens, keep in mind that any lens is less sharp at its widest aperture. If your lens has a fast widest aperture, like F1.4, stopping down by one to one-and-a-half stops will help overall image quality. Regardless of lens, try to avoid narrow apertures beyond F4.

Set focus manually on the brightest star – or failing that, to infinity. Use the focus check setting (AF/MF SETTING > FOCUS CHECK) to digitally zoom in on the focus point when adjusting the focus ring, then rack focus back and forth to find the position that makes your chosen star look its smallest (and therefore sharpest).

If your composition features a foreground subject, make sure it is far enough away from your camera that it will be acceptably in focus. Do this by looking up the hyperfocal distance of your optic and ensuring the foreground subject is at least half that distance from the lens.

Before setting your sequence of images off, make a test photograph and check everything is sharp, correctly exposed and in frame. Adjust focus, exposure settings and framing as required.

To set up the intervalometer, open the menu and go to SHOOTING SETTING > INTERVAL TIMER SHOOTING. Use the in-camera timer and set the interval to the minimum (one second), and the number of photos to 240. This will give you 240 exposures of 30 seconds each per our example, with a one-second gap between each image – a total time of 124 minutes.

You can then set a timer for how long until the first exposure is made. Set it for a minute or two, leaving time to ensure your framing is still correct after using the menu buttons, then get clear of the area without disturbing the tripod.

Post-Production: Stacking Star Trail Images

You can find several free apps for compositing star trails, such as StarStaX (Mac and Windows) or Sequator (Windows only), which will do the work for you.

If you have Adobe Photoshop and want more control, you can create the star trail effect using the blending function – here’s how.

To get all your images into Photoshop, first convert them from RAW to JPEG using the batch processing function in your RAW processing software. Make the most of the RAW files’ extra data and do the bulk of your editing before converting, though. Work on one image, then copy your settings over to the rest.

Once the images are converted to JPEG, open Photoshop and load them as a stack of layers. Select FILE > SCRIPTS > LOAD FILES INTO STACK and select all JPEGS.

If using Adobe Lightroom to edit RAWs, you can instead select all the images in Lightroom and go to PHOTO > EDIT IN > OPEN AS LAYERS IN PHOTOSHOP.

Once Photoshop has loaded in all the layers – which may take some time depending on the number of files and performance of your computer – you can start combining the images. Make sure the layers panel is visible. If it’s not, select WINDOW > LAYERS.

Select all layers in this panel by clicking on the top layer, then scrolling to the bottom of the window and shift-clicking the bottom layer.

Go to blending mode in the layers window (a dropdown box that should currently display the word ‘Normal’) and select ‘Lighten’.

This will allow the brightest parts of the images to appear on the top layer – and your star trail effect should be visible immediately.

All that remains is to flatten the layers into one image. Click the four horizontal lines in the layers panel and select ‘Flatten Image’ from the dropdown menu. Now you can save and export your freshly composited star trail!

Uncover the Beauty of the Night Sky with Fujifilm

We hope this introduction to star trail photography not only demystifies the process but encourages you to explore celestial photography, no matter your photography level.

Dive deeper into the universe of photography with more insights and tips – waiting for you in FUJIFILM Learning Centre.