How to Take Pictures of Stars
In this tutorial I’m going to show you how to photograph the stars! Plus, I’ll be giving you a free guide to photographing stars so you can get perfect pictures whilst you’re out shooting. We’re going to look at star photography settings, equipment to use, when and where to do it and best practice when it comes to taking pictures of the night sky.
Download the guide below.
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Tip 1 - Best locations for taking pictures of the night sky
To get the best pictures of the night sky you need no light pollution.
Try not to be near any streetlights and avoid doing it on a full moon. Try to take the photographs on or lower than a half moon.
Mount Teidi, Tenerife
Tip 2 - Equipment needed to take pictures of stars
Tripod
You will need a good sturdy tripod to take the weight of your camera. As it’s dark, exposure times shooting the night sky will be long, therefore your camera needs to be dead still. Avoid using cheap flimsy tripods as these could cause your camera to move in the wind or make your set up top heavy.
DSLR and Mirrorless camera
Taking pictures of stars requires you to work fully manual, therefore you will need a camera that is capable of that. A good camera to use would be a DSLR or mirrorless camera that has a fully manual setting. To learn how to use your camera in fully manual mode click here.
Remote trigger or cable release
Whist your taking pictures of stars you cannot touch the camera as you will get camera shake. To enable this you will need a remote trigger or a cable release, this will enable you to fire off the camera without touching it.
Wide Angle Lens
It’s a good idea to use what’s called an ultra-wide angle lens so you can photograph as much of the night sky as possible. On a Full frame camera this will be a focal length of 16-24mm, on a crop sensor camera it will be 11- 17mm and on a micro 4:3 camera it will be a focal length of 8-12mm.
If possible it’s a good idea to have a lens with a wide aperture such as f2.8 or below to let in much light in as possible.
To learn more about apertures and focal lengths click here.
Tip 3 - Star Photography Settings
There is no one magic setting that will get you perfect pictures of stars every time as it depends on the lighting situation you’re in. However there are base star photography settings that will start you off.
Use an Aperture of f2.8 to let in as much light as possible.
Use an ISO of 1600-3200 - You don’t want to go much over 3200 as it could create noise and noise is seen much more prominently when it is dark!
A Shutter speed of around 25 seconds - Whilst exposing for the stars you’ll need a long shutter speed to let in as much light as you can.
Your lens needs to be on manual focus and set to infinity.
If you can, shoot in raw – You need to post process star photography to get the best out of it and reduce any noise and shooting in Raw will help massively with this. If you don’t know how to post process photography come to our Lightroom course where we teach you all about it.
Camera lens set to Manual and infinity focus
Before and after post processing a star photograph
Learn more with our Astrophotography Course here
Tip 4 - Location & Test shot
For good pictures of stars you need a good location with foreground interest. This will add more detail and interest to the shots.
You will also need to take some test shots with the setting above then adjust accordingly. If the shots look too dark, increase the shutter speed and/or ISO, if it’s too light, do the opposite. To learn more about ISO, click here.
A good idea is to have rocks in the foreground in your star photography
Final Pictures of Stars
20 Seconds - F2.8 - ISO 1600 - 16mm Focal Length (Full frame camera)
20 Seconds - F2.8 - ISO 1600 - 16mm Focal Length
Picture of the milky way in the night sky.
This Example has no light on the foreground which has caused a silhouette. This enhances and draws attention to the milky way.
In these shots the foreground has been lit up with a torch. This technique is a bit hit and miss but it’s really good to get a sharp detail of the foreground of your shot.
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