The recipe to capture star trails

Those of you who think, photographing in night has very limited option, I'm sorry, but you are absolutely wrong. There are infinite option you can select from for a night photography project. You can paint with light, you can make bokeh, you can take city space reflection in the lake or any other water body around, you can experiment with light-trails etc. Photographing moon and starts is another very fun activity you can try. And if you haven't shot star trails as yer, then you must do it right now. How? Let's read on to find how you can photograph star trails like a pro. Shooting a star trail is one of the most wonderful thing you can do with your camera in night. It can be a fun project to capture the star trails. All you need is a camera which has a 'bulb' mode to shoot, a tripod to keep your camera still for a long time and a remote shutter release button so that you don't mess up with the camera setting. If you wish to shoot star trails, do some planning in advance. Select a location and the point from where you'll shoot the trail. It is preferable to do it a night before to save you time on the day of shooting. Following is the recipe you need to follow to photographing a star trail: 1. When you finalize a location, make sure there isn't too much light. Any kind of external light source can affect shooting a star trail. Preferably select a place which is dark and has very low chances of any external light source affecting your shooting. 2. Focusing in dark is really very difficult. Your camera screen actually doesn't show anything clear. That's the reason we said do some homework. Or reach the spot well in advance so you can set the focus. 3. If your main subject is stars, do take some sample shots to see if all the settings are as you want them to be. 4. Set you white balance. Setting it on 'Tungsten' will cool down the redness which is generated because of a long-exposure . or you can your white balance to 10000 Kelvin, giving it an orange glow. 5. Once everything is in place, the focus, set exposure to 'bulb'. Now is the time to set the aperture. Set it at the widest setting. An aperture of 3.5 to 4.0 is generally good. 6. The next important step is to set the ISO. Set it at 200 (or 100 if you find you're getting too much noise at 200). 7. Last but not the least, remote release the shutter and let the exposure last 30 minutes.