Got roasted on my star trail stacking technique and it was the best thing that happened to my photos

I posted a shot of the Milky Way over Mount Rainier last month, and a guy in the comments absolutely tore apart my star trail stacking. He said my 30-second exposures were creating gaps that made the trails look 'like a dotted line drawn by a shaky hand'. I was stacking 50 images, but he pointed out that with my lens, I needed 20-second shots and at least 80 frames for a smooth result. I tried his method on a clear night two weeks ago, and the difference is insane. The trails are buttery smooth now instead of looking choppy. Has anyone else had their entire stacking workflow flipped by a single piece of harsh feedback?

3 comments

3 Comments

kaiblack3mo ago

Totally get it. I had someone rip my foreground blending for northern lights shots. They said my lit-up trees looked like plastic toys because I was using a single long exposure for them. They told me to shoot the foreground at blue hour, then blend that with the sky shots later. Tried it and it was a total game changer. The trees have natural detail now instead of that weird fake glow. Sometimes you just need that one blunt person to point out the obvious flaw.

nancy8243mo ago

Wait, you used one exposure for everything?

parker_jones501mo ago

Hold up, you mean that whole time I was out there freezing my butt off I could have just shot the trees separately during blue hour? Man, that's wild. I've been shooting aurora for like three years now and never once thought to blend a separate foreground. I gotta try that next time because my pines always end up looking like they glow in the dark. What shutter speed do you usually use for the foreground part?