Shooting the night sky

[Graeme Duane]

Sounds like you need to do a time exposure time lapse with a stills camera at full res, and render this out at the whatever post format you’re using. I use an old Canon 10D and have pretty good results with star lapses.

[Swell78]

Thanks, I hadn’t thought of that one. My DP suggested doing the stars in post unless we can get ahold of the Red One Digital camera. That might work, Im not sure though. Do you know what the ratio of shots would have to be, say for an 8 second lapse? Thanks again!

[Graeme Duane]

I guess you’re shooting 30p? So what ever your interval is, multiply thatr by 30 to get the shooting time for 1 second of playout.

Last time I did this I had the following settings for a Canon 10D (ballpark):
Crank the ASA right up to 1600
Open the iris
Set the exposure time on the computer/remote to about 1 min.
Set the interval time on the computer/remote to as short as you can get it, maybe 5 to 10 secs.

You’ll have to play with this, and it depends on how much ambient light there is and how bright the actual sky is. I got pretty cool results with no moon in a dark sky with stars vortexing over a bank of pitch black pine trees.

I’ve also had insane results doing city lapses at night.

The surprising thing is that the resolution fits nicely!

[Juan Martinez]

Here is another suggestion. If you are shooting with an F950 and recording to an SRW1, you can take advantage of the frame accumulation mode. This function will allow the exposure to span over several frames (user selectable). In addition, Zeiss Digi-Prime lenses deliver full MTF at wide open, which will yield the high resolution necessary for your shot without sacrificing sensitivity.

Juan Martinez