8 Excellent Star Photography Tutorials & Guides for Beginners

OMG GUYS. Star photos.

Can I just geek-out at you for a second about star photos? Because they are effing incredible. First off, star-gazing is incredible, right?

Just grabbing a friend, driving out to the middle of nowhere and staring at the sky while you talk about life. Maybe share a drink. Best. Thing. Ever.

So take that, then add in some awesome camera powers and suddenly it’s like you’re getting to trip without the illegalness of shrooms. The colors, the patterns, the stars. The universe is having a rave and we’re all invited. Literally anytime we want.

I’ve started experimenting with star photography

The other night was a new moon and I noticed how bright the stars looked, so when I was getting ready to go to bed around midnight, I decided to go take star photos instead.

Because who needs sleep, really.

I didn’t have a good understanding of the technical aspects of star photography, I’ve only messed around with it a little before, so I just sorta guess based on what I know about photography in general. Some of the photos I liked, others were eh.

You can click on the photos to enlarge ’em.

Messin’ with white balance (K) to create warmer or cooler color casts in the photos.

I feel like, if I knew more about astrology, I could pick some constellations out in this photo.

Hey hey Milky Way (my fav by far & one of the last photos I took for the night)

I’d like to get to the point where I like evey star photo I take. But it definitely requires a little technical photography know-how. When it comes to taking pictures of the stars, camera settings matter.

To try and up my star-photo game, I went searching for some tutorials. And since I’m not an expert on this yet (like, at all) I figured I’d share what actual expert night sky photographers have to say.

First, 2 videos explore a couple different types of star photography with 2 experts.

The two expert star photographers in these videos focus on different styles of photography, but the results from both are crazy amazing.

Video 1 – Camera settings for star photography

In the 1st video tutorial, Phil Hart, talks about his experience with astrophotography, and the difference between that and star photography. Then he goes into the camera settings, exposure, mode, aperture, ect. Hart also gets into nightsky timelapse photography, which creates amazing results if you know how to shoot it.

Video 2 – Examples of hyperlapse & long exposure “star trail” photography

The 2nd video features star photography expert, Matthew Vandeputte, who specializes in hyperlapse photography.

He focuses on timelapse and long-exposure star shots. When you use a longer exposure for star shots you get “star trails.” You’ll see examples of that and the timelapse technique in Vandeputte’s work in this video.

It’s super helpful for me to have a couple videos to reference and learn from because it helps me visualize the whole process of star photography, but I also really like having some reading material. These articles are super-informative and go into depth about the camera settings and the “why do you do this that way” stuff. Which I really like because I have an obnoxious compulsion to know why things work the way they do down to the littlest detail.

But even for those of you that aren’t quite so crazy about the details, these articles are great references for which camera settings you need to use for star photos. I think they’d be really helpful to take along on a little self-taught star photography adventure too.

The Ultimate Star Photography Tutorial

http://www.davemorrowphotography.com/p/tutorial-shooting-night-sky.html

How to Photograph the Stars

How to Photograph Stars & Night Sky, Top 5 Tips

The Milky Way was actually around when I took those photos (at least I think it’s the Milky Way) so I also looked up some Milky Way-specific photography techniques.

How to Photography the Milky Way

This is next level stuff – how to create a video timelapse of the night sky.

Puttin’ this on my photo-nerd to-do list fo sho.

Totally makes you wanna go camping somewhere where you can see the stars, doesn’t it?