A comment about my star trails made me redo my whole stacking workflow

Someone on a discord server pointed out that my star trail photos had these tiny gaps between each frame, and I never noticed for like 6 months. They said to use a 1 second overlap between exposures and then stack them differently in Sequator. I tried it on a batch from a night shoot near Lake Tahoe and the trails look so much smoother now. Has anyone else had a random critique totally change how they process their night shots?

2 comments

2 Comments

logan_gonzalez3d ago

Man, that overlap thing is the exact reason I still have a folder called "star_screws_2019" I'm too embarrassed to open. I spent a whole winter shooting and stacked everything with zero gap, so my trails look like a dotted line from a broken printer. Now I just tell myself those photos were practice for learning what not to do, which is basically my entire photography journey in one sentence.

phoenix_singh253d ago

Honestly, I used to think that overlap stuff was just overkill and a waste of shutter time, but seeing the difference it makes totally flipped my take on it. Tbh, now I’m going back through my old shots and kinda kicking myself for not listening sooner.