Fixed my star trails by turning off one setting I forgot existed

I kept getting short curved streaks in my shots even though I was using a tripod and a 20 second exposure, and it drove me nuts for two weekends in a row. Then a guy at the local club meeting in Phoenix asked if I had long exposure noise reduction turned on, because that makes the camera take a second dark frame and any bump during that gap shows up as trails. I switched it off, stacked 40 shots of Orion in free software instead, and the stars came out as actual points. Now I want to know if anyone else got burned by a menu setting they did not even know was on.

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kai_burns734d ago

The whole post is about fixing "short curved streaks" but that sounds like normal star movement to me. 20 seconds is already kind of long if you want pinpoint stars, depending on your lens and how close to the pole you're aimed. The noise reduction thing matters more for hot pixels than for trails, so I'm not sure it was really your problem. Two weekends of frustration over a menu setting feels like a lot when the fix might just be a shorter exposure or wider lens. Not saying you're wrong, just that the setting might be getting blamed for something else.

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