The stars in the night sky can be transmitted in two ways. Like an star trails (traces in the sky) – the effect is obtained with long exposure and low ISO. This is the easier way. We only need to measure the brightness at a higher ISO and open aperture and then recalculate the exposure for the lower ISO.
Here is the moment to say that such long exposures are not particularly recommended when shooting with a digital camera. If we are shooting with a film, it is not a problem to expose for hours at night. But an electric current passes through the senzor of digital devices. The longer it is active, the more it heats up. Even at low ISO, the photo starts to make noise during long exposures. This can be seen in the upper frame, in the color of the flat surface of the lake. There is a danger that some of the highly heated photodetectors will break through and turn into “dead pixels”. Therefore, it is recommended that such photos, especially with very long traces, be assembled by software. The camera is on a tripod, exposed for a few minutes, then cooled for a while, then exposed again. The photos are superimposed in software that fills in the blanks in the traces left during the holidays.
The second way is to get the stars as points. His approach is the opposite. We need a relatively fast speed to fix the stars and not to become arcs. But in the absence of enough light, the shutter speed is compensated by the maximum aperture and high ISO.
This frame has parameters – shutter speed 7 seconds, 6400 ISO and aperture 1.8. Luckily here are a group of tourists who with headlights and flashlights illuminate the path in the lower left part of the frame. And the next frame is somewhere between the two approaches.
In this case, the speed is neither long enough to leave the stars clear traces, nor short enough to appear as dots in the frame. I decided to keep this shot anyway, because it has a good accent – the illuminated windows of the shelter. Lack of focus is often a problem when shooting the starry sky. When we have such a picture, usually the starry sky itself is the strongest accent in the frame, which makes these frames somewhat uniform.
Pictures of the moon can also be referred to the night sky. The moon itself is easy to photograph, even by hand, because it is very bright. But in the context of some landscape or other elements it burns (with longer exposures it even shifts), because everything around is very dark and if we want the whole scene to come out, we have to put a long exposure.
