TIL my cousin's time-lapse setup changed how I see star trails

My cousin stopped by last weekend and showed me a star trail photo he took over 4 hours near Lake Tahoe... He used a cheap intervalometer on his old Nikon and stacked 240 frames in a free program. I always thought you needed fancy gear to get those circular trails around Polaris... but he said it's more about patience and a solid tripod than the camera. Now I'm rethinking why I spent $500 on a tracker mount I barely use. Has anyone else found that simple setups beat expensive gear for certain shots?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_angela28d ago

Man I used to be one of those people too. I dropped a ton on a star tracker and then barely touched it because the setup time was a drag. Then a buddy showed me his star trail shots from a beat up Canon T3i and a cheap intervalometer. Total game changer. Now I leave the tracker at home more often and just shoot stacks with my old tripod. The results are honestly better for wide angle stuff anyway. Feels kind of dumb spending all that cash when a free program and patience does the trick.

anna_green4828d ago

... and honestly the free program part is what gets me. I spent like two hours last week trying to figure out a star stacking app I paid thirty bucks for, and it kept crashing. My buddy just uses one of those free batch processing scripts he found on a forum and his photos look way better than mine. Kinda makes you wonder if the expensive gear is just for bragging rights sometimes.