The one thing I finally stopped doing wrong in stack shots

I spent 6 months thinking my star trails looked blurry because of bad tracking, but it turned out my intervalometer was set to 3 seconds between shots instead of 1, and a friend at a meetup pointed it out after I showed him a single frame.

3 comments

3 Comments

carter.gavin22d ago

Doesn't the buffer issue usually only matter with really fast bursts or older cameras? I've never had a gap problem with a one second interval, even with cheaper bodies. Most modern cameras clear the buffer fast enough that one second is plenty.

sullivan.spencer23d ago

Did you check the gap between shots already with a test at home or did it take a star trail fail to figure it out? I had the same issue where I thought my shutter was lagging, but the interval was just too long and left those tiny gaps. What worked for me was setting it to 0 seconds between shots on my remote, and then the stars came out solid. Also make sure your exposure time plus the interval adds up right, or you'll get those little breaks in the trail. Have you looked at your camera's buffer speed too, just in case it's slowing things down?

mark_price23d ago

Yeah the buffer speed thing got me too... camera would take the shot but then the interval would start before it finished writing to the card and that created gaps I couldn't figure out for weeks. Drove me nuts.