Hi all,

I am fairly new to photography but enjoy shooting pretty much everything. One thing I've really started to get into is astrophotography and have had pretty good results getting spot stars but one thing I'd like to try next is doing some star trails.

What I'm not too sure about though is how to set the interval timer on my D7100. If I'm doing say a 30sec exposure, do I set the interval over 1 minute? So the camera has time to do the noise reduction and write the file? Does that mean I would have large gaps in the trail? Or can I turn noise reduction off so that it instantly writes and take the next shot? Would I be unable to remove hot pixels in post that way?

Or is it better to do a single 2hr long exposure at a lower ISO?

I'm just keen to get a formula down for when there is a nice clear sky for me to give it a try. I'm also thinking about getting a laptop and tethering the camera so that I can do over 30 second exposure intervals more easily. Good idea?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Heres a couple of spot star shots I'm pretty happy with anyway. The second is of a memorial for a mate of mine that I'm helping build, I wish I got the stars more in focus but I'll go back at a later date and nail it. Any tips with those would be much appreciated too.


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