Star trails are a little complicated to do but can be very rewarding.
I did this shot by setting up my tripod in the garden & by using Stellarium (a free program available to download which you can set up to show you the night sky in your area) I could find where Polaris (the north star) is. I pointed my camera (a 7D with a 18-55mm kit lens) at Polaris, keeping the corner of the house & the tree in the frame to add context & shot 4 exposures, each with differing times hence the brightness of the trails varying.
If you have dark enough skies, there's no need to keep stopping & restarting the shutter. My reason for doing this was because the skies in my area are polluted by light from Manchester which was magnified by the sky being a little hazy too.
I put the 4 expsosures together in Photoshop using this tutorial*.
So in short, simple star trail shots are achieved by using a tripod, remote, camera & lens & taken long exposure shots (30 seconds each is sufficient enough but the amount of photographs taken will need to increase if you want longer trails) & then the individual shots are combined in Photoshop.
Obviously this is just my way of doing these shots, you can find your own ways of doing it to adapt your style.
* http://help.adobe.com/en_US/photoshop/cs/using/WS1E389632-4B37-425e-8EAB-1384C0B432D3a.html
If you have dark enough skies, there's no need to keep stopping & restarting the shutter. My reason for doing this was because the skies in my area are polluted by light from Manchester which was magnified by the sky being a little hazy too.
I put the 4 expsosures together in Photoshop using this tutorial*.
So in short, simple star trail shots are achieved by using a tripod, remote, camera & lens & taken long exposure shots (30 seconds each is sufficient enough but the amount of photographs taken will need to increase if you want longer trails) & then the individual shots are combined in Photoshop.
Obviously this is just my way of doing these shots, you can find your own ways of doing it to adapt your style.
* http://help.adobe.com/en_US/photoshop/cs/using/WS1E389632-4B37-425e-8EAB-1384C0B432D3a.html
