{"id":46788,"date":"2025-07-07T19:51:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-07T19:51:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/46788\/"},"modified":"2025-07-07T19:51:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-07T19:51:11","slug":"i-shot-astrophotography-on-film-for-a-year-heres-what-i-learned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/46788\/","title":{"rendered":"I Shot Astrophotography on Film for a Year: Here\u2019s What I Learned"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Side-by-side<\/p>\n

Astrophotography has exploded in popularity over the past decade, thanks to ever-improving sensors, automated tracking mounts, and processing software that practically polishes your stars for you. But in a digital world obsessed with data, sharpness, and pixels, I found myself increasingly disengaged.<\/p>\n

So I did something most people would call insane: I started shooting deep-space photos on film. <\/p>\n

For the past year, I\u2019ve been experimenting, troubleshooting, and obsessing over a practice that feels more like alchemy than photography. The results? Sometimes beautiful. Often frustrating. Always rewarding.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what I learned.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Why I Shoot Astrophotography on Film <\/p>\n

I started astrophotography in 2017 with a humble Canon T5i from Target, gifted by my dad. Since then, I\u2019ve shot more digital astro than I can count. But after years of pixel peeping, noise reduction, and stacking the same nebula 500 different ways, the magic wore off.<\/p>\n

After being immersed in digital astrophotography for years, my excitement began to fade. Modern digital astrophotography for me lacks excitement and is not as engaging, plus the editing is tedious. My good friend Rogette says that modern astrophotography is basically \u201cbrain rot\u201d \u2013 \u201cYou click the button and see what happens on the screen.\u201d Of course, this was an exaggeration, but I agree that digital astro feels trivial and can be a monotonous task. Film, on the other hand, is raw. It\u2019s mysterious. It\u2019s slow and unforgiving in all the right ways. Nobody\u2019s really doing it anymore, and maybe that\u2019s what makes it so engaging.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

What Film Stock To Choose <\/p>\n

The biggest enemy in film astrophotography is reciprocity failure. The longer your exposure, the less light your film actually records, unlike digital sensors, which scale linearly. For example, you could be shooting ISO 400 film, but after a few minutes, it would effectively turn into ISO 25 film. <\/p>\n

From my tests, these modern emulsions stand out:<\/p>\n

One film I don\u2019t recommend is CineStill 800T. While it\u2019s beloved for urban night photography, it\u2019s a poor fit for astro: excessive red halation and grain swamp the detail. In one photo, it looked like every star was wrapped in neon fog.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, I prefer low ISO films for their finer grain, which holds up surprisingly well.<\/p>\n

\"Split<\/p>\n

Neither of the images above has been digitally edited. It looks like the Acros has much more detail and signal compared to Ektar 100.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

In this photograph I used CineStill 800T, I find this film stock undesirable for astrophotography because of the red halation around the stars and large film grain.<\/p>\n

Equipment for Film-Based Astrophotography Camera Selection <\/p>\n

My main body is the Nikon F2, a mechanical tank that doesn\u2019t rely on electronics. Why is that important? Because electronic film cameras love to die mid-exposure. My friend\u2019s AE-1 program only lasts about 2 hours on bulb mode with a full battery.<\/p>\n

And don\u2019t forget a shutter release cable. Trust me.<\/p>\n

Lens\/Telescope Selection <\/p>\n

Forget your dreamy vintage glass with swirly bokeh, astro requires precision.<\/p>\n

Fast, modern, wide-aperture lenses (f\/1.4\u2013f\/2.8) are your best friends. Another key consideration is minimizing optical aberrations, particularly coma, a distortion that causes stars at the edges of the frame to appear blurry or stretched. To ensure sharp, pinpoint stars, it\u2019s important to choose a lens with minimal coma and astigmatism. I recommend Lenstip.com<\/a>, which offers detailed lens reviews and scores for aberrations like coma. Their ratings help identify lenses that perform well.<\/p>\n

If this is your first time trying Astrophotography with a 35mm film camera I would highly suggest skipping the telescope. A telephoto lens\u2014say, 135mm or 200mm is cheaper, easier to find, and often better corrected than entry-level astro scopes. Small telescopes in the $500 price range fail to support a fully corrected 35mm imaging circle.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

This was one of my first shots after buying a Pentax 67. I find that the 6\u00d77 format is a little too wide for my taste at this 400mm focal length. The 6\u00d77 negatives are gorgeous, but pairing it with a long enough telescope that covers the format? That\u2019s a $10,000+ endeavor I\u2019m not ready for\u2026 yet.<\/p>\n

Mounts and Guiding: The Backbone of Astrophotography <\/p>\n

A high-capacity equatorial mount is essential when shooting on film. These mounts track the stars as the Earth rotates, keeping your subject centered during long exposures. With digital, you can check your results immediately and adjust if tracking was off, but film doesn\u2019t offer that luxury. There\u2019s no feedback loop. You don\u2019t know if your shot worked until days later, after development and scanning. This makes precise tracking absolutely critical.<\/p>\n

Even the slightest vibration, gust of wind, or mechanical drift can ruin an exposure that took hours to capture. I\u2019ve shot in 25 mph winds before, something that would slightly blur a digital image but completely destroy a film frame. A sturdy, stable mount and tripod are your first line of defense.<\/p>\n

To combat this, I use an autoguider, which is a small telescope and digital camera mounted alongside my film setup. This system makes real-time corrections to the mount\u2019s tracking by locking onto a guide star and compensating for even the smallest deviations. It\u2019s the only way to ensure sharp, pinpoint stars over multi-hour exposures. Without it, you\u2019re gambling every shot.<\/p>\n

Trust me, there\u2019s nothing worse than spending two hours on a single frame only to get a streaky, unusable mess because your mount drifted.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

More Challenges of Using Film for Deep Space Imaging <\/p>\n

Focusing is a nightmare. Viewfinders are dim, and precise focus is essential. For lenses, I set them to infinity. But on a telescope, it can be much more difficult. Usually what I do is focus on a bright star, or even the moon if it\u2019s out. If you\u2019re still having trouble focusing I would suggest a magnifying chimney hood and a Bahtinov mask for getting pinpoint stars. This Bahtinov tool helps you fine-tune focus based on diffraction spikes.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Sky quality is also very important. The darker the better, for most of my photos I drive 3 or more hours away from city lights. This ensures I get the most signal without any sky glow. Sky glow often appears as a hazy, milky gradient that washes out stars and deep-sky details. Below is the Bortle scale, this scale measures how bright your sky is. I typically drive to a Bortle 3 or lower if I can. Light pollution maps are available online to find the darkest area near you.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The Moon and planets are so bright. They can easily be seen from heavily light-polluted areas, which makes them great for getting started with astrophotography.<\/p>\n

Finding Objects in the Night Sky <\/p>\n

The way I find objects is pretty easy in this digital age. I use my autoguider to find the thing I\u2019m looking for. This technique is called plate solving. Basically, a digital camera takes a photo of the sky and based on the pattern of stars in the field of view it can determine exactly where you\u2019re pointed at. <\/p>\n

Once the computer knows where you\u2019re pointing, it can make corrections or center any object of your choosing. This is very helpful if you don\u2019t know where something is or you don\u2019t know what it looks like. A lot of these objects are not bright enough to be seen with your eyes through the camera\u2019s viewfinder. If you don\u2019t have plate solving you would have to use a star chart and find the object based on the reference point of nearby stars, this technique is called star hopping.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Modern astro setups are packed with automation: built-in intervalometers, autofocus, target switching, and more. These are all the advantages you lose with using an old film camera. When I shoot I start a timer on my phone and manually close the shutter on my camera. This is all at the expense of a good night\u2019s sleep. Trust me, it\u2019s not fun driving home 200 miles when you\u2019re out of it. Eventually, I want to get an interval film back for my Nikon F4 (MF-23), but I don\u2019t like dealing with batteries. <\/p>\n

Post-Processing Film Images <\/p>\n

I like to push my images +1 or +2 stops during development. This helps bring out more contrast and shadow detail, which is crucial for deep-sky targets. Then it must be scanned to bring it into the digital realm. I typically don\u2019t do much to my photos, but programs like Siril allow me to fix weird gradients from my lab\u2019s scans and Siril can also fix color issues with astro images.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

I normally notice a lot of images have a green tinge to them. This is usually caused by the different reciprocity failures in each individual color layer of the film This is removed in a program called Siril with the \u201cremove green noise\u201d tool. I try to stay mostly true to the negative. A large reason I like analog astro is because I don\u2019t feel the need to overprocess the image like I do on digital. <\/p>\n

The image above has a minor color correction after being scanned by Legacy Film Lab<\/a> in Tustin, California. They\u2019ve consistently provided high-quality scans with accurate color and minimal dust, making them my go-to choice for astrophotography negatives. If you\u2019re looking for a reliable lab that understands film, especially for more technical work like astro, I highly recommend them.<\/p>\n

Final Thoughts <\/p>\n

Shooting film in the age of CMOS sensors and AI noise reduction feels like learning to sail a wooden ship in the era of jetliners. It\u2019s slow. It\u2019s clunky. And it teaches you more than any YouTube tutorial ever could.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not better than digital, it\u2019s different. And for some of us, it\u2019s exactly what we needed to fall in love with astrophotography all over again.
I\u2019m still just scratching the surface. There are even stranger astrophotography techniques out there; dry ice-cooled cameras, gas hypersensitization, pre-flashing, and even infrared film.<\/p>\n

So this year, I\u2019m going to try some of them out\u2014and I\u2019ll report back. Stay tuned.<\/p>\n

About the author<\/strong>: Kai Longridge is a photographer based in Los Angeles, California. You can find more of his work on his website<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n