My First Star Trail Photography Experiment: Unexpected Results with the Insta360 Ace Pro 2

Last night I jumped into something completely new - star trail photography. No planning, just spontaneous energy and curiosity about what my new Insta360 Ace Pro 2 could do when pointed at the night sky. Set it up on the back deck, aimed it skyward, and hit record without really knowing what to expect.

Boy, was I wrong about the results being mediocre.

When I checked the camera this morning, I discovered this thing captured both a time-lapse video AND individual still images throughout the night. Two completely different creative outputs from one setup. That's the kind of efficiency I can get behind.

The Setup: Simple and Straightforward

The beauty of this experiment was how basic the setup was. Mounted the Insta360 Ace Pro 2 on a tripod, pointed it toward the clearest section of sky I could see from the deck, and let it run. No complex settings, no overthinking the process.

The camera handled everything automatically - exposure timing, image intervals, and file management. Sometimes the best approach is just to start and learn as you go.

Video Results: Better Than Expected

The time-lapse video came out surprisingly well. You can actually see the star movement creating those classic trail patterns across the frame. The camera captured smooth motion that shows exactly how the earth rotates relative to the stars - something you never really appreciate until you see it compressed into a few minutes.

I brought the footage into Filmora, dropped some text onto it explaining what viewers were seeing, and added background music to make it more engaging. Nothing fancy, but it transforms what could be a quiet, potentially boring clip into something that holds attention.

--> Here's the final video result (on You Tube)

• you can see how the stars create those long arcs across the sky.

The Still Image Process: Where Photoshop Shines

But the real discovery was working with the individual JPEG images the camera captured throughout the night. The Insta360 can shoot both JPEG and RAW, but I stuck with JPEG for this first experiment.

Here's the workflow that delivered the results:

Step 1: Lightroom Preparation
Open the first image in Lightroom and dial in your exposure settings - highlights, shadows, contrast - whatever makes that single frame look good. Then copy those settings and paste them across all the captured images. This gives you consistent exposure across the entire sequence.

Step 2: The Photoshop Magic
This is where it gets interesting. Open Photoshop and use the "Import Stack" option under Scripts. This pulls all your individual images into one massive Photoshop document. Fair warning - this creates a huge file that takes time to process, but the results are worth the wait.

Step 3: The Blend Mode Trick
Once all images are imported as layers, select everything and change the blend mode from "Normal" to "Lighten." This essentially sandwiches all the images together, capturing the brightest parts of each frame - which happen to be your star trails.

The effect is immediate and dramatic. Each star's path through the sky becomes visible as a continuous streak of light.

Fine-Tuning the Results

For this first attempt, I kept it simple and just blended all the layers together. But there's room for more advanced techniques. You could isolate the best-exposed foreground from one of the frames, cut it out, and layer it on top of the star trails. This gives you a perfectly exposed landscape with dramatic sky movement above.

I also removed about 10 frames from the lightest parts of the sequence to get better overall exposure balance. Sometimes less is more when you're trying to maintain that dramatic contrast between the dark sky and bright star trails.

What I Learned

This experiment taught me that star trail photography doesn't require expensive specialized equipment or years of technical knowledge. A good action camera, steady mount, and some basic post-processing skills can produce genuinely impressive results.

The Insta360 Ace Pro 2 handled the technical challenges automatically, letting me focus on the creative aspects and learning the editing workflow.

Next Steps: More Experiments Ahead

I'm planning to keep pushing this technique further. Different locations around Connecticut offer various foreground options - maybe some shots with trees silhouetted against the trails, or finding spots with less light pollution for cleaner star visibility.

The combination of automatic video creation and individual still images gives me two different ways to tell the story of a single night's sky movement. That versatility opens up possibilities for both social media content and larger photographic projects.

Bottom Line

Sometimes the best discoveries happen when you just start experimenting without overthinking the process. Last night's spontaneous star trail session turned into something I'm genuinely excited to develop further.

What do you think about these results? Have you tried any night photography experiments that surprised you? Drop a comment below and let me know what techniques you'd like to see me tackle next.