Fresh from my (and others) attempts to capture the moon with the Nokia 808 PureView, I was interested to see that 808 photographer extraordinaire Richard Dorman has been going one step further and trying to capture the stars. See below for the proof. Essentially the trick is to take lots of photos (with the 808 on a tripod, of course) and stack them together for a final render. Yes, this can be done more easily on a standalone camera perhaps, but isn't it still cool that it's being done on a Symbian-powered phone?

From Richard's notes:

Right let’s get down to business, firstly find your location. You will need a tripod for this, otherwise the background will not match in each image and the trails will have kinks in them.

Do some test shots of the scene to make sure you are happy with the location and the frame you have chosen.

Settings

•  use infinity focus (if you have it). The Nokia 808 does.
• Set the ISO to 100 and take a shot, can you see the background and the stars, if not then reset ISO to 200 and test again. Continue this until you get an image you are happy with
• Time lapse setting, every 5 seconds take an image, with the Nokia 808 you can set it to take a maximum of 1500 images. This is plenty to achieve star trails. In fact 400+ is enough.
• Flash off of course

I also suggest you take something to drink and maybe read, you will be at location for an hour or two. Plus you might need a backup charger, I made sure I had a Nokia DC-16 attached just in case it was needed. The last thing you want is for the phone to run out of battery.

What a great idea. Read his post in full for details on how to stack the images together at the end of the day, and for a few pointers on what else might go wrong.

Comments welcome if you've ever tried something like this, or indeed if you've found a particular 808-compatible tripod that works well - Nokia's HH-23 is now apparently unavailable and never used to hold the phone that securely in the first place, so presumably most of you will be using a third party tripod attachment. care to share any success stories? I used this one for ages until I broke it(!)

What next? Trying to photograph galaxies?

(hat tip to PureView Club)