Star Trails

[oldno7]

What lense do you guys recomend?
After that can you describe your process?

Lot's of questions, but it's all new to me. More surely to come.

[CarpeyBiggs]

lenses don't really matter in star trails. shoot whatever focal length you want, though i prefer wide angle.

most folks are stacking star shots nowadays, to get trails. basically, combining a bunch of short exposure photos to simulate one really long one. this gives fantastic results, though is a lot of work.

google star trail stacking. i'm on my portable laptop right now, don't have my list of resources.

[asdf]

I have only done 4 stars trails images, here is how I did my most recent one while camping in Buckhorn Wash.

Canon XSi, Sigma 18-200m, and Manfrotto Tripod.

I set up my camera on the tripod just outside camp and took a few 20-30 seconds shots of the sky on ISO 1600 to get the north star in the right spot in the frame.

I set the camera to bulb mode, F3.5, ISO 100, set my focus to infinite, locked the remote, started my stopwatch, and went back to the camp fire. I went back to the camera every 10 min to close then opened the shutter as fast as I could (if you take more then 1 second it will leave gaps in your trails). I repeated this six times so I ended up with six ten minute exposures.

Processing the images was very simple, I downloaded the free Star Trails application ( http://www.startrails.de/html/software.html ), stacked the images, saved as a tiff, and imported into Lightroom2 to do a bit of touch up work.

If anyone has any suggestions how how I can improve my process please let me know.

Here is my end result

[oldno7]

Thanks guys, I've been googleing all morning

[Wild One]

thought I'd stress the need to ensure that each of your exposures is exactly the same time length. Otherwise you'll end up with brighter and darker sections of the trails in each individual trail. Here's one I did that didn't have exactly the same length of images (i like the stopwatch idea). I had to do a lot of touching up in PS to even get it to this point and I still don't really like it.




Also, if you're going to be working photoshop I would recommend downloading a star stacking or startrails action that just runs in PS. That way you aren't having to switch between applications to create your image. You just open PS, run the action and browse for the files you're stacking and watch the magic.

[asdf]

Pretty sure I have the star trails thing nailed down here are my last few images.

50 images
20 seconds each
f/2.8
ISO 800
Taken from Sundance ... I like how you can see the different areas of light pollution SLC, Park City, and Heber.





56 images
30 second each
f/2.8
ISO 1600

Uintas - Near Trident Lake
Video - http://www.flickr.com/photos/summit42/3849597216/



I was not very happy with the truck rolling by in the frame so I trimmed this one down and removed all the saturation from the sky.



Same spot as above
60 images
30 seconds each
F/2.8
ISO1600



Less images and saturation.


Man this is fun stuff .. already have some plans for the next new moon

[CarpeyBiggs]

beautiful. why are you shooting such a high iso though?

[asdf]

beautiful. why are you shooting such a high iso though?

The higher ISO I use the more stars I can pick up.

[Wild One]

beautiful. why are you shooting such a high iso though?

The higher ISO I use the more stars I can pick up.

I tend to get a ton of noise when I try to shoot at 1600 ISO for as long as 30 seconds...but I'm also shooting with the XTi. Are you using mirror lock-up and/or long exposure compensation? I haven't tried the exposure compensation because I believe that it takes twice as long to expose one image, but did try the mirror lockup. Didn't have any noticeable difference.

[JP]

Pretty sure I have the star trails thing nailed down here are my last few images.

I'm getting dizzy

Great stuff

[asdf]

beautiful. why are you shooting such a high iso though?

The higher ISO I use the more stars I can pick up.

I tend to get a ton of noise when I try to shoot at 1600 ISO for as long as 30 seconds...but I'm also shooting with the XTi. Are you using mirror lock-up and/or long exposure compensation?

No mirror lock up for star trails or exposure compensation but I do get plenty of noise on some images when using high ISO's.
Last month during the full moon just above Joes Valley I shot 131 20second exposure at ISO800 and the noise was in full effect. So I took the first shot and removed as much noise as I could with Lighroom2, then I copied the noise reduction setting to the other 130 images and exported them as Jpegs to use for the stacking. After they were all stacked I did a bit more noise reduction and ended up with this image.

[CarpeyBiggs]

last night in the tetons. 27 minute, 15mm fisheye.

[oldno7]

WOW

[asdf]

Just awesome Dan.

What ISO and how the hell did you get the trails to pick up on the water? Luck?

[CarpeyBiggs]

trails in the water?

water usually reflects back at maybe 2 stops less than the actual scene... so i shot iso 1600, in raw, and processed the raw twice. once for up top, and one with some exposure comp dialed in for the foreground. then composited.

now don't go telling everyone...

[asdf]

trails in the water?

I tried last month in the Uintas on the edge of a very still lake and was unable to pick them up. So I was either doing it wrong or its a limitation with the sensor in my XSi.

[CarpeyBiggs]

trails in the water?

I tried last month in the Uintas on the edge of a very still lake and was unable to pick them up. So I was either doing it wrong or its a limitation with the sensor in my XSi.

i'm sure you weren't doing it wrong. the water has to be completely still though... no movement at all. and sometimes, water just isn't perfectly cooperative.

i dunno

[asdf]

From last night.... Star trails w/ light painting.

[Wild One]

summit--very original dude. Going to keep the background on this one elusive?


At least let us know how many images this was and what lengths they were? Must have been pretty freaking cold though being out with no fire at night in that much snow and on a clear night....

Pretty awesome picture

[forum8fox]

The progression of my star trail images. ALL SINGLE EXPOSURES!






I seek some advice on how I can achieve the blur of the climber in the last shot through out the swing (you'll understand in a moment) while also freezing him in 2 or 3 spots as well as possible (least amount of ghosting possible).

So like a combo of the shot above and this shot here:


Thinking about exposing at f11 for an hour, moving to the next half stop down for a half hour, then f8 for 15min, f6.7 for 7min, f5.6 for 5 min then f3.5 for 3 minutes. All as a single exposure moving the ring on the lens, a 4 hour exposure. Hoping to get the stars growing in size to from a thin line to a thick point. Going to pop a couple flashes at him swinging in the last 3 minutes at f3.5 to hopefully make him stand out as much as possible... What do the pro's have to say about this?