Star trails

[whited3]

Hi all,

Been playing around with doing star trails and this is my first attempt in the wild.

Friday night at Pebbly Beach, NSW, Australia. Just north of Red Rock for those of you who want to find it. The camera is on the beach pointed south. The glow in the trees is our camp fire. ~180 images, f3.5, 30 sec, ISO 1600. Lee 1.2 GND upside down. Hi ISO and noise reduction were turned off on the 7D. Blended using StarStraX.

I am disappointed in the noise (tried to reduce in ACR) and the stuttering of the stars (best seen on the perimeter).



Single image from the night's star trail effort.



Camp fire the next night.............shown here for no reason Say 10 meters inland from the star trail effort of the previous night. This is a salvage shot from another star trail effort the next night but it got very cold and most of the images were blurred with condensation on the filter.

[Sponge]

Dark Frame Subtraction can help with noise with star trails but you have to take that image at the same time as the others to ensure the same noise pattern is subtracted. I'm not sure how the 7D works but my camera does this automatically after long exposures but I turn this off because otherwise Id have to wait an equal amount of time to the exposure's length after each long exposure. Instead I just take a picture with the same settings but with the lens cap on after I've finished all the images (when the sensor is warmest and 'noisiest') and then blend it with software.

[Tony M]

Hi Mark,

Very interesting. I've been planning to try this myself; the evening that I was going to drive to the mountains turned out to be cloudy, so I'm planning another trip, probably next week.

You've done everything that I planned to do, except the campfire and GND filter. I had planned to use the flash in the last photo taken, to light up some foreground object. I didn't know that a campfire throwing light on the foreground for such a long time would not create too much light. The shape of the tree makes a perfect foreground.

Regarding the gaps in the star trails: could the software you used have missed some frames? The gaps appear to be in the same frames for each star trail.

I hadn't thought of the upside-down GND filter to darken the ground.

Although it looks like you don't need instruction, here's a link to a useful tutorial on photographing star trails in case others are interested: http://digital-photography-school.co...g-stars-trails.

Tony

[whited3]

Thanks for that link Tony. Strangely he's using all the same gear I am, right down to the el cheapo timer remote!

[chrisjaz]

Wow the first image is amazing i would love to be able to create this .Your other images are really great to .