Star Trails - Night on the move

[Every Miles A Memory]

Tried some shots last night. Didnt think about it in the beginning, but when shooting stuff like this, I was outside for over and hour and only took 3 images. Wasnt happy with the first two because I was playing with the settings and they didnt give me any results.

This one was a 26min exposure, ISO 400, f/5.6

I learned a few things. Dont include that big planet (Venus) in the frame because it draws your eye right to it. I'm going to wait till the tide comes back in tonight so I have water to reflect the stars off of.

There was also a few short cloud layers that passed over while this exposure was processing. The clouds gave it the grey tone and reflected a lot more light off of them than I would have expected

Going to go give it another try tonight

 

[Tucson T4R]

Good point on the brighter planet and keeping it out of play. The other thing I found was you can keep your ISO pretty low and still pick up an amazing amount of ambient light on the foreground / landscape just due to the long exposure. I ended up using ISO 200 to help reduce the noise levels in the images.

The other annoyance is sneaky aircraft flying through your shot. I had to photoshop out a couple fly throughs from my star trail images.

 

[Every Miles A Memory]

I'm going to try a longer exposure tonight and try and keep Venus out of the image and keep my ISO down at 100. I also think because of the clouds passing through the image, they amplified the stars so they got fatter

I guess each night is a learning experience

 

[Tucson T4R]

........I guess each night is a learning experience

Heck, every time I pick up my camera it's a learning experience. :xxrotflma

 

[photoman]

Where is the next attempt Pat?

As mentioned in this thread- you always need to be aware of man made light. Distant cities, streetlamps, radio towers, and the dreaded fly over.

 

[Every Miles A Memory]

Where is the next attempt Pat?

As mentioned in this thread- you always need to be aware of man made light. Distant cities, streetlamps, radio towers, and the dreaded fly over.

Here was my scene

27second exposure @ f/2.8 ISO 1600

My attempt was to have the camera set up last night and do an hour long exposure @ f/8 - ISO 100 That failed because there was too many clouds. So I woke up at 5am this morning and walked out to check the sky. Everything was clear and perfect. I set the camera up in the location, hit the shutter release on the remote and walked back in the house. I ate my breakfast, watched the morning news and cleaned up the house.

Go back out an hour later, and notice there is no red light on the back of the camera????? I walk over to check it out and the shutter had never clicked open??? OMG

By this point, the sky was really starting to lighten, so by the time I went in the house and figured out the remote wasn't pushed in all the way, I only had enough time to snap off a few quick shots at short intervals.

I'll try this again either tonight or tomorrow morning. Learning Process!! Rookie Mistake

 

[photoman]

Pat-

That is still a neat shot. You need to get away from the amber lighting though.

 

[Every Miles A Memory]

I cant in this location. It's the RV Campground lights that are on timers. They go on at dark and cant be shut off without killing power to the campground

It was a lot worse before I toned the saturation down in PP

 

[loren85022]

Photography is the one thing I wish the Expo would add to the available classes. Maybe we could all gather for an impromptu evening star shoot/ rum sampling.

EMAM, where is that shack?

 

[Every Miles A Memory]

Photography is the one thing I wish the Expo would add to the available classes. Maybe we could all gather for an impromptu evening star shoot/ rum sampling.

EMAM, where is that shack?

The shack is our tiki bar behind our motel. It's built from recycled building products we find around the island. Dumpster diving for doors, windows and scrap wood so if and when it gets blown away by the next Hurricane, it's not a total loss. Only money we've put into it is for the coolers, the screws holding it all together and the copious amounts of beer we keep stocked!

And at the next EXPO, I'm all for impromptu evening star shoot/rum sampling!!

 

[Tucson T4R]

.........And at the next EXPO, I'm all for impromptu evening star shoot/rum sampling!!

Count me in. :wings:

 

[photoman]

Why do we need to wait till Expo? Plenty of good nights between now and then. :ylsmoke:

 

[Every Miles A Memory]

That little Shack is already waiting for your arrival!

 

[photoman]

Ha ha- I was talking about the clear skies in the AZ desert while the temps are nice and low. Never been to Florida and to be honest it is a ways down on the list. Love seeing your pictures though Pat.

 

[Tucson T4R]

A friend of mine camping last week wanted a star trails shot with his toys. :sombrero: