Star Trails

[soxboston]

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/7934237@N03/503806422/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/208/503806422_cc46c5a204.jpg" width="500" height="333" alt="Star Trails" /></a>

I had seen this technique in many pictures on the internet and in different magazines, so I thought I would try it out myself. Basically, if you have a tripod and your camera has a bulb setting, you can create these cool looking shots with an exposure of about 15-20 mins, or longer depending on the effect you would like. If you would like the stars to seem to rotate about a certain point, like my shot, then you will have to include Polaris, the North Star, somewhere in your shot. For people south of the equator, I'm not sure which star is the southern celestial pole, but you would have to include that one depending on your location. Northerners, find the last star in the handle of the little dipper and you're good to go. Position the star in your frame, add maybe a tree like I did for some foreground, and make sure you don't bumb the camera or cuase any vibrations during the exposure. If you don't have a remote or cable release for your bulb setting (like me), you can set your camera to its highest exposure length (mine is 30 sec), and take multiple shots, one after another. Try to leave as little time between shots as possible in order to avoid gaps in your trails. Once you have taken about 20-30 exposures, you must stack them on top of one another. I used a program called RegiStax found at http://registax.astronomy.net to stack my exposures on top of one another. The result is a cool looking star trail behind a tree in my backyard!

Settings:
28mm @ f/3.3
400 ISO
White balance: Incandescent
30 sec x 37 exposures
Stacked with RegiStax

Note: I realize my trails are not as bright as other pictures. I haven't had time to do it again and bump the ISO to 800 or even 1600, but this would obviously create much brighter stars (and more noise). If anyone else has experience with trails, let me know how you fared with your own settings, etc. Thanks!

[Saralonde]

A little difficult to see, but an interesting technique.

[slipping_halo]

Hello this is my first post and I just saw this pic and had to show you one of mine that isent too much like yours with the wonderful swirl of stars, just one of stars that I really felt lucky for getting. This was taken with a nikon d70 and a sigma 28-70 cheap lens at iso 1600 and a exp. time of 30 secs. I should apologise about the senser burn in the corner, if anyone has a easy tip on how to remove it, im all ears!

[Tifosi248F1]

Not a bad attempt Colby. I can imagine how much work it was taking 37 separate shots, just standing around for 18 minutes or so. You should definately get the ML-L3 remote if you want to do more shots like this. It's even a helpful addition when you want to be away from the camera and take a shot.

slipping_halo, to remove that amp glow turn on Long Exposure NR. It takes 2 pictures, in effect doubling the exposure time, however the second exposure is mirror down. It takes a picture of black and the camera uses this to subtract the amp glow and any noise from the actual exposure. Note that you won't be able to use your camera for the same period of time as the exposure, so if you take a 5 minute exposure your camera won't be ready to take another picture for another 5 minutes.

[soxboston]

Well I didn't exactly stand around for all those exposures. I used Nikon Camera Control, set the number of exposures I wanted, and then just let my computer do all the work.

[jalenaaron]

I am not trying to be rude but can anybody tell me the beauty of one dot:confused:

[Saralonde]

If you look closely, Jalenaaron, you can see the swirls. As I mentioned, it is hard to see:).

[whiteflyer]

Little hard to see, but well done for the effort, there is now way I could be bothered to take all those shot and then stack them.


I did have ago at this back in January , but did not know which was the north star. I had to convert to B&W as the original has a red sky from a near by town lights.


f11
ISO 100
21mm
3191 secs

http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q142/whiteflyer/stars.jpg

[chanedcomm]

If you look closely, Jalenaaron, you can see the swirls. As I mentioned, it is hard to see:).

Colby, thanks for sharing the technique.

I am wondering how the brightness of the other stars could be improved given the aperture was already wide open (f/3.3). Would a higher ISO help? But then I wonder how Whiteflyer got the shot (bright and clear) with f/11 and ISO100. :rolleyes:

Thanks
chanedcomm

[ryan s]

I am wondering how the brightness of the other stars could be improved given the aperture was already wide open (f/3.3). Would a higher ISO help? But then I wonder how Whiteflyer got the shot (bright and clear) with f/11 and ISO100. :rolleyes:

Thanks
chanedcomm
It appears he used an ~60 minute exposure versus a pile of 30-second exposures put together.

ISO plays a part, but in my night photography experiences, you can compensate by using a longer shutter time. My camera never leaves ISO 100 :)

[whiteflyer]

Yes leave your ISO at 100.

My shot took 53 minutes, on a tripod. To get some detail in the tower I used a torch to paint light over the tower.

Basically I shone a torch over the tower from top to bottom for a couple on minutes during the exposure.

[rdaw]

Great shot, whiteflyer - I really liked your torch work-around, too - not sure that would have crossed my mind.
I tried to take some star trail pics this past weekend - stayed up WAY too late waiting for it to get dark enough. I finally decided, enough of checking every five minutes, I won't check for another hour. I went outside with camera, tripod, remote etc an hour later, only to see the moon rising, blotting out my bright stars. If I'd checked the calendar for moon phases, I would have been in bed two hours earlier and spared watching a totally abysmal movie. Lesson learned...

[henryscat]

I love this technique but I have read several warnings about leaving the shutter open for that amount of time and what damage you can do to the sensor. However I have also read that it is a pile of rubbish.

I borrowed a fully manual film camera in order to try this technique but when there is a 7 month old in the house, sleep is much more precious! ;)

Nice swirls btw!

[rediguana]

For people south of the equator, I'm not sure which star is the southern celestial pole, but you would have to include that one depending on your location.

For the Southerners, you can use the Southern Cross and the Pointers to locate the south celestial pole (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Star).

I've done some exposures up to around 5 minutes to attempt to capture the Milky Way, but I've now got to find a way to place the camera on a tracking mount to do long exposures with no trails.

Cheers Gav

[ziriuz84]

Cool shots!! Particularly the b/w one!
This was a test I made some years ago. The gear was my Nikon F2AS Photomic with the 28mm lens opened at f/1.8. The shutter time was something around 10 minutes, i think (i don't remember now), with an 800 ISO as film :)
<a href="http://fc04.deviantart.com/fs18/f/2007/216/b/d/starlines_by_ziriuz84.jpg" alt="Starlines by Ziriuz84"><img src="http://fc04.deviantart.com/fs18/f/2007/216/b/d/starlines_by_ziriuz84.jpg" width=500px></a>
In the bottom you can see the Pleyads (the little cluster). The yellow cloud maybe came from some light in the little towns near my location.

[rikkersc]

I took a few star trails the other night while waiting around for the peak of the Perseid meteor shower and I think they turned out okay, (looked fine on the LCD, still have to check them on the monitor.)
The meteor shower didn't turn out any great photos though.:( They were too infrequent in our area to capture any and they appeared in too many random spots in the sky (I was hoping one or two would pass though my star trails.
I am hoping to post a star trail once I get it to the monitor.

[Pernod]

I tried this the other night, found a couple of great tools to automate the 'flattening' process at astropix.com (http://www.astropix.com/HTML/I_ASTROP/TRIPOD/TRIPOD2.HTM).

This shot I've already posted in the Perseid meteor shower thread.

Interesting is the colours of blue and orange were actually from different times through the exposure (blue sunset when I started shotting, and 30min later the orange/pink is light pollution from a city nearby)... by merging them you get a nice blend.

Also, this technique had the added bonus of reducing noise in the final shot (so I was happily shooting at ISO 1250.

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1078/1107795684_f9b196870d_d.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/heenan/1107795684/)

[laungmai]

Wow! I can't wait to get back to New Brunswick to take photos of the stars. (my main reason why I bought the tripod hehe). It is too foggy where I live, and we barely get clear skies :(

Okay, this will truly show how novice I am, I am not sure what you mean by multiple exposure shots. Are you taking you more than one photo in sequence and putting them together?

Everyone's shots are so neat!

[the hank freid]

I haven't had the chance to try out star trail photography. But yesterday I got the Canon 10-22mm lens.Wondering if the wide angle lens work better for star trails? Or should I stick with 35mm and over, or prime lens like 50mm.

[rediguana]

I took the following at 10mm on my 10-22mm lens. Great for a wide angle, but to get long star trails you need a very long exposure (since the field of view is so wide and it takes a long time for the stars to move across the sky). To get those trails in this shot at 10mm took 24 minutes.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2367/2369142013_84efaf46f4.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/rediguana/2369142013/)