Star Trails

[MarkyLandon]

I wanted to catch some star trails on November the 5th and try to catch some fireworks and plane tracks too.

Here is the end result... and the story behind the shots that almost killed my camera.



Canon EOS 40D and EF-s 17-55mm f/2.8 lens set up on tripod in garden with remote cable release attached.
Drive mode set to continuous.
ISO 100 (should have been higher I think) f5.6 and 30 seconds exposure.
Pressed the shutter relase and locked in place to ensure sequential 30 second exposures.
Shot in RAW.

... and now the bad news. Came back 90 minutes later to check on progress only to find it was RAINING and my camera was soaked. Still taking shots but soaked.

Within a few minutes of taking it back inside it stopped working. Long story short after 24 hours drying out it was fine (but it was a nervous 24 hours)

Images converted to jpegs in Lightroom . There were only 20 images as a result of the clouds coming over before the stars were not visible anymore (the sky was clear when I started)

Opened up the images using a nifty little photoshop action to stack them all together
Software.

Reinported into lightroom and fixed a few minor things like blackening out a few bits of the silhouette at the bottom and making hte star trails whiter and downplaying the orange glow in the sky (distant London)

Exported to flickr direct from lightroom using Jeffrey Friedl's excellent plug in and Timothy Ames plug in (mogrify) to add the signature as a watermark.

WIll be trying this again (on a dry night) and staying with my camera to avoid mishap and hopefully get some more complete star trails.

[mpf777]

Thanks for sharing. I should try this someday, looks like a fun photo project. Glad to hear your camera still works!

[equilution]

Do they make a similar plug-in for PS Elements 5.0 or Lightroom? I'd love to stack. Way too much ambient light around here at night to leave my shutter open for an hour! Thanks.

[dcclark]

The only software which I've used which successfully stacked star trail photos (for me, at least) was StarTrails. It's windows-only, but works well and nearly automatically.

[lasikeye]

hello

Way too much ambient light around here at night to leave my shutter open for an hour! Thanks.

[vijaysanand]

this shot is awesome! and u really risked the life of ur camera. but ur camera has not given up! I was touched when I read, the camera was soaked but it was still capturing!!!!!!!!!!! you should treasure that camera. Its been very loyal to you!

..........

[kfrab]

How do you keep the shutter open for long time exposures, for instance you said 90 minutes... Can you do this on all Manual cameras?

[dcclark]

Just set your shutter speed to "bulb" and let 'er rip. Usually remember to put your camera into Manual exposure mode, but the aperture isn't tremendously important at those lengths. I personally "stack" multiple 30-second shots into one image after the fact. That makes it a lot easier, and avoids the weird sensor overheating that you can get with a single long exposure.

[kgb224]

Outstanding capture.
Glad that your camera is still working.