Nightime, Long Exposure, help meeeee

[fletch]

Originally Posted by OsmosisStudios

How would this help? Stopping down from f/5 to f/22 is 5 stops: that'd make the shutterspeed something around 10hours.

That is what I was going to say!

Anyway - With the photo above the star trails are great but the rest of the photo is lacking. Just because its at night doesn't mean you can forget the basics of landscape photography, a subject, foreground interest, leading lines, thirds and all of the rest. The star trails are just the icing (frosting) on top.

Get to the location before dark to set up your composition, then you need enough light to capture the detail. You can try a longer exposure but this will create more noise so you can also try light painting using a flash or just a basic torch. If that doesn't work take an exposure of the land in twilight when there is more light and blend that with the trails in the sky using PS.

[Benphall]

Thank you all for the advice i will look into the "blink" feature for the nikon.

[HunterProductions]

Here is a website from a guy who does nothing but night exposures and his work is incredible, the link that I am posting is to his technique page, give that a good read through and then check out his work. If your in to night photography you will be amazed.
Go Here.