Star trails - second attempt

[mseigafuse]

This is really still a practice run as I want to do this again with a more interesting foreground. But, all in all I am pretty happy with the results.



This is actually 310 30 second exposures combined together using startrails.exe. 309 of the exposures were "light frames" meaning they were exposed to light (stars and flashlight in tent) - the final exposure was a "dark frame" which I did at the end of the series by putting the lens cap on for the final exposure. The darkframe showed the hot pixels and the program uses that to remove the hot pixels. After combining I also did some processing in GIMP, namely GREYstoration to clean up the noise and a levels adjustment to bring more blue out in the sky. I took a nice nap while my camera was happily taking exposure after exposure - I learned that if I have my camera in continuous shooting mode and use my DIY cable release with the toggle switch... I can make the camera just take one exposure right after the other

[Fred flyfisher]

Very cool.... I love what you did with this... Nice work.

[f4fwildcat]

Very cool! I'm going camping tomorrow, I'm going to try some night work! Can't wait!

[mseigafuse]

Originally Posted by Fred flyfisher

Very cool.... I love what you did with this... Nice work.

Thanks Fred, appreciate you looking and the comment

Originally Posted by f4fwildcat

Very cool! I'm going camping tomorrow, I'm going to try some night work! Can't wait!

Thanks f4 - taking night shots while camping or even just around the campfire is fun - hope you have a great time and get some wonderful shots. Thanks for the nice comment

[teedlepeep]

Oh that looks so cool !!! We are camping this weekend and I'm hoping to be able to try something along those lines ! I'm going to write down what you did and bring it along.

Nice work

[mseigafuse]

Originally Posted by teedlepeep

Oh that looks so cool !!! We are camping this weekend and I'm hoping to be able to try something along those lines ! I'm going to write down what you did and bring it along.

Nice work

Thanks teedlepeep - hope it works out for you, would love to see the results. This can chew through batteries in no time - hope you have a battery grip or an AC power supply and access to a power outlet. My shot was actually in my yard and I had an extension cord out to my AC supply. I know some people have used AC adapters to power their camera from their car - I haven't tried that myself (yet) though