Star Trails - Night on the move

[cnynrat]

I tried capturing a few star trail images while we were out in Chaco Canyon last week. Not really crazy about any of the results, but here's the best one:



This was a 30 minute exposure at f4 with ISO set to 400

A few lessons from my first attempts at this genre:

1. It really does help if you compose your shot in the daylight before it becomes totally dark (doh!).
2. I discovered my D70 is limited to a 30 minute exposure. Obviously this limits the length of the trail I can capture without going to multiple exposures and combining images, but still long enough to get some interesting results IMO.
3. Fully charged and healthy batteries are important. I found a 30 minute exposure would take a battery showing fully charged on the camera down to about 25% charge. Ambient temps were probably 30-35* or so, which is probably cold enough to affect battery charge. Also, my batteries are kind of old, dating back to when the D70 was actually a camera that people wanted to buy. Finally, it should be noted I had noise reduction turned on which results in a lot of post exposure in camera number crunching.
4. I need more practice with light painting - I had a few flubbed shots due to over zealous attempts.

It was a lot of fun and I plan to try some more when I get a chance.

[Every Miles A Memory]

Looks good to me Dave

[photoman]

A few lessons from my first attempts at this genre:

1. It really does help if you compose your shot in the daylight before it becomes totally dark (doh!).
2. I discovered my D70 is limited to a 30 minute exposure. Obviously this limits the length of the trail I can capture without going to multiple exposures and combining images, but still long enough to get some interesting results IMO.
3. Fully charged and healthy batteries are important. I found a 30 minute exposure would take a battery showing fully charged on the camera down to about 25% charge. Ambient temps were probably 30-35* or so, which is probably cold enough to affect battery charge. Also, my batteries are kind of old, dating back to when the D70 was actually a camera that people wanted to buy. Finally, it should be noted I had noise reduction turned on which results in a lot of post exposure in camera number crunching.
4. I need more practice with light painting - I had a few flubbed shots due to over zealous attempts.

It was a lot of fun and I plan to try some more when I get a chance.

All very good points.

It helps to be with another photographer or someone that might be able to hold a light for you. This can help with composition and focus.
The cameras that have live view can cheat and use the magnification to manually focus on an area. Setting your focus to jest left of infinity also helps with focus issues.
Pickup an intervalometer to get longer exposures.
Cold does play a huge part in battery life as well as your willingness to spend the time to get a good shot. Extra batteries are good and an intervalometer allows you to walk back to camp or a warm vehicle.

I have fun playing with night photography and night photography even if the shots do not turn out that great. It is always a good challenge.

[suntinez]

I think that came out nice Dave! I like the contrast you got.

One thing I've found in composing in the dark is to temporarily up the ISO setting to 800-1000 to test what you're seeing, then dial it back down for the long exposure.

If you want to try stacking without investing money in editing software there's some freeware here to try it.

[cnynrat]

Looks good to me Dave

I think that came out nice Dave! I like the contrast you got.

Thanks Pat and Linda. Technically I was happy with the result, especially considering this was a first try. I'm just not sure the composition does anything for me.

What I had hoped to do was capture a picture with a wall of a Chaco ruin in the foreground (Or is that simply "on the ground" in this case?) and the star trails in the background. Unfortunately, once we arrived there I learned that all the ruins in Chaco are off limits after dark.

It helps to be with another photographer or someone that might be able to hold a light for you. This can help with composition and focus.
The cameras that have live view can cheat and use the magnification to manually focus on an area. Setting your focus to jest left of infinity also helps with focus issues.
Pickup an intervalometer to get longer exposures.
Cold does play a huge part in battery life as well as your willingness to spend the time to get a good shot. Extra batteries are good and an intervalometer allows you to walk back to camp or a warm vehicle.

Some good suggestions here, thanks.

[RHINO]

i here what your saying about the composition, but the pic itself looks good, unlike mine, whats the deal with the light corners? never had that happen before

[Tucson T4R]

Just wild guess not based on any knowledge whatsoever. Is there any chance you had shined a light on the back of camera during the exposure? Sometimes you can get light bleeding through from the view finder but I don't know if that would only effect the corners like that or not. You can use the viewfinder cover if your camera came with one or just tape it over to eliminate the risk.

[cnynrat]

I had a similar problem when I was messing around near the camera with a light during the exposure, but only in one corner. Not sure how that might happen in two corners, but maybe the light would come through the viewfinder as Brad suggested.

[Lost Canadian]

i here what your saying about the composition, but the pic itself looks good, unlike mine, whats the deal with the light corners? never had that happen before

That's amp noise generated by the sensor during a long exposure. Some camera's are more prone then others to it. It was prevalent in some older DSLR's from a few years back, I know the Nikon D80 had it bad, like that. Most newer models handle amp noise pretty well now.

[RHINO]

thanks for suggestions guys, i have heard of amp noise but havent had this pop up in any of the long exp shots i've done previous to this particular night. i am carefull with light sources during long exp. but its always possible. i did turn off long exp nr this time, maybe thats all it is.

nothing to do but more pics and more experimenting.