A starry starry night....

[Brian_C]

Took this last night over at Ballycopeland Windmill, Co. Down Northern Ireland. I'd been planning this shot for about 2 months. I was waiting for the moon to be quiet small (allowing the stars to be brighter) and the sky to be pretty much cloudless, but each attempt in the previous two months had been foiled due to any number of elements of a busy life.

Canon 500D
Tripod.
Manual Focus (it was too dark to use Auto-foucs)
ISO 400
20secs @ f4
Custom White-Balance
I used a powerful handheld spotlight to lighten the windmill and add a little interest in the foreground.

 

[jingphotography]

Nice one.

I would try something like 30 mins or longer exposure to get the trails of the stars + some random short time spotlight to close to the windmill (so not to light up the grass)

 

[thompo]

Nice shot,

Knowing the area, there is a lot of poterntial light polution on the Horizon, you done well to keep it in check.

As above a longer exposure and more focused light could work well. If going for star trails though id recommend a series of 30sec-5min exposures and blend them together to keep noise and light pollution in check.

 

[Brian_C]

Thanks for the feedback guys.

I purposely steered clear of the temptation to shoot star trails. thou I'm planning on getting a Time Exposure controller (so I don't have to stand with the camera and press the shoter - set it and come back a hour later)

Re: the foreground. Again I purposely shone the spotlight on the grass, to help add a little foreground interest. I might darken the light on the grass tonight and see how that looks, leaving only the Windmill bright.

Thanks for the constructive feedback.

 

[Brian_C]

OK so here's an updated version with the foreground darkened a little.

 

[Rubiks]

What lens did you use for this?

 

[Brian_C]

What lens did you use for this?

Used a Sigma 17-70 f2.8 - 4.0 on manual focus, at the 17mm end.
I think a Sigma 10-20 would really work on this type of shot, you'd get more of the sky.

 

[Shutter]

Funny little stumpy looking WM! hehe!
Loving how clear the stars are, well caught! I also think a little closer to the WM would be better to a lose some grass but also to get some more detail in the WM!