Star trails- is it possible in UK

shopaholic

shopaholic

Messages
42
Edit My Images
No
have been reading today about taking star trails and the one article recomended so many miles from any town village etc. Unless you are living in the Scottish Highlands or middle of exmoore didnt seem possible. Has anyone done this a few miles out of any major town or just wouldnt it work?
 
Yes, it's possible, just better with less light pollution.
Here's one I did in my back garden, terrible light pollution round my way. Well worth searching for posts on them on here, there's lots of helpful people who have written how to do it.

ST.jpg
 
Shooting out to sea on a clear night is a good bet as light pollution is obviously much less over the sea. Not only can you have much longer exposures you may also be lucky and pick up some ship's light trails as well!!

Here's a photo I took from a south Devon cliff top in the 1980's. The 15 minute exposure has picked up star trails, 'ship trails' and the Eddystone lighthouse some 8 miles out to sea.

Eddystone-1.jpg
 
I've done one from my back garden looking towards an airport. It needed more exposures to combine so isn't that good, but it can be done. You can also buy light pollution filters, although you might need to modify them in some way maybe with step down rings to fit your lens.
 
It should be possible, it depends on your camera, really. I tried it with my Nikon D80 and it was awful as they just can't handle the length of exposure needed for this to work...
 
You could also try short exposures like 10secs and stack the images if the light pollution is bad, i tried it tonight for the first time.

Not a very good attempt but it was 37 10sec exposures stacked together

3344480927_4dc8a1838f.jpg
 
The other option, is to set the camera to 30s exposures, in jpg mode, ISO800, set shooting to continuous mode and lock a remote shutter release. Come back some time later and combine all the images in startrails
 
I've used the exact same method as suggested by jgs001; this pic comprises of 130 images each of 20 secs duration, then blended using the startrails download. Between each exposure, there's roughly 20-30 seconds where the image is written to the memory card (using a Canon 30D), so my final shot represents a time lapse shot of roughly 1 1/2 hours. As you can see, it doesn't help being under the flight path of a local-ish airport (25 miles away!).

Startrails3_p4a_comp.jpg


Nigel
 
I had the same thinking about light pollution.
My first attempt was in the middle of Dartmoor. Couldn't see a thing and more importantly couldn't focus on my foreground interest.

My second attempt was village based. A churchyard that was far enough away from towns/cities to prevent light pollution but had enough ambient light to enable me to compose the shot:

3074810741_e9b2260d31_o.jpg
 
Manglewurzel, that's superb, nice placement of the north star too ;)

Nigel
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top