Star Trials???

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leeharrison2

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Name
Lee Harrison
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I have recently downloaded the star trails program and can't wait to have a play around with it but I've just been thinking, if I take a 30sec exposure with my camera, it takes another 30sec after to process the photo before I can take another picture, so I would only be taking one picture every minute.

Will this processing time effect the star trails that I produce or will this be adequate to create a smooth trail???
 
There will probably be jumps in the end result. After all a "star does move" quiet a bit in 30 seconds.
 
Do you have some form of long exposure noise reduction switched on. This would cause the delay and may well remove the stars as noise too;)
 
thankyou, that website loks fantastic, and I will remember to turn off the noise redution...
 
wow I just tried a 30sec exposure with the noise reduction off, I can't believe how quick it is, once the shutter had closed, it processed instantly, thank you very much, that will help a massive amount...

Thanks Lee :)
 
No problem :)
Love to see an image or two when you get it cracked.

It doesn't need to be a mega-special location - the results can be surprising.
I recently introduced a group to star trails using the technique you are using and the gratifying thing is some of them went away and gave it a go.
Here's one of their results - it's only their back garden but it looks brilliant!
 
thats superb, I can't wait to have a go, stuck in the library at the moment doing my dissertaion but as soon as it's handed in I'll have a go and post the pictures up on TP so you can take a look.

Thanks again
 
DuncanDisorderly said:
No problem :)
Love to see an image or two when you get it cracked.

It doesn't need to be a mega-special location - the results can be surprising.
I recently introduced a group to star trails using the technique you are using and the gratifying thing is some of them went away and gave it a go.
Here's one of their results - it's only their back garden but it looks brilliant!
Click to expand...

well this was my first attempt, just taken in my back garden when I had a spare couple of hours


Back Garden Star trials... by Lee Harrisons Nature Photography, on Flickr
Obviosly not the best but I like to think a good starting point...

Thanks Lee
 
Did you focus on polaris to get the circular movement of the stars?, did you take it as a continous exposure or several stacked images?
 
Lee - not a bad first attempt!
Just need something a bit more interesting along the bottom and work out how to make the trails a bit more intense (probably not in all the light pollution) and you've got it nailed!

I guess you already know, but...Looks like you knocked the tripod / focus / zoom near the end of the exposure - and there's some odd gaps which don't look quite like they were caused by cloud cover.
 
Thedodo said:
Did you focus on polaris to get the circular movement of the stars?, did you take it as a continous exposure or several stacked images?
Click to expand...

Yes I did focus on Polaris to get the circular effect, and I made it using about 150 30sec exposures layered together in the Startrails program...
 
DuncanDisorderly said:
Lee - not a bad first attempt!
Just need something a bit more interesting along the bottom and work out how to make the trails a bit more intense (probably not in all the light pollution) and you've got it nailed!

I guess you already know, but...Looks like you knocked the tripod / focus / zoom near the end of the exposure - and there's some odd gaps which don't look quite like they were caused by cloud cover.
Click to expand...

I can't wait to get somewhere darker and with a more intersing forground, this was just for experimental persoses to see if the software and my method worked, I going on holiday to the cotswolds next week so hopefully get a few good shots there...

and I did knock my camera unfortunately, the gaps were caused because I used an elastic band to hold a piece of rubber on the shutter button so that it would continuously take photos but twice it slipped off and I didn't notice :S and while putting it back on I knocked the camera... armature I know, next time I will set there with my remote...

I'm sure that they will get better...

How can I make the trials more intense and possibly shaper??

Thanks Lee Harrison
 
Hi Lee,

What aperture and ISO did you shoot at? It doesn't seem to have picked up as many stars as what is usually possible. I realise you might be limited by the lens you're using, but even with surrounding light pollution I would have thought there would be more stars visible. Perhaps try a higher ISO/wider aperture/shorter shutter speed. You need to aim to collect as much light as possible in a relatively short time.
I took this the other night from my balcony. It's at f2.8, but unfortunately I can't remember the ISO I used:

Lazy Star Trails by S_M_Photography, on Flickr

Definitely use a remote next time. :thumbs:
 
GrittyShaker said:
Hi Lee,

What aperture and ISO did you shoot at? It doesn't seem to have picked up as many stars as what is usually possible. I realise you might be limited by the lens you're using, but even with surrounding light pollution I would have thought there would be more stars visible. Perhaps try a higher ISO/wider aperture/shorter shutter speed. You need to aim to collect as much light as possible in a relatively short time.
I took this the other night from my balcony. It's at f2.8, but unfortunately I can't remember the ISO I used:

Lazy Star Trails by S_M_Photography, on Flickr

Definitely use a remote next time. :thumbs:
Click to expand...


Wow what a superb picture, really great...

I used a sigma 18-200 at 18mm f/3.5 which is the lowest I could go to, I shot on ISO 200 with a 30 sec exposure, I tried a few shots on 400 but there was to much of and orange glow come up from the horizon???

any advice???
 
Hmm. I'm quite new to it myself, so I'm not too sure what to suggest. :thinking:

The stars themselves look a little on the dark side, so maybe the problem is that the frames are all a little underexposed. I would suggest with my limited knowledge that you try shooting with the same settings, but leave the ISO a bit higher. You can't really escape the orange glow in an urban environment, but shooting with the WB set to tungsten should help tone it down a little.

Maybe someone with more experience can shed a bit more light. :)
 
When I did my 1st Startrail recently I used the incandescent WB preset which got rid of most of the light pollution, leaving a slight purple colour where auto WB gave a nice orange colour.

Settings wise I was using 24mm f/4 25s @ ISO 1600 (max for my camera). This actually picked up a ton more than you could see by eye.

You can see the image either on my flickr or there's a (badly compressed thanks to photobucket) version in the gimp plug-in link in my sig. I will post a proper link later but I can't get to photo sites at work.
 
thanks all for the help.... would a 1600ISO no create to much noise??? I also use the startrials program to layer my images up so I have to shoot in JPEG, would I be better shooting in Raw and using a different program to produce the trails?
 
leeharrison2 said:
thanks all for the help.... would a 1600ISO no create to much noise??? I also use the startrials program to layer my images up so I have to shoot in JPEG, would I be better shooting in Raw and using a different program to produce the trails?
Click to expand...

It was kind of noisy at ISO1600 yes but the end result wasn't as bad as I was expecting as you're taking the max value of any pixel when you stack which clears a lot of the noise out. My only real issue was that some of the colour noise made the trails look kind of odd. I am going to use 30s at ISO800 next time and see what difference that makes. I am hoping for less colour spots in the trails. A lot of the usability depends on your camera, 1600 on a D50 was really pushing it with 800 really being the max, but use say a D3 and you would probably barley notice the noise. I did get 2-3 hot pixels too which you can really see when you do a time lapse so a lower ISO might help here also.

I shot jpg as processing 100+ images will take ages and takes up more room on the card. Next time I might shoot raw but I can only use 2GB cards so space for the images is an issue if I want to go longer than about 90mins.

Just need a clear moon free night now, so looking at a couple of weeks yet as it's more or less full at the moment. Will also give me a new set of images to chuck through my new GIMP plug-in *shameless plug*.

edit: All the stacking tools will need a "processed image" as far as I am aware. be that a jpg, tiff etc. So if you are sure of your exposure and settings then by all means shoot jpg. If you shoot raw you will need to process 1 image and then batch apply these across the set, useful if you can't get the WB right in camera.

and another edit: this is the image I got using ISO 1600


Star trail by themaninthesuitcase, on Flickr
 
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