Star Trail by natsnell

Star Trail

Taken in my back garden. Just the other side of the trees is a road, hence the orange glow in the trees. Urban area also give the orange glow in the sky.

Long exposures can accumulate quite a lot of noise which can make the photo look speckled. So I set up the shot using a 30 second exposure with a combination of aperture and ISO that exposed the photo enough to see the stars and the foreground without introducing too much noise.

I then used the elastic band and small stone trick to keep the shutter button pressed while the camera was in multi shoot mode.

I went back inside and watched some TV for an hour before going back out to retrieve my camera.

All 117 photo were then combined using Image Stacker software using the brighten option (all images are compared and the brightest pixel at each point is used in the output image).

Processing removes all exif info, so here is what I used:
Camera: Canon EOS 450D
Exposure: 58.5 mins (117 x 30 second exposures)
Aperture: f/6.3
ISO Speed: 400
Focal Length: 18 mm

Not bad for my first real go at this.
Sweeeeeet! What stacking program did you use! Might try this in kirky in summer. From the beach
March 24th, 2011  
Nat
@mrgtrueman Man that will be mint!
Its a small utility called "Image Stacker" from Tawbaware.
March 24th, 2011  
Nat
@mrgtrueman Next time I will try it for a few hours. I did not want to leave it going for ages this time as I did not know for sure how it was going to come out. I may also go out into the country maybe up on the moors.
March 24th, 2011  
cool
March 25th, 2011  
Clever stuff! I like the contrasting appearances of the trails and the trees.
March 25th, 2011  
Very cool!
March 27th, 2011  
Nat
@mrgtrueman I'm also now looking at building a barn door/scotch mount to see if I can get a photo of a galaxy or something!
March 28th, 2011  
@natsnell i have no idea what that means!
March 28th, 2011  
I have no idea what that last comment means either, but you really are going above and beyond, puts us all to shame when you're putting so much time and thought into cool pictures. Whats the Oscar Wilde quote, 'we are all in the gutters, but some of us are looking at the stars.'
March 30th, 2011  
@chewyteeth I agree. It all sounds very complicated but the effect is good. A lot of effort . Its getting a bit addictive.
April 7th, 2011  
Leave a Comment
Sign up for a free account or Sign in to post a comment.