NYFalls.com Talk

Kelly wrote:Some inspiration: Matthew Cook Photography - Star Trails

wow, those are really cool star trails
That's exactly the stuff I have in mind. Wish I could do that

americanhero wrote:wow, those are wonderful trails.

I tried some trail as well this year. Took this two shots in Southern Utah while there on vacation. It also was my very first attempt with the trails
The first one wasn't long enough, only 12 independent shots which I later later stacked together. All shots were 30sec exposures



the second one is much better, I stacked 5 or six shots together. Each of the shots had a 2 minute exposure and the lighting on the rocks is from my campfire.




if I ever find a place here in Western New York without a lot of light pollution, I will give it another try.

Those are incredible! Love 'em! Well done.

I have recently started reading on stacking. I can't figure out how some of it works though. I saw one awesome image someone took and they did 100 30-second exposures and stacked them. The result was amazing. But when I did any 30-second images, it looked like a blank screen on my camera. How does that work if you have all those exposures and it seems to be capturing nothing. I'd hate to go sit somewhere for an hour, do all those exposures, stack them and find I got nothing in the end!

Is stacking a tough thing to do?

Loved your shots. I hope some clear weather comes soon as I'd like to try some star trails again.

hoohaa wrote: Those are incredible! Love 'em! Well done.

I have recently started reading on stacking. I can't figure out how some of it works though. I saw one awesome image someone took and they did 100 30-second exposures and stacked them. The result was amazing. But when I did any 30-second images, it looked like a blank screen on my camera. How does that work if you have all those exposures and it seems to be capturing nothing. I'd hate to go sit somewhere for an hour, do all those exposures, stack them and find I got nothing in the end!

Is stacking a tough thing to do?

Loved your shots. I hope some clear weather comes soon as I'd like to try some star trails again.

thank you.

I used a special software for stacking and it was really easy to work with it.
The program was established by a German guy, but you can choose between German and English.

http://www.startrails.de/html/software.html

One disadvantage of stacking software is that you get gaps in the trails. Within a lower resolution you barely see it, but in high resolution this can be really ugly.



I just started experimenting with my camera and star trails and still have to improve my technique a lot.
But I found a really good article about star trails, maybe it is helpful for you.

http://www.naturephotographers.net/arti ... 509-1.html

Photoshop CS4 and 5 will do stacking quite well.

Matt wrote:Photoshop CS4 and 5 will do stacking quite well.

unfortunately too complicated for me.
I mostly use Picasa for editing pictures, because it is absolutely easy. I have no idea how to do something with these complicated programs other than auto correct.

Here are my tries.

http://www.pbase.com/gardengirl13/lost_in_space

I started doing star trails years ago with film and it was much easier! Just set it up open the shutter and hours later go back and you're done. Now with digital the it's issues it's harder to do. You can see I'm getting a bit better then a few years ago. the 60D really seems to do this well.

And americanhero wanna know a secret? Download this- it's free and works great! http://www.markus-enzweiler.de/StarStaX ... l#download

Here are my hints. For plain star photos without the fancy tracking tripods use the highest ISO your camera can handle, open the lens as wide as it'll go and shoot for about 30 sec. Any more then that and the stars will start to move. The longer the lens the shorter the time. At 10mm 30 sec seems to be ok. Some do 25. For trails I set it up at ISO 100, wide open and shoot for 10 min. Problem is when you unlock the shutter and take the next photo it has to be VERY fast or you'll get spacing in between your trails. I do 10 min shots for as long as I want. Then shoot a bunch of dark images. It is important to do this at the time of shooting so the temp of the battery and sensor is the same. Basically just put the cap tightly on the lens and keep the settings (ISO, f/stop, ss) all the same. I only shoot about 4 of these. Some do a lot more. Doing this helps keep the noise down a bit.

I played with my camera a lot while traveling throughout Utah, some of the results are not too bad


Coyote Gulch Star Trails on a full moon night


Bryce Canyon Trails


campground Trails


Salt Creek Canyon Trails

Those are amazing. How long were the exposures? What are those lines running counter? Jets?