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First star trail attempt with 1Ds mkIII

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Alekhine

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Hi,
I just wanted to share my first try at a startrail.

The final image is a result of 88 images stacked together, each of them was 90 seconds of exposure.

Since I waited about one second between each shot in order not to heat the sensor, there is a discontinuity in the circular lines, of course more noticeable in the ones towards the outside.
But all in all it seems not so bad.. what do you think?

Guido





--
Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
Oscar Wilde

http://www.guidotramontano.com
 
I think I don't know why you haven't gotten more responses on this shot - I think it is very good! For me what makes a good star trail shot is not usually the stars but the foreground. A good foreground subject puts it all in context and makes it a much more effective shot. I have tried some star trails but never have gotten the foreground part of the image to come out the way I wanted.

Did you expose the foreground separately in this image?

The gaps in the star trails are as you say to be expected, although I have seen some multi-shot images where they are not present. I think there are some blending techniques in Photoshop or other software that allows you to blend them out somehow.

Anyway, a very good effort, thanks for sharing!

ML
 
I"ve been very curious about how the 1ds III would do with start trails, and I'd say its very good. It'd be nice to see the image at 100% for better analysis (after all, it is a gear forum).......and sharing the exposure details/processing would be helpful. (ISO shutter speed, Lens, etc).

Thanks........look forward to more.
Mike
 
I do a few startrails with a 1Ds2. I think your picture is great, hard to believe it is a 1st attempt. Nice foreground interest. It may be just a bit overexposed.

Warning, startrails can become addictive, and don't listen to the nay sayers who insist you can only do them in real dark sky areas. you can get pretty good startrails from inner city locations.

The gaps are not caused by the 1 second delay between shots (at wide angle it takes 15-20 seconds before star movement is visible). The gap is caused by the lighten blend mode. They are also made worse by over use of clarity when opening the RAW. I have tried various techniques to reduce the gaps, but I have never found one that works and just accept the gaps

Regards

David Sharp

************************
http://www.pbase.com/dasharp/startrails

 
Put it on the wall and tell everyone you took it! Nice job.
 
Hi Mikey,
mikeyL said:
I think I don't know why you haven't gotten more responses on this shot - I think it is very good! For me what makes a good star trail shot is not usually the stars but the foreground. A good foreground subject puts it all in context and makes it a much more effective shot. I have tried some star trails but never have gotten the foreground part of the image to come out the way I wanted.

Did you expose the foreground separately in this image?
Click to expand...
No, I used just all the frames in lighten mode with a free software downloaded from somewhere...
Thanks for your thoughts, I'll try to eliminate the gaps with photoshop!
mikeyL said:
The gaps in the star trails are as you say to be expected, although I have seen some multi-shot images where they are not present. I think there are some blending techniques in Photoshop or other software that allows you to blend them out somehow.

Anyway, a very good effort, thanks for sharing!

ML
Click to expand...
--
Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
Oscar Wilde

http://www.guidotramontano.com
 
Hi Mike,
here is a 100% crop.





Manual mode, shutter speed 90 seconds per shot, Manual Focus, set around a little before infinite, ISO 640, f4.5, 2500 kelvin degrees. Used my Iphone as intervalometer, 3 beers, one sandwich and 5 cigarettes :-)
No postprocessing, just RAW to JPEG.
Mike Gerstner said:
I"ve been very curious about how the 1ds III would do with start trails, and I'd say its very good. It'd be nice to see the image at 100% for better analysis (after all, it is a gear forum).......and sharing the exposure details/processing would be helpful. (ISO shutter speed, Lens, etc).

Thanks........look forward to more.
Mike
Click to expand...
--
Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
Oscar Wilde

http://www.guidotramontano.com
 
D Sharp said:
I do a few startrails with a 1Ds2. I think your picture is great, hard to believe it is a 1st attempt. Nice foreground interest. It may be just a bit overexposed.

Warning, startrails can become addictive, and don't listen to the nay sayers who insist you can only do them in real dark sky areas. you can get pretty good startrails from inner city locations.
Click to expand...
Yeah right, I think the same! I'll try one as soon as I find a good place...

yes that was my very first attempt at startrails and yes I know it can be addictive.

I'm already starting to think to astrophotography... have to find what I need for that, but will my 1Ds3 or 1D4 be good for astrophotography? I guess not?
D Sharp said:
The gaps are not caused by the 1 second delay between shots (at wide angle it takes 15-20 seconds before star movement is visible). The gap is caused by the lighten blend mode. They are also made worse by over use of clarity when opening the RAW. I have tried various techniques to reduce the gaps, but I have never found one that works and just accept the gaps
Click to expand...
I had a suspect that the gaps where software-side, I have to write one myself, it's pretty easy, but then no, I can only write software for PC and I have a Mac.
Thanks for your inputs!
D Sharp said:
Regards

David Sharp

************************
http://www.pbase.com/dasharp/startrails

Click to expand...
--
Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
Oscar Wilde

http://www.guidotramontano.com
 
Astrophotography is a blast - but also very addicting and an expensive sub-hobby within a hobby. Many people try to jump in on the cheap without knowing what is important and actually throw away some money and often become discouraged. With the right start though it can be very fun!

I recommend a website called http://www.astropix.com if you are interested in getting to the next level with astrophotography. Jerry's site is great and he also has a couple of very inexpensive and super informative books on CD that not only will give you an idea what is involved but also potentially save you some money if you decide to start buying any specific astrophotography gear like tracking mounts or telescopes or whatever. Seeing what he has done even with some very modest setups in some cases can be very inspiring. But astrophotography is more of a journey than an immediate destination as it takes lots of experience to get some of the more inspiring images of fainter objects.

Your current cameras would be fine for astrophotography other than the fact that they are both rather large and heavy bodies. if you do any longer exposure shooting that requires you to track the stars motion to avoid blurring (i.e. NOT star trail pictures), the lighter the camera the better. So most folks who use DSLRs use Rebel class cameras for astro shooting, although I have done some shooting with my 40D (bigger than a Rebel class body but still much smaller and lighter than your 2 cameras you mention).

Anyway, go check out Jerry's website - it's very cool!

ML
 
I use the Russell brown stack-a-matic script which is available for cs5 or cs6

http://russellbrown.com/scripts.html

The advantage for me is that you end up with a layered image which you can then separatly edit before compressing it down to save. Useful if you Lightpaint the foreground and you need to mask or edit some of the lighting.

--
Regards

David Sharp

************************
http://www.pbase.com/dasharp/favourites

 
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