- its like a contrast between two mediums - Ashley Janea
- Cool - Lensa Waiz
Racing Stars
Take two at filling this in with the whole commentary as for some reason the original disappeared Wednesday night/Thursday morning.
I have been itching to do a star trail picture for a long while and on Monday night decided to head out to Rougham Control Tower (Google Map) on a cold frosty night with aching stomach.
The set up to do this picture was as follows:
1. Camera firmly mounted on a weighted tripod. With a hot shoe spirit level ensured the camera was horizontally level. With a compass and locating the great bear ensured that camera was pointing due north towards the pole star (to obtain the circle of stars).
2. The camera, a Nikon D300, was set to manual mode, 30 second exposure, aperture wide open on the Sigma 10-20 at f/4, focal length of 10mm, manually focused to infinity and the ISO adjusted with a number of test shots until the stars would appreciably show, in this case ISO 800 (owing to the background light off nearby Bury St Edmunds and Moreton Hall). Continuous shooting mode was enabled with 100 exposures maximum batch limit. The white balance was set to Daylight.
3. Using a wired remote release the shutter was triggered and the remote release locked down. The camera will now continuously take 30 second exposures (long enough to register the stars but short enough not the significantly register the foreground and back lighting) automatically for 100 exposures.
4. Then I sat on my Karrimat with hot coffee and listened to the latest from Scott and the crew on TWiP on the iPod whilst I watched the frost build up on the grass and the stars whiz over.
5. 10 minutes in and a Muntjac deer came barrelling through a hedge and across the grass till it bounced off the tripod and me. So after some cursing, realignment and brushing myself down, I started again.
6. After the 100 initial exposures, the camera was set to f8 and focus to hyperfocal distance so that I can take one image where I light painted the control tower with a 3W LED torch (using day light white balance appeared accurate whilst giving a gentle glow to the background light in the distance).
7. Finally 1 last image was taken with the lens cap on as a dark frame for later noise assessment during post processing.
8. So after 102 images, feeling very cold and the imodium wearing off, I headed back home after completing the tedious part.
Now for the post-processing.
1. This could have been done by loading the stack of images into Photoshop and use "lighten" blending but the memory requirement would have been horrific with full size 12.3MP camera images.
2. Instead I used an application called Startrails to do the blending. The 100 normal images plus the light painted one was selected for the blending and the single dark frame one. As noise wasn't too bad for the camera a single dark frame was ok. Otherwise 3 dark frame could be used taken every 33 images just in case there is any variance. The images where blended and the result saved as a TIFF. The application can do a video of the star movement but didn't seemed to work on any of my Vista PCs.
3. The TIFF file was then imported and converted to DNG into Adobe Lightroom where a little curve work was applied to improve contrast, some luminance and saturation of colours and final output sharpening on export for the image posted here.
So the lessons learnt from this exercise were:
1. Bring a hat and gloves, it was freezing at ground level.
2. Find a location with less background light.
3. Bring more hot coffee.
All an in a very pleasing first attempt at doing star trails and surely try this again using other buildings.
Update: Looked again at using Photoshop CS3 Extended to do the merge of all 101 pictures (not including the dark frame). Easiest method is to use the Analysis script in the file menu, then browse and add all the images you wish to include, set the analysis method to "Maximum" and away you go. Let the PC chug away and after over an hour you end up with a 22GB temporary Photoshop file and a very large smart object which you should then flatten to a layer for final tweaking.
Comparing the results, the Photoshop version was a little cleaner but Startrails only took 5 minutes to produce the combined images with little memory and temporary file overheads. However if a few number of much longer exposures was used then I'd probably recommend the Photoshop Analysis script approach.
Used in TradeKing Big Dog blog's blog article Friday Community shout-out!.
Featured in Digital Photography Schools blog articleLong Exposure Photography: 15 Stunning Examples.
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Used in The Brown Study blog 2008 Retrospective.
Featured in TheFutureBuzz's article50 Inspirational Images From Flickr Under Creative Commons.
Featured in RRut.com's feature Star Trails: 10 Impressive Photographs.
Featured in the "i tell stories" aricle On Creation: A Quarterly Report - A commitment to learning.
Featured in the WebUrbanist's article 12 Long-Exposure & Time-Lapse Photographers.
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Used in the Environmental Graffiti article Star Trails: Secret Paintings of the Night Sky.
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Comments and faves
monkeyleader, kazam media, .mushi_king, Lisa Bettany {Mostly Lisa}, and 739 other people added this photo to their favorites.
eddiemcfish (44 months ago | reply)
Very nice, and best viewed in large size I'd say. How long / how many exposures did this take?
sean_hickin (44 months ago | reply)
Graet image!
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Seen on my Flickr home page. (?)
monkeyleader (44 months ago | reply)
Stunning mate - and thanks so much for the explanation. I must give this a blast sometime. The deer incident woud have had me keeling over in shock though :)
Wiccy. (44 months ago | reply)
Wow, beautiful work and such incredible dedication.
My first thought when I saw this was "awesome, I must have a go at this", after reading your wonderfully clear explanation I decided to leave such technical ideas to the more patient!
Brilliant image, with so much effort gone in to it.
Moldini { Jon Mold Photography } (44 months ago | reply)
Fantastic work Andrew.
Big respect for the patience to capture all the images and braving the cold.
Excellent information. Very inspirational and one that I will definitely try on a still night and away from any deer!
One question.
How do you set it up for continuous frames at 30 sec. Did you set it to manual 30 sec exposure and lock the cable release to always 'pressed' whilst on continuous shutter mode? Does that make sense?
Anyway, big respect and great capture.
kazam media (44 months ago | reply)
Lessons learned:
4. Bring a second camera to record the deer incident ;)
Great shot/s, great explanation and I will give this a go soon - cheers
loki_p (44 months ago | reply)
Great shot. I have to stary use light painting.
.mushi_king (44 months ago | reply)
Stunning capture and jolly, jolly good effort. Fantastic stuff and thanks for the detailed commetary.
My gosh - rogoue muntjac deer? Maybe it has a flickr account and wanted some action too..?
MonketyMonk (44 months ago | reply)
That's great that is, I really like the light painting of the control tower - that's a nice effect to the overall picture.
Something I really want to have a go at.
Andrew Stawarz (44 months ago | reply)
Thanks everyone, you know when you have an itch and you must scratch it, it also works for photographs when you've a though buzzing in your head.
Jon, yes the camera was set to manual exposure 30 seconds, f/4 and in continuous shoot mode. The shutter was tripped and the remote was set in the locked down position. On the Nikon D300 you're able to set the maximum number of images to shoot in a continuous burst (a maximum of 100). So the camera would automatically stop after 100 continuous shots. I'll update the notes above.
Andrew Stawarz (44 months ago | reply)
Nige, you've got 2 great locations for star trails, St Vigors church and the Windmill on Cambridge Road in Fulbourn. Should be able to get a good North facing vantage. Tempted to stop on Thursday night after the group meet social on the way home if the weather is good (so far not too hopeful, Wednesday and Friday nights look OK but I'm busy on Friday).
∗justin (44 months ago | reply)
Nice work Andrew and thanks for the explanation too. I love the bit about the deer bounding in.
Andrew Stawarz (44 months ago | reply)
Thanks Justin, always like to provide an explanation on how pictures that appear odd are done. Normally very straight forward once thought out or researched.
Chopperfoto-leica.torquay (44 months ago | reply)
This is really stunning, well done
bbusschots (44 months ago | reply)
Fantastic star trails shot! Even better considering you were cold and ill!
Bart.
John Rose Photogrpahy (44 months ago | reply)
This is awesome, I will definitely have to try it.
cleangetaway (44 months ago | reply)
great result and good supporting infor on how this was done, I learnt something here thanks!
paul (england) (44 months ago | reply)
So all in all, quite straightforward, then ... ;-)
Absolutely brilliant, Andrew!
frscspd (44 months ago | reply)
Wow.
Andrew Stawarz (44 months ago | reply)
Thanks Paul and Marina! Oh very straight forward ;o) just initially time consuming. Been thinking all day about applying the same technique to the following windmill a few away from home:
Would be quite fun to have the swirl between or at the centre of the sails.
David M Hogan - Now on Google+ too (44 months ago | reply)
Great shot, this turned out perfect!! I really need to get a DSLR.
Kirpernicus (44 months ago | reply)
Great results, well done.
Hi, I'm an admin for a group called Eye Candy!, and we'd love to have this added to the group!
Daniel Cormier (44 months ago | reply)
Nicely done. Thanks for the tutorial.
Something's Missing (44 months ago | reply)
Wow, really good.
zpgoodell (44 months ago | reply)
Very nice Shot.
PhilC. (44 months ago | reply)
Brilliant work!
Johanna Taylor (44 months ago | reply)
this is beautiful!
Salva Mira (44 months ago | reply)
Excellent picture. I really like it +++
Congrats
Katie-Rose (44 months ago | reply)
Great star trails!
Len Langevin (44 months ago | reply)
this is a wonderful piece of work!
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Seen in the interestingness archives. (?)
--stevejc-- (44 months ago | reply)
Great shot, brilliantly done!
. Andrew Dunn . (44 months ago | reply)
Nicely done. Is there a historical significance behind the choice of foreground?
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Andrew Stawarz (44 months ago | reply)
Sorry Andrew yes there was, just noticed the one long description has gone missing for some reason, it contained info about the build and a description of the process. Will have to reconstruct it.
Edit: Now done and still scratching my head over how it happened, c'est la vie! Hopefully catch you tonight at the group social Andrew.
Thanks again!
Richie Wisbey Collection (44 months ago | reply)
Fantastic work.
paul (england) (44 months ago | reply)
Please add this to
Slow Photography
(Thanks!)
(This "group" is a mess, I know - I set it up and then did
nothing - but I really will get it sorted out some time ... )
gkomar (44 months ago | reply)
Absolutely amazing! Great job! Thanx for the story, aswell :)
Shot12 (44 months ago | reply)
Great shot.
Kai [WSM]™ (44 months ago | reply)
wow. that sounds like a mission. but great, striking result
LuisDS (44 months ago | reply)
Wow! This was really worth the hard work! It is fantastic!
flofler (43 months ago | reply)
Thanks for your detailed explanations.
D.M.Lobo (43 months ago | reply)
Hola, soy el administrador de un grupo llamado Fotografos Artos de Cerveza y nos encantaría agregar esto al grupo.
Augustin_ (43 months ago | reply)
brilliant photo, great explanations!
Alessandro Casagli (43 months ago | reply)
Awesome pic! Please consider adding it to theWorld's best Nikon shots Group. Cheers! :)
Paul Forsdick (43 months ago | reply)
That really does work really well. The house adds a lot to this. Pretty involved but well worth the effort (and the cold!) I think.
GranDadWoof (43 months ago | reply)
I think you're as mad as a bucket of frogs...
... but it was worth it
Andrew Kumler (43 months ago | reply)
Fantastic results. And thanks so much for the instructions on how this was done.. I had a good laugh when the deer came out..LOL..
Thanks again,
Andrew
Mollow2 (43 months ago | reply)
Wonderful shot. Thanks for writing out a step-by-step guide too :)
Vilhelm Sjostrom (42 months ago | reply)
Very informative, thanks for tags and thorough description!
Jakub Zdechovan Photography (42 months ago | reply)
Awesome shot! The workflow looks insane to me ;-)
stuttgart_san (41 months ago | reply)
Great description. I only did single shot ong exposures so far. Reading this makes me really want to try the stacking.