Above the Cloud / My First Star Trails Attempt

Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM

07/07/2005 09:12:29 PM · #1

Hey all,
Yesterday Christchurch had some really thick fog roll in, it closed the international airport, and blanketed the city completley.

I was fortunate enough to be driving over the hill and to get above the cloud, and see the fog illuminated by the city lights. The light trails in the fore ground are night riding mountain bikers, on a popular trail in the porthills.

The sky was clear so I thought I'd try a star trails shot, this photo is a 20min exposure, needless to say, the full size image is pretty noisy. I also had trouble getting a good focus, as its basically impossible to see anything through the view finder.

Felt like sharing, C&C welcome.
Cheers,
Simon

Message edited by author 2005-07-07 21:13:36.

akshayvh

Canon EOS-7D

07/07/2005 09:18:13 PM · #2

I tried something like this a while back. To counter the out of focus problem, I went with the widest focal length (18mm on my lens) and smallest aperture (f/22 for greater depth of field) to ensure that the trails didn't end up being blurry. The lower aperture also helps you expose for a longer time (longer trails), but then that leads to more noise. You can always run it through NeatImage and get usable images though.

Nikon AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5G IF-ED

07/07/2005 09:33:20 PM · #3

Thanks for your comments akshayvh, yeah I did run neat image over it, had to uses some pretty forcefull noise reduction to remove the grain, but it came up ok. Still out of focus though :)

Any other takers?

petrakka

07/07/2005 09:45:40 PM · #4

usually with that stuff f/8 is a good stop to use and just go wider than 50mm and focus at infiniti and you should be good.
f4 if you are doin like under 20 min though. many star trails pics are for several hours, (see film still has uses haha)

2Shay

Nikon Z7 FX

07/07/2005 09:47:12 PM · #5

I haven't tried a shot like this yet, but I was thinking that you might just manually focus to infinity. I would guess that the stars are past the maximum focal distance of the lens. I did this on my Nikon when I took pictures of fireworks for the 4th. The pictures were focused, but I was not entirely satisfied with the results. If only they could have shot off fireworks for a few hours on the third so I could get my settings ready! ;-)

jasm8

Canon EOS-40D

Canon EF 28-135mm F/3.5-5.6 IS USM

07/07/2005 09:52:50 PM · #6

Love the shots as this is something that I've been wanting to try with my camera for the longest time (I notice that we have the same camera... did you use a remote or a wireless remote to keep the shutter open for the 20 minute exposure? I've been think about getting a wireless remote but i'm wondering about the technical aspect of you taking the picture... can you tell me what you did?)
Your shot of the star trails has a lot of potential! I think that there was too much ambient light to get a strong definition of the trails and your right ... the picture is a bit noisey. Are you able to go to a darker location where there is absolutely no ambient light at all? Camping or somewhere in the woods where there are no city lights?
Good luck with your next shot!
-Kevin

07/07/2005 09:54:55 PM · #7

Oddly, thats what I did; set my camera to manual focus, and wound the focus ring to what I figured was infinity, however it would appear that infinity on the kit 18-55mm lens is actually slightly back from total rotation.... bizzare.

Thanks for your comments guys.