Posted by Darren White on July 12, 2007 at 3:18 PM
Based on what I have been reading and learning over the past few months I decided to try something (this is only a test).
I have read that noise starts to get bad around 30 sec into an exposure so I decided that if I did 30 sec bursts that I could create noiseless star trail shots.....
this is 20 exposures at 30 seconds each = 10 min exposure
ISO 200
D70
f/4.5
I am happy with the results and will put this to a tougher test later this summer around Mid August or when the Meteor shower is....
I did like how the north star on the far right stayed still while everything else moved around!
Thanks for looking, comments are welcome....
Darren
Posted by Mike Stovall on July 12, 2007 at 4:26 PM
Darren, that's cool, man. I'm really interested in the subject of getting low noise star trail shots with digital. How does it look for noise at large sizes? How did you stack these bad boys up?
While shooting some star trails out at Bandon last summer (15 minute exposure) I saw multiple shooting stars. Unfortunately none of them showed up in any of the shots. But I'll bet you could get some with this technique. The whole show displayed in one shot would be incredible.
Posted by Darren White on July 12, 2007 at 4:33 PM
Mike for this I just used the
Automate>merge to HDR in CS3 and unchecked the align image box.....it then converts it to a 32 bit file.....
Posted by Mike Stovall on July 12, 2007 at 4:41 PM
Darren,
I foresee a star trail party sometime soon! I've been wanting to either do Larch Mountain or Lookout Mountain with star trails over Mt Hood. We should camp up there one night and try to get some good star trails...
Posted by Zack Schnepf on July 14, 2007 at 11:49 PM
Just a side note, with my 5D I am able to do 5 minute and 10 minute exposures with no noise. Occasionally I get a spec or 2 on hot nights at 10 minutes, but I just clone em out.
occasionally I get a spec or 2 on hot nights at 10 minutes, but I just clone em out.
I find cold nights worse on my 1Ds2. I think cold is much worse with the constuction wit cmos sensors... Taking a black frame (with the lenses cap on) an subtracting them out does the trick!
Discussion
13 repliesI have read that noise starts to get bad around 30 sec into an exposure so I decided that if I did 30 sec bursts that I could create noiseless star trail shots.....
this is 20 exposures at 30 seconds each = 10 min exposure
ISO 200
D70
f/4.5
I am happy with the results and will put this to a tougher test later this summer around Mid August or when the Meteor shower is....
I did like how the north star on the far right stayed still while everything else moved around!
Thanks for looking, comments are welcome....
Darren
BTW, here's some freeware I found to remove hot pixels: http://www.mediachance.com/digicam/hotpixels.htm The in camera noise reduction (which uses dark frame subtraction http://tinyurl.com/2quhhu) doesn't always get all of them.
While shooting some star trails out at Bandon last summer (15 minute exposure) I saw multiple shooting stars. Unfortunately none of them showed up in any of the shots. But I'll bet you could get some with this technique. The whole show displayed in one shot would be incredible.
Automate>merge to HDR in CS3 and unchecked the align image box.....it then converts it to a 32 bit file.....
I have some killer star trails that I took with my F4s because it had the x setting and would not run your battery down.
I foresee a star trail party sometime soon! I've been wanting to either do Larch Mountain or Lookout Mountain with star trails over Mt Hood. We should camp up there one night and try to get some good star trails...
Kevin
I find cold nights worse on my 1Ds2. I think cold is much worse with the constuction wit cmos sensors... Taking a black frame (with the lenses cap on) an subtracting them out does the trick!