Really need your help

I went shooting the Perseids last night and was out from 12:30am to 3:30am and took about 78 frames. Came out terrible and I am at a loss as to why. I would REALLY appreciate you taking the time to look at the disasterous results and commenting on what you think I did SO wrong. Left the house at 11:15pm...got to bed at 5am...I want to cry. Explanations are at the top of the gallery...Thanks!

http://www.pbase.com/wildestdreams/meteor_mess

Todd will be able to help - as I recall, he had similar noise frustrations with the Milky Way when he had a 5D. HUGE props for the extraordinary effort!

I have no idea what that pink "noise blob" on the right is. Did you guys have any lights on around the camera? Including behind it? At 800/1600 it WILL pick that up. Beyond that it just looks noisy. Were you shooting raw? Were you using long exposure noise reduction? I've had mixed results with the dark frame subtraction it does (especially since ACR does hot pixels automatically). Plus it's a pain to wait double time.

It looks to me like a combination of too high of an f/stop and too short of an exposure time relative to that f/stop. If the frame is very dark like these on an exposure that isn't long enough for your settings combination with a high ISO, you're going to see noise like this. Then again, maybe something else is going on, I do very little night photography.

Consider that you're essentially trying to take a photograph of tiny white spots surrounded by black - and in order to do so, you're turning up the sensitivity of your sensor in an exponential fashion. You won't ever escape the noise, you can only hope to minimize it at capture and beat it in to submission in post.

ACR's noise reduction sucks for heavy color noise like this. Get these in to Noise Ninja or the like and you should be able to pull some decent results out regardless.

No lights on anywhere during exposure..only opened car door when camera not in operation. Yep, always shoot in RAW. Didn't use LE noise reduction. Tried that when I first got the camera in 2007 and images looked worse using it than not so no, I don't use it. As far as f stop vs exposure time, I tried EVERY possible exposure/ISO combo ( I admit I f'd up with the f stop...pun intended) and all resulted in what you see in the 4 examples. I thought I'd set up f4 at home before we left but obviously I didn't. I've never had such bad results shooting at night as with these. I haven't done as much with the 5D as I did with the 10D when I had it. Funny thing is, I found a website today that had images people took last night of the Perseids...similar settings and cameras (including a 5D) and they looked great...nothing like what I got. Could the f8 really have been the culprit and done that much damage to the exposures?

Could the f8 really have been the culprit and done that much damage to the exposures?

Oh, absolutely! Your lens at f4 will allow 4 times as much light to hit the sensor than when it's stopped down to f8.
I believe that using the lens wide open and a shutter speed of no longer than 30-60 sec. will go a long way toward resolving your issues here.
If you want less of a 'star field', consider reducing the ISO, as well.

A couple of things stand out to me: 1st: Yes, I also agree the f/8 setting is a problem (although it doesn't quite explain everything). f/2.8 is the smallest aperture opening I personally would recommend using for star images (prime lenses with 1.8 or 1.4 would be even better). Bigger apertures allow for shorter exposures even at the higher, noisier ISOs (and give you less blur from star trails. ~45 sec at ISO 800 (or so) at f/2.8 is the limit I can get before seeing trails on my D300). Of course, to catch meteors this means you have to be really good about your timing. This is why many photographers will photograph the stars at f/2.8 or wider and then shoot another image of the foreground or other subject at f/11 (or whatever aperture is sharpest for them) then combine the exposures later.

2nd: Noise is caused by heat. The more images you take in small amount of time, the more noise you get. 78 frames in 3 hours is a lot especially on a summer night and will heat up your sensor causing quite a bit of noise easily by even the first few images if you were shooting these almost back-to-back. If it was winter and 0 degrees it wouldn't be quite as much of a problem, but then you have other problems to deal with. Take more time between exposures, perhaps 5 minutes or so, if you aren't going for star trails to let your sensor cool off.

Thanks so much for taking the time to help. I thought I'd prepared well but you all have brought up points I didn't find in my research. Joshua, the very first image had all the weirdness you see in the examples. The temps were 53-55 where we were in the mountains and I did pretty much take one exposure after the other instead of resting the sensor in between. Yeah, I know about winter long exposures and batteries, HA! I want a do over! Maybe I'll go in the yard tonight and see what action there is...if I don't fall asleep by 7pm!!!
Kurt, I tried Neat Image on one of them and it actually did do a remarkable job. I didn't even try it since it was such a noise fest. Thanks!

I had similar problems early on. The red light intruding from the right side is sensor heat building up. Just crop or clone it. And it takes a ton of noise reduction for me even at iso800 and f4.5 which is as wide open on my 28-135mm as I can go. I often use my 50mm at f2.5 just to reduce the noise as much as possible. Keep trying, and listen to the good advice from these guys.

Thanks Morris I just don't understand how there could be so much heat build up with the first exposure...doesn't make sense.

You're right, that doesn't make any sense whatsoever for a first exposure. That's bizarre.

Hmm, I'm new to this too.
Not meaning to hijack your thread, just adding some of my "experience" for what it's worth.

I had a little better luck than you but not much.

I had MANY meteors cross my field of view but NONE showed up at ISO 1600, 35 sec. f4. The star field looked ok though.

I did get some to show at ISO 3200, f6ish (or 8, not sure at the moment), and 30 sec.
The noise is pretty bad though but I did shoot a dark frame for subtraction (too much wasted time for in-camera). We'll see how that goes. I would have used f4 but it seemed I was getting more noise but I don't think it was noise...sky fog or something like that? Not sure.

I sure didn't have the sensor heat build up that it seems you did.

I'll post a couple (I only got 4 or 5) when I get the chance this weekend.

I did use an interval timer. That worked pretty sweet.

And there were LOTS of meteors - best shower I've ever stayed up for.

Yes Chuck, please by all means post yours. Sounds like you had a very similar outcome. I've done a fair amount of night photography and never with such bizarre results. Same here, hands down the best meteor viewing I've ever seen. Makes it that much harder to have done so poorly capturing it. You should've seen the meteor we saw when I was nearly ready to start shooting. It was HUGE, super bright and the trail glowed for 6-8 seconds after it was gone. If only I'd been ready just a little sooner! Didn't see another like it.

Pam, I don't know if you were using anything to block the eyepiece during your exposures, but I've experienced weird spots in the past from very distant light reflecting off my glasses into the finder during a time exposure if the finder is not blocked. Its amazing how little light it takes passing through the finder to cause problems, and this might be another explanation for the pink spot on the edge of your frames. I also agree with others comments that there will be an enormous difference attributable to using f8. One trick I've used for night photography is to use an inexpensive lens mount adapter to be able to utilize fast prime and wide angle lenses from other manufacturers that I either had on hand or was able to borrow- you don't need the autofocus or even automatic diaphram operation for night time exposures. Find or borrow a 50mm f1.4 from someplace, even if its another manufacturers mount, and also a 24 mm f2.8 or 20mm f2.8, and I think you'll be happier than trying to use the f4 zoom. Hope this helps!

Regarding the pink blob... I had a somewhat similar situation a few years ago when photographing the Mt. Arenal volcano in eruption in Costa Rica. We finally determined it was a light from the side that was reflecting in the lens hood over long exposures. Was your lens hood on? I was out on the same night with a d700, shooting with no hood and did not have this problem.

Bob Maynard

So, I have quite a bit of experience shooting stars and I noticed several problems Pam. The pink is 100% caused by heat as Josh said. On older cameras this used to be a really big problem. However, on newer cameras they have what is called Long exposure noise reduction. What it does is take a black image of the same scene and then black out all of those pink areas. You know this is turned on because when you take a 141 second shot you have to wait an additional 141 seconds before you can even see your results.

Secondly a lot of the noise in your images is because the stars were moving. There is a formula to shooting at night, you take 500 and divide it by your focal length and that will give you the time in seconds that you can have your shutter open to get motionless stars. So at 20mm you are looking at a maximum shutter time of 25sec. As mentioned above you want as much light going into your camera as fast as it can so you want your fastest lens wide open. This is why a lot of people shoot 50mm 1.8's and 24mm 1.4's for night photography.

Finally the last thing that could cause some of these results are environmental. A street light out of your field of view can really cause some interesting effects and colors It is amazing how sensitive these cameras can be.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Bill...thanks for more handy tips! I do have the plastic fantastic lens so I will try that on night skies.
Bob...I took the first few with the hood on but then removed it.
Jim C...thanks for the formula, that will certainly come in handy! So tell me, why did I get the pink noise blob on the very first exposure? There was no heat build up and there was absolutely no light pollution.

Pam. If there is no external light sources then it has to be heat. My older cameras used to have a lot more problems with this than my newer ones do but if I expose anything over a minute and I don't use long exposure noise reduction I get pink blobs just like that.

Hope it helps.

Jim, is the 5D considered an older camera?

Pam, the 5d, while it is a little bit older camera it is not as old as I am referring to. The ones I refer to are like the original Canon Rebel and the Nikon D70.

Everyone, thanks again so much for all your help. I have deleted the Pbase gallery so don't use the link

I can confirm sensor heat as the cause of the pink noise. I've had it happen at 10k feet and not much above freezing with both the 300D and 20D. It doesn't take long for those tiny circuits to warm up with power applied to them, regardless of outside temp, and a long shot means constant power. It's one of the down sides to digital, though there are workarounds. Canon's official (?) astrophotography page disappeared as far as I can tell, but I've found this page very informative: http://www.astropix.com/INDEX.HTM.

Thanks Chris! I appreciate the link