Reject Startrail

So I thought I'd post a reject of mine from friday evening, really just as an exercise in showing lessons learned so that others might reap the benefit too.

One of my side projects has been to learn how to get some decent night shots, including star trails. Last Friday was clear for once so off I trapsed, set up my gear in the woods and let it do its thing there for 2hr 30. This was the result:




It's obviously a total reject so here are various thoughts.

- WB, set it low to make the sky look blue rather than ghastly orange
- The longer the better, this is about 1.5 hrs stitched together I think
- I shot for longer but condensation on the lens made the rest unuseable. I've added some of the condensation in at the top on purpose to show the effect, it's that weird streak in the blue at the top. I am buying a couple of hand held fans that'll run on batteries for hrs which I'll mount near the lens and leave running to deal with this.
- aeroplanes can be annoying
- I used remote continuous mode on this with a remote. It gives the smallest time between exposures so the trails marry up best when you merge them all
- I used startrails.exe to stitch them, a great freebie
- lightpainting is best done softly and before the main take. This needs a lot more experimentation but the concept is sound I think, especially on old monuments once I consider myself competent. I bought some big yellow 20 million lux thing from ebay for £20 for this, did the job perfectly
- plan ahead with charging because this was a spur of the moment thing. My battery wasn't full nor the lamp charged
- I have a headband headlamp thing, very useful for hands free operation when it's dark. I recommend it
- to compose, set camera to highest iso, take a pic, then recompose afterwards based on the result. make sure to set iso down afterwards
- typical exposure was 30 secs, f8, iso 400. A little on the dark side so I had to adjust all the raws in bridge
- be very alert when lightpainting that closer stuff is much brighter. Ie see that bush on the right
- to find polaris, the star that they all turn round, look at the bear and follow the last 2 points (google finding polaris)
- this was 10-17mm fisheye corrected. You need a really wide lens to get this stuff, and you'd be surprised at just how steep an angle you need to point it


if anyone else has stuff they want to add as lessons for others feel free to post

might be a reject to you but i think it's amazing....good skill and work.

Roy

Indeed, why is this a reject?
Our standards aren't that low right...

Having taken one or two star trails myself, I have to ask: why is this a reject. i like it. It has a lot going on.

OK, from an astro point of view there might be too much else in the frame. But from an image point of view, the trees, the aircraft trails, the light in the foreground all make this a great image ( IMHO )

Not a reject in my eyes, i think its a stunning image, very well done. Dave

BLIMEY !!

Wish some of my rejects were as good - I can`t even get the moon right without wobbling !!

Brilliant !

Tony

I agree with Tony

Excellent shot wish my rejects were half as good

What a crap picture, I can quite see why you rejected it

LOL....

How dismissive (what ever would you think of my stuff!?!) I'd not reject this at all. I mean, what more could one want from this sort of thing?

Well done!

Andrew

Ummmmmmm, ok

Not being affected, but I just know I can do much better and I know much better can be done. Once I've got something to prove it I'll post it, you'll see what I mean hopefully. Probably be a few months though

It gets my vote just because I wouldn't have the patience to sit in a pitch black forest for nearly 3 hours.

I'm with the others - this is a bit too nice to be a reject. The most critical thing I guess is the plants on the right which are more brightly illuminated than the others, though I could certainly live with this. Although the plane trails spoil the symmetry somewhat, in the end I think they probably add to rather than detract from the photo.

And Mike's right - 2.5 hours in the wood is true dedication.

(BTW Mike - haven't you sold your Opteka 85:wink!).

I'm with everyone else. Much too nice to be a reject. You should see my first attempts at star trails from a few weeks back, yours is at least a bazillion times better