Album Night Shots and Star Trails

star trails over Pine Valley Mtn. from my campsite this weekend near Yant Flats.

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Miss Buffalo said:
star trails over Pine Valley Mtn. from my campsite this weekend near Yant Flats.

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Miss Buffalo, when I grow up I want to be just like you. ;)

W.




From wnorton using an iPad and Tapatalk HD.
 
The Titan in The Fisher Towers. I have some others, but they are too big and I haven't had time to re-size them. BTW this is 3 45 minute exposures stacked.
 
timestacked2small.jpg I roughed up a timelapse video from the images I stacked to create this image. It's Mp4 format and I can't seem to get it to upload here. Do I have to post it to youtube first or something?
 
Here is the first edit of the timelapse created from the above star trail image. I think I can make it better, any suggestions? The files were batch edited in LR, then imported in AE I'm thinking the image has better color in the stars than the time-lapse. Perhaps I should do a pseudo HDR edit (3 edits of each image composited into one, edited for highs lows and mids) Then import to AE anfd optimized there? Seems like lots of work but I am planning to use the clip for a video/ shot film about the climb of the finger of fate. @30 FPS the clip is only like 2 seconds so I set it to 10 FPS which is perhaps too slow? What do you think of the motion? would it be better to see more of the frame and less motion? maybe just side to side motion instead of diagonal? Also open to suggestions for editing the stacked images, would it be worth persuing the edit I mention above for the images too? Stacked using the star circle academy automation in lighten mode (I don't have a ton of experience with it, only 2 images stacked prior to these) with PS. I'm interested in learning the comet effect too but I figure with the above timelapse/ stack the clouds make gaps which is not condusive to the comet effect. Both of the above photos were edited pretty quickly and I feel they could get better but I don't know all the tricks to optimize a stacked image. Anyone care to share tips? I've read a fair bit on various websites, I especially want to get better at gap removal (mainly the gaps that exist without clouds). I read something about extending trails too, which is semi useful in the case of clouds however I don't know that I feel it is ethical when trying to maintain the state of representing reality. Thanks for the advice.
 
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Alright, so I've never done much of the night shots so hopefully someone can teach me a few things. I went out and messed around, couldn't get it focused but I saw the post about how to get it focused earlier in the thread so I'm good there. How do you guys get such amazing shots of the milky way? And then star trails everyone says its like 120 stacked images, are each image 30+ sec exposures?
 
Escalante out on HITRR.

I was really excited to get down to Escalante during Spring Break and get some star trail photos, yet the whole time it was really cloudy. This is a result of a lot of editing to get something to work, and not as "clean" as I would have liked but, definitely a new angle and a new processing technique that I'm studying. I believe the light in the south is a result of campfires or a city down at Lake Powell. This is a compilation of 30 photos for 2 mins each at f/4 & ISO 1600.

Escalante Star Trails by Scott Barlow (scottbarlow)) on 500px.com
 
Alright so this is what I was able to produce as my first star trail thanks to you guys! Little blurry and such, not much for foreground but it'll work.
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MTN_DUDE said:
Alright so this is what I was able to produce as my first star trail thanks to you guys! Little blurry and such, not much for foreground but it'll work.
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Nice work man! My eyes must just be blurry because that looks pretty close to focused to me! Just remember to learn where your infinity focus point is ahead of time. Some lenses have it marked, others don't. Some that do have it marked end up with the infinity point not quite where it is marked so it's good to learn it for your specific lens by focusing on the distance in a normal situation.

Another note - it is pretty hard to get the stars focused sharp AND have a super close foreground like above simply because of the fast aperture required to do trails.
 
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