Album Night Shots and Star Trails

Love the shots with the milky way in them!
 
ibenick said:
That's killer man!!! Stacked or single exposure?
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Thanks man. Its stacked.

I figured out the aperture on my camera and the focusing to infinity (thanks for the help on that). Turns out I was focusing PAST infinity, which I didn't know you could do until I did some research on it. Turns out that in extreme temperatures you have to go just past (or before) infinity to get the focus right. I tired to do some star trails of the Wellsvilles the other night that would have turned out killer, but I was just a hair off on the focus and it didn't turn out.
 
my first temporary attempt for this year. Have to work on all my shots at home. This one is from Snow Canyon CG, I would love to have the trail more in the middle, but there was an ugly building on the left and that night I was too tired to head out somewhere else in the park. So it's just for practice ;)

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Miss Buffalo said:
my first temporary attempt for this year. Have to work on all my shots at home. This one is from Snow Canyon CG, I would love to have the trail more in the middle, but there was an ugly building on the left and that night I was too tired to head out somewhere else in the park. So it's just for practice ;)

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Nicely done, Yvonne!
 
Great job Yvonne, much better than my first attempt!
 
here is another star trail, taken in Valley of Fire.
But even in the middle of the night there was a lot of air traffic and unfortunately a car spoiled the composition.
Anyway, it was nice to play around a little bit.
I guess sooner or later I need a better camera, there is still a lot of noise in the composition and maybe a problem of the D90.

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I really like that one, Yvonne. :)

There is an easy way to fix that car though. You did stacked stars, not single exposure, right? Just pick a foreground from one of the stacked images that you like better. Then go into photoshop, throw that one in a layer behind the image above. Now grab your eraser with a feathered edge and probably at partial opacity and start 'painting in' the foreground that turned out better. It's one of the wonderful convenient things about stacking stars, you have a wide variety of foreground options to choose from. :cool:
 
ibenick said:
I really like that one, Yvonne. :)

There is an easy way to fix that car though. You did stacked stars, not single exposure, right? Just pick a foreground from one of the stacks you like better. Then go into photoshop, throw that one in a layer behind the image above. Now grab your eraser with a feathered edge and probably at partial opacity and start 'painting in' the foreground that turned out better. It's one of the wonderful convenient things about stacking stars, you have a wide variety of foreground options to choose from. :cool:
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yes, those images were stacked. I used your manual for shooting star trails and the results were much better than anything else I did before.
Hmm, photoshop, I need to buy a version of it. Maybe I'll get an inexpensive version in our university store.
Is it difficult to get familiar with the program?
 
Miss Buffalo said:
yes, those images were stacked. I used your manual for shooting star trails and the results were much better than anything else I did before.
Hmm, photoshop, I need to buy a version of it. Maybe I'll get an inexpensive version in our university store.
Is it difficult to get familiar with the program?
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I don't think so. And there are plenty of tutorials online. You could try a program called 'The Gimp' too. It is free and is touted as a Photoshop alternative. If you don't already know Photoshop, it could be easy but I don't like it since I already know my way around PS. You can download The Gimp here.
 
ibenick said:
I don't think so. And there are plenty of tutorials online. You could try a program called 'The Gimp' too. It is free and is touted as a Photoshop alternative. If you don't already know Photoshop, it could be easy but I don't like it since I already know my way around PS. You can download The Gimp here.
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thanks Nick. I'll check it out soon
I'll also download a trial version of Photoshop and try to play around a little bit with it.
 
A snippet of the time lapse I shot in Coal Pits wash last weekend. This is only 19 thirty second exposures stacked. Amazing how much faster the stars appear to move when you shoot towards the equator. I wonder if using mirror lock up would help eliminate the micro gaps in the trails caused from the time in between exposures?

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