night and low light Twistleton Star Trails

Any comments or feedback welcome.

Just amazing John. Can you provide some tech inof on this shot? Camera and lens used, f stop, expose time? Thanks.

Hi Will,

 

No problem. I'd put the exposure info in the technical details section but the equipment's a Canon 5D with 17-40mm f/4 at the 17mm end. The foreground's lit by the remnants of light approx 90 minutes after sunset and a very new moon behind and to the left of the camera.

 

Usual curves, levels, saturation and sharpening stuff done in Photoshop but nothing fancy.

 

cheers,

John.

This is fantastic. The moon lighting is great, the framing is excellent, and the exposure just right. Great shot.

John, thanks for the info. I don't usually rate photos anymore, but I had to give you a 7/7 on this one. Great shot. I'll have to give this a try one night. How can you judge exposure with such a long shutter speed?

Will,

 

My usual metering technique is fairly crude but seems effective in practice. I take a shot at a wide-ish apperture and high ISO for a few seconds (say f/4, ISO1600, 30s), check the histogram to see how it turns out exposure wise, adjust if necessary, then set the ISO and f-stop for the final shot and multiply the exposure time accordingly (e.g. if the histogram looked OK at f/4, ISO1600 and I wanted f/5.6 and ISO 100 I'd multiply the time by 32).

 

If you're shooting in fading light (e.g. after sunset or with a setting moon) you need to take account of the fact that the light will have dropped by the time the exposure finishes and add a bit. I don't have a scientific way of working this out yet but doubling has worked reasonably well for me in the past (I'm working on a method for this and I'm happy to post what I find if I figure out anything worthwhile. There's no point contributing to a forum and being secretive about your technique :) ) but at worst you end up with a slightly under-exposed foreground which I like in this kind of shot anyway.

 

I hope this helps.

 

cheers,

John.

Man this is good for sure...I love the color in the sky...your best work yet I believe...I am yet to get out and try this like we talked...maybe tonight...lol

John, thanks a bunch for the info.

Excellent exposure and composition!

John, this image is pretty amazing for two reasons. 1. I really like star trails, something that I haven't tried before. 2. Technical, the Canon 5d and 33 minute exposure? I mean come on, this doesn't look like there was any noise. Next you will tell me that it was at ISO 1600 or something goofy like that. It's a cool image (cool is my new term for images this week). Congrats - Sean

John, just looked at technical details and I see this is ISO 100.

increible.Siempre me atrae este tipo de imagenes.Felicidades por la foto.un saludo

Lovely shot, and very good of you to take the time to explain how it was done. Much better than just seeing a photo, which only tells half a story I feel.