Space Station

This was just a 14 minute test shot to see if my composition was as

good as I could get at where I was. Coincidently the space station

blazed by during the capture. Also coincidently, my extra battery

that I was going to switch out every 1-2 hours with the one in the

camera completely failed when I put it on the charger during this

picture. Therefore, I was unable to make the real shoot.

Sometimes you just get lucky.

 

I like the why the land wraps around the edge, with the red tree and the sun. I see two lights over on the horizon; what's the second one?

Great idea using the fisheye lens. Amazed a 14 minute exposure would give you even this much of a startrail effect. Going to try my hand at star trails for the first time this weekend, am encouraged by your photo.

 

Loren Sutherland

What time of night was this? I've tried a few of these, and they turned out ok, but it's real easy to over expose. Nothing is worse than taking a 2-3 hour picture, than letting the camera go through 2-3 hours of noise reduction, then wake up the next morning to view the picture and see nothing but a white screen. I like your comp. here. I look forward to seeing another one of these.

It was an hour or so after sunset, Kelly. I've only tried a couple of these shots, but never really went through with the full shot. I have the TC-80N3 remote so I can program it to take a shot every 6 minutes or so all night long, then stack them later. I just have to change the battery in the camera every so often. With this 14 minute shot there's really quite a few hot pixels and noise at iso100. I've never tried a single 2-3 hour shot or tried using the noise reduction. I always figured the noise reduction could be done in postprocessing instead of in camera, which doubles the time it takes to take the shot. Maybe I should give it a go. I also figured a 2-3 hour shot would have too many hot pixels to be of use. If you're having success with your Rebel XT then there shouldn't be a reason why my 20D can't do it. I know what you mean about overexposing. That branch at the top right only had a barely visible glow from my campfire and it really sticks out in the picture.

The shots that I have tried were in the dead of night with no light source near by. I use iso 100, f/6 (really depending on time). I have a shot in my folder on here that was 58 minutes at f/5 and it almost looks like daytime. It was so dark out there that night that I couldn't hardly see the camera in front of me. I am no pro at this, but I'm learning, and loving it. As for the noise reduction....I don't know a way to do it after the shot, if you do please share. I let the camera do it. It kinda sucks waiting that long for the shot to finish.

 

I hope you try this again at this location. I think this shot is amazing as is, but a 45 minute shot would look really nice. (or longer) I would wait until it were darker, and kill the camp fire. (or just let it burn for 10 minutes or so, just to show the tree) and just try different settings. I would go f/6 for 1 hour (just a starting spot.)Iso 100.

 

Hope this helps. Take care.

My plan was to program my remote to shoot 6 minute shots consecutively all night long and then stack them in photoshop, but one of my batteries failed me so I didn't even mess with it. I've always heard this is the best way to have a clean star trail pic. I just counted the hot pixels on this 14 minute shot and there was 37 of them. That seems like too many for a 20D to me. I don't want to waste too much of your time, but do you mind counting at least roughly the hot ones on the full frame shot of the one you just posted(58 minutes no noise reduction)? Just wondering if I should send my camera in while it's under warranty. I always use Noise Ninja for cleaning up noise. I can't imagine there being a better program. Once the noise is removed you can go back and erase whatever percentage of the luminance noise, color noise, or both that it took out. That way all of the detail of the main subject can be saved. It seems like I did have a hard time removing the noise and keeping all of the stars with this shot. I think I mostly just cleaned up the color noise and left a good percentage of the luminance noise. I'll probably go back to this location in a few months. Hopefully I'll get a good one.

I'm sorry Scott, I'm still pretty new at this and I don't know what you mean by "hot pixels." Educate me, please.

A hot pixel is a white dot that shows up in the picture. Although in this case I'm also counting the red and purple dots as hot pixels because they require just as much from the clone brush. Naturally, better the sensor fewer the hot pixels. If I would try a 14 minute exposure with my Sony f828 I'm sure I would have hundreds of them. Here's a 100% crop with no postprocessing with five hot pixels.

Here is a 100% crop from the original.

here's another one from a shot that was about 10 minutes. This had no noise reduction. I didn't really study the whole picture, but I see 2 hot pixels right off. My rebel is probably about the same as your 20d when it comes to this. My main concern right now is the dust on my sensor. It can't be seen unless I take a picture of the sky during the day. I wouldn't worry too much about those hot pixels, I'm sure almost every camera has them.

Thanks for the samples, Kelly. I do feel a little better now. I think I'll stick to stacking a bunch of short exposures. As you probably already know, smaller the aperture, more the dust on the sensor shows up. I hadn't really shot anything at f10 or smaller for a few months, until a couple of weeks ago shooting some flies. The pictures were covered in spots from dust. Ten minutes after seeing them on the lcd I had 90% of them cleaned off. Here's 30 bucks well spent. If you ever want to see all of the dust that's on your sensor, shoot a white wall with good exposure, a few feet away at f20, focus set to infinity. I have heard that Canon won't warranty a camera if they can tell it's been cleaned by anything but air. Something you might want to consider, but I can only imagine them doing that if the customer caused harm to the sensor from cleaning it.

Scott,

It has come to the point where I have to do something about the dust on my sensor. I looked at the kit you recomended, but to be honest I'm kinda scared to do it. How hard is it to clean your sensor? Everything that I've read says not to do it, but there is no one around here that will clean it. Is it really that bad doing it yourself?

I think people exaggerate how dangerous it is because they don't want to be held liable for replacing your sensor if you by chance scratch it. The sensor is covered with glass and the swab you use to clean it is super soft. It would be the same as rubbing the outside of your lens with it and scratching it...pretty unlikely. Just make sure you use the blower to remove the large debris if by chance there is any. You don't want to rub the sensor with a piece of sand on it...again, pretty unlikely. If you can read instructions, use a blower, wrap a piece of cloth on a stick, put two drops of liquid on a cloth, rub the stick across the sensor, flip the stick, rub the stick across the other side of the sensor, then by george you shouldn't have any problems. Ever since I've been cleaning my sensor(about 3 weeks after I bought my camera), I've always thought how ridiculous the statements are about the dangers of it. Also, if it doesn't get very clean with your first try, don't be afraid to do it again with some firm pressure.

Thanks Scott, by the way, have you ever had any of your images published? I had forgotten how fantastic they were. And thanks to you and your water dropping into a bowl pictures (the smiley one is probably THE best picture I have ever seen....EVER!) I just spent the last hour trying that shot and came up empty. I'll try it again, I don't have all of the flashes that you have. Here's the best one, but it's not that great.

Thanks, Kelly. I've had a few published, but nothing major. I haven't gone out and tried to promote anything. People occasionally see my images on this site and contact me. I tried shooting water drops with my 20D with just one flash, but couldn't ever get enough light. I never had any problem using just one flash with my f828. It does help tremendously to avoid flash hot spots by using multiple flashes shooting from the sides. Something I always catch myself doing when shooting water drops is forgetting to hold the dropper high enough. I usually hold it about 2 feet above the water to obtain a good tall splash. Keep at it. You'll get a good one. I bet I've shot around 10,000 pics at drops and have ended up with 11 that I ended up post-processing and putting up here. It takes a lot of trial and error.