First Star Trail Success

 Life in General, Photography  No Responses »
Feb 282012
 


Canon EOS 1d MkIII with EF16-35 F/2.8L II lens @ 31mm
265x 30s @ F/8 ISO 200

This is my first tar trail that I’m reasonably happy to publish. Taken in the back garden, it’s stacked from 265 shots.

The two key changes made between this and the fail shot were that “Long Exposure Noise Reduction” was switched off, and that I used a timer remote cable, rather than the EOS Utility on my laptop. This seems to start the “next” shot immediately after the shutter has closed on the previous shot.

Now, to go and shoot somewhere a bit more interesting!

 

FAIL! First Star Trail Shot

 Tips and Techniques  2 Responses »
Jan 232012
 

Everyone's got to start somewhere, right?

Canon EOS 1D MkIII with EF16-35 F/2.8L
35mm 75x 30s @ F/4 ISO320

This is my first crack at star trails, and as you can see, it’s not very good. The camera was tethered to my laptop, which was set to fire off 150 thirty second shots, one after the other. What it seems to have done though, is to drop every other frame, hence the rather dotted nature of the trail.

Plus, the amount of light pollution is utterly horrible! And there’s a strange flare just left of centre.

I’m going to have another crack though. I think “Long Exposure Noise Reduction” might be switched on, which could be causing the breaks between shots. I wanted to publish this shot so I can look back on it in time and see improvement (hopefully!).

Onwards and Upwards!