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As it was a clear evening I shot off over to Fox House to shoot my first proper star trail. I had two practice runs over the last week in the garden, but decided I needed a sodium free zone for my first real star trail.
This was shot on the Olympus EP2 with the 14-42mm lens and the Fisheye converter attached.
It's 66 photos, each 60 seconds long, stacked using a Photoshop Action.
I plan to shoot lots of star trails over the winter.
| Brand: | Olympus |
| Camera: | Olympus Pen E-P2  Check out Olympus Image Space! |
| Lens: | Olympus 14-42mm II (FF equiv: 28-84mm) |
| Recording media: | JPEG (digital) |
| Title: | Star trail |
| Username: | 
Pete |
| Uploaded: | 19 Oct 2011 - 11:36 PM |
| Tags: | Fox house, Landscape / travel, Night sky, Star trail, Trees |
| VS Mode Rating |
Unrated These stats show the percentage of wins and the rating score that your photo has achieved. You can go to the VS Mode by clicking on this icon. Signup to e2Signup to e2 to see which photo this has won or lost against in the vs mode |
| Votes: | 58 |
Comments
great shot,ive wanted to try this as well,what film speed rating did you use?
Wow! Your own personal firework display! Very well done Pete, this is beautiful!
Carol
Quote: Thanks
ISO 100
It seems 20- 30seconds is good for town stars as the light pollution tends to brighten things up. But out jn the wild you need 60seconds. I shoot at f/4 although these are at f/3.8.
In my experience, if you're out in the sticks, away from light pollution, a stack of 30sec exposures is ideal.
You have to factor in the position and light from the moon and atmospheric conditions also.
I favour ISO200, f4 - f5.6.... Also try lighting the foreground during either the first or last exposure.
Yes your ISO200 at 30sec is same as my ISO100 at 60sec. So we're singing off the same hymn sheet. just my way you don't have to shoot and stack so many photos and there's slightly less noise
I like the idea of lighting the subject - I did take a small torch but the subject was too far away to light well.
What are you using to stack, Pete? You mentioned Photoshop...is that CS5? Or an earlier version?
Did you reduce opacity of any of the 66 layers...or keep them all at 100%? My guess would be 100% for all to get adequate trails.
I also did a star-trail trial (try saying that after five glasses of wine! 
) on my recent Cornish trip, which will make an appearance at some point - not as accomplished as this is, alas!
Bill
I used CS5 but any version that allows actions and batch conversion will work. There's a star trail action you can download which does the merges automatically. I was playing around manually last week and found the lighten mode keeps all the data from other areas the same (at 100) and allows the star to shine through on each layer
I disagree Pete, cus the stars are moving... but hey, there is no rule book
Looking forward to more of these if they are all as good as this.
David
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