Star Trails

This was my first attempt at photographing star trails at night. I must admit that the conditions were not perfect but for a test run I am quite pleased with the outcome. You notice that the horizon is very bright considering that it is approximately 10:30 at night. The reason for this is because the moon was very bright this evening. Optimal conditions would warrant a moonless night or also known as a new moon. Anything bigger than a half moon will bring a lot of unwarranted moon light into the picture causing it to be brighter that it actually is. This was approximately a 1 hour and 30 minute shoot taking approximately 30 photographs at 3 minute exposures. These setting are always subject to change and one should experiment with their own settings to find the right exposure. I used my Canon 5D Mk II and a 17-40 mm lense at 4.0 Av. My ISO was set at 400 and the white balance was set for tungsten. That was about it with the exception of post processing the images. Since I had about 30 images it is necessary to stack all the images together and flatten them to get a single photo. This was accomplished by using a program that is Mac friendly called Helicon Focus ( www.heliconsoft.com ). The program is not free it is shareware but I found that it is far easier to use it versus try to layer all the images in Photoshop and process them there. Check back for I will heading out for some other locations to try some other ideas on shooting star trails. If you have any questions just drop me a e-mail and I'll get back with you. Thanks for stopping by.... Harry