Fisheye star trail fun

pyry

Here's a trail shot I did a couple of nights back, 2 hours 20 minutes worth of exposures (68 x 121 sec + 3 second gaps)




And the light display version



As a curiousity, if you stack a trail set the 'wrong way around', the result is a mildly disturbing starless sky - with a milkyway shaped glow.




Tell me what you think!

DJ-S1

Cool! The last one is neat too, the only star still there is Polaris. Nice work -

craig_d

Very cool, especially the last one. Sort of like the trick of taking several exposures of some public place and then editing them together to remove all the people.

I was surprised at first to see Polaris so high in the sky, but then I noticed your .fi email address...

UmmmHowsThat

Starry, starry night...duh duh duh duh dunt dunt dunt

pyry

DJ-S1 wrote:

Cool! The last one is neat too, the only star still there is Polaris. Nice work -

There are faint traces all over the place, but Polaris is indeed the only one standing out at all.

Thanks!

craig_d wrote:

Very cool, especially the last one. Sort of like the trick of taking several exposures of some public place and then editing them together to remove all the people.

I was surprised at first to see Polaris so high in the sky, but then I noticed your .fi email address...

The very same technique

I used that last one as a background I could tone separately from the stars for the current round of DSS.

Polaris looks lower in the fish-eye than it actually is. It's sitting at 60 degrees up here.

Thanks for the comment!

UmmmHowsThat wrote:

Starry, starry night...duh duh duh duh dunt dunt dunt

Vincent, by Don MacLean?

DaddyO

Excellent job. Totally well done.

BradfordBenn

Really Cool.

pyry

DaddyO wrote:

Excellent job. Totally well done.

BradfordBenn wrote:

Really Cool.

Thank you both very much

rcof

Nice star trails. What software did you use to merge the photos? Was alignment done manually or by the program?

pyry

rcof wrote:

Nice star trails. What software did you use to merge the photos? Was alignment done manually or by the program?

Thanks for the compliment

I shot a long series of exposures and stacked them in Photoshop CS3. I simply imported all images from Lightroom as layers and turned all blending modes to Lighten. This effectively makes a maximum value stack.

It's also possible to make the layers into a smart object and select Maximum as the stacking method. However this way it's not possible to use individual masks (the big red light in the middle of the frame was masked out, this way there are gaps the trail only in that region).

I used a decent, fixed tripod so no alignment necessary.

rcof

Thanks for the reply. I am still a novice at using the software. Star trails were so much simpler back in the film days. Open shutter, wait awhile, close shutter, develop and print. I now plan to give digital a try.

pyry

rcof wrote:

Thanks for the reply. I am still a novice at using the software. Star trails were so much simpler back in the film days. Open shutter, wait awhile, close shutter, develop and print. I now plan to give digital a try.

Yeah, digital trades complexity for flexibility.

Hang on, there's a star trail thread here somewhere which should be a good read...

Found it .

Nikolai

Very neat! Thank you for sharing!

pyry

Nikolai wrote:

Very neat! Thank you for sharing!

Thank you Nik

Maestro

Very creative and cooooool!

Dogdots

WOW -- I really like these

pyry

Maestro wrote:

Very creative and cooooool!

Dogdots wrote:

WOW -- I really like these

Thank you very much Stephen and Mary