Star Trails at Balanced Rock

HFMarshburnJR

I have been a member for about a year now but this is my first post on this forum.

I recently had the opportunity to take my gear on the road through the greater Southwest US. During this journey i had the opportunity to try a lot of things and visit a lot of different places for the first time. One of those things was taking star trail images. I searched all over until I found the foreground element that I wanted to use, and over about a 4 hour period in perfect shooting conditions at Arches National Park I was able to come up with this image. I am very interested in your opinions nd critiques of this work.

HFM

Elaine

Well, I don't know much about this type of photography, but I think this is very cool! I love the colors, your foreground element is nicely positioned and the star trails are great! I think your patience paid off in this shot! Well done!

jamesl

HFMarshburnJR wrote:

I have been a member for about a year now but this is my first post on this forum.

IHFM

Wowserver, this is awesome! Was this shot with a digital camera? How did you get your battery to last that long? I've done a fair amount of star trails with my 10D and 30D + two batteries, and I can't generally get mine to go much longer than 2 to 2 1/2 hours.

This composition is excellent! You certainly had a clear sky. Did you camp out here while you were shooting? I bet it was creepy. Thanks for sharing this!

James

HFMarshburnJR

James and Elaine -

Thanks for the comments. Here is the rest of the story. We did not camp out in the park, but that wasn't an issue since we were staying in nearby Moab, UT. We arrived at our planned shooting location about 30 minutes before a half moon had set. After getting the gear set up, I decided to use the moonlight to illuminate my foreground instead of lightpainting with a flashlight. While the moon was still up, I set my camera to f5.6. After the moon set, all exposurs were taken at f2.8 to maximize the star trails. I used my Nikon D70 with a 14mm F2.8 lens for this image. This final image is a composite of 18 ten minute exposures. I took a single 10 minute black frame exposure to remove the noise and sensor fringing (due to heat from the long exposure).

It was very surreal in the park at that time of the night (between 12:30AM and 4:30AM). We saw 2 or 3 cars on the park road and no other people out there. The night sky was perfectly clear - so clear that we were able to enjoy the sight of the Milky Way with our naked eyes, and we were able to see the international space station transit the skies overhead on two separate orbits.

As for the battery life. I had taken 4 batteries out with me for this shoot, and about 2 hours into the shoot I changed to a second battery just to be safe. I believe that I coul have gotten 2-3 hours out of a single battery for this shoot. I just didn't want to take the chance of losing an image.

It was a magical night. Thanks again for your comments.

HFM

jamesl

HFMarshburnJR wrote:

James and Elaine -
HFM

Thanks for the info and the technical details. I try to shoot my star trails when there is a full moon behind me, as well. It really helps to bring out the details in the surrounding landscape. For mine, I generally shoot 30 second exposures. I like to minimize the noise as much as possible on my Canons. Here are a few I have shot over the past few years:


This was a 3 hour exposure shot with my Canon 10D and 20mm lens. I did like you, and did a shot early to get the color in the sky. I then used my Intervalometer Remote to shoot 3 hours of 30 second exposures. These I combined using Image Stacker.


This was with my 10D again, very similar to the one above. The full moon was behind me, lighting up the cliffs very nicely.

Hope to see more star trails from you soon!

James

EDIT: Linked in pictures correctly this time.

USAIR

First welcome to Dgrin
Second great first post and amazing shot
Good job

Fred

HFMarshburnJR

James and Fred -

Thanks for the kind words.

HFM