star trail

[Ruckus99ss]

I have tried numerous times and can not get them to come out right. I did a 18 min exposure and had it focused on a cactus with the stars in the background. I'm at work so can not post the attempt but will when I get home. How are you guys editing them with cs3?

[cedew]

What exactly didn't work? Foreground not lit up enough? A lot of these guys "paint" the foreground with a light.

[Ruckus99ss]

just the streaks look like crap. I used a remote, camera on tripod, and sigma 10-20 lens. Its set at iso 100. Also its very purple and as i get rid of the purple it seems like the stars just disappear

[Adrena1in]

If you're focussed on something pretty close then the stars are going to be very out of focus I'm guessing. You'll only really capture the brightest of the stars. Try and focus on the stars instead. Also, ISO100 isn't going to capture much either, so try ISO800 or maybe even ISO1600 if it's cold out.

You might also want to look at stacking multiple images. At a really dark site once I managed to go to 12 minutes, and stacked two such images together in Photoshop, by layering them and setting them to 50% transparancy. Got nice trails, but a lot of hot pixels and some sky-glow. At my usual site I tend to shoot for only 30 to 60 seconds, and then use something like startrails.de to stack them all together into a composite star trails image. Taking shorter exposures is going to reduce the noise and sky-glow, but with the ISO high and aperture wide open you'll capture lots of stars.

[Ruckus99ss]

here is my poor attempt...
http://ruckus.smugmug.com/photos/480177448_UYCb7-L.jpg

[Adrena1in]

Crikey, if you think that's poor then I can't wait to see one you think is good! That's excellent!! I love the way you've got such a wide angle that the stars at the bottom left are creating different arc-shapes to the stars towards the top right. Not seen that in a star trails photo before. I also like the length of your trails. Enough to give the idea of the movement, but not so much that you can't recognise the constellations...good old Orion, right smack in the middle!

I'm impressed.

[aresauburn™]

This is actually a great shot! I wish there were cacti around here..

[dankbud42o]

here is my poor attempt...
http://ruckus.smugmug.com/photos/480177448_UYCb7-L.jpg


i think it looks pretty sweet man..i cant wait to start trying this stuff