Red Rock Canyon in Vegas - first try

So I was bored tonight and figured I'd drive out to where I thought it would be dark and make an attempt at these kinds of photos. I learned some valuable lessons and hope to revisit taking these types of photos soon.

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Very nice, the best time to do these shots is when the moon is behind you illuminating your landscape but not overly bright so you still get plenty of stars. If you do a lot of exposures to get more stars to show up, just use photoshop to only paint in 1 frame for the foreground so it doesn't show up as a big blur.

I started reading more last night but I'm not sure I understand the multiple exposures thing? If I'm taking multiple exposures won't the stars have moved and when I combine the exposures won't it appear as just a duplicated mass of the same stars, just in a different position? Don't answer that... I'm going to do more reading today with lots of notes and maybe go attempt the shot again.

I was only about 200 yards off the road and there were plenty of cars that would drive by and light up the landscape at times as they turned through a curve. Irritating to say the least but maybe it helped a little?

Let's not mention the wind...ohhhhh the wind.... but I'm glad I bought a solid tripod last year.

Good one! DeepSkyStackeris a good tool for that, you can read through a tutorial for it to get an idea of stacking.

You stack it based on the stars, that way they don't move, and it makes the signal/noise ratio better, so you have less noise in the image and can stretch the signal you have even more. Then your blur of a landscape will be painted over in photoshop using a single exposure's foreground to make it look normal again.

Regardless of the quality based solely on astrophotography, I really like the image. In fact I do believe you managed to capture a "fallen" star as well.

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I guess that's where I needed to do it different. I should have just taken timed exposures of just the stars....then taken one of the scene...then edited it to look like a landscape pic?

Hmmmm...

I have that program now. I guess I'll have to go back out and take a few frames and see what happens. Thanks again.

dan_bgblue wrote in post #10151000
Regardless of the quality based solely on astrophotography, I really like the image. In fact I do believe you managed to capture a "fallen" star as well.

Haha... no, those were stragglers in the park that were driving inside. Needless to say I was frustrated when a few cars at different times kept getting in the picture.

Next time I'm going to go to a different location to minimize the potential for late departures out of there.

VegasBoz wrote in post #10151944
Haha... no, those were stragglers in the park that were driving inside. Needless to say I was frustrated when a few cars at different times kept getting in the picture.

Next time I'm going to go to a different location to minimize the potential for late departures out of there.

That's another reason for stacking - if you're stacking lots of sky but just using one foreground you can pick a clean one
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