Heavenly bodies - photos of star trails in the California desert

[UstadKhanAli]

 

I thought you might be using a mount to track. In the days of film you could never get pinpoint star images of any depth without tracking. Todays cameras can capture so much more starlight in a much shorter exposure. This was with film and a 20 min exposure obviously tracked:

 

 

Very cool images.

 

You're right, nowadays, with increased noise sensitivity and decrease in noise, you can get away with a short exposure but still get the stars to expose. In the photos above that are star images, I used a 30-second exposure at ISO 800 and f/2.8, which was enough. Now, if you were to blow up the photos a little bit, you can still see a very very slight star trail. One of the things about wide angle lens - and you undoubtedly know all this, but just for the sake of discussion - is that you can get away with a longer exposure than if you are using, say, a telephoto, to use the other extreme. The telephoto would show the star trails more readily. So for wide angle, I can get away with a 30-second exposure. If I am using something that is not a wide angle, I might have to go for a shorter exposure of 20 seconds or less, which shows less trails and appears more as a sharp pinpoint of light.

 

The shots that I can do in low light, I never would have dreamed possible with my old film camera, or even quite frankly five or six years ago with what I had then. And I still have relatively modest equipment compared to what a lot of people use, but I'm not complaining about that....it's good enough that if I come up with a bad shot, it's on me, not my camera or lens.

[Geoff Grace]

Sorry to be late to the thread. Great photos as always, Ken!

 

:phil: :phil: :phil:

 

Best,

 

Geoff

[UstadKhanAli]

Thanks, mang!

[AxiomVanguard]

Thanks for sharing your photos Ken. Very, very nice.:thu:

[UstadKhanAli]

Thanks!!!!

 

Will have some more photos in early August!