So yesterday evening the Brighton Photographers Group put on a Star Trails expedition and I found myself along with about nine other photographers, shaking with cold in a deserted field above Birling Gap, watching the skies anxiously for a break in the clouds.
It was the first time I’ve tried Star Trails and having read up a bit beforehand, I was reasonably confident of getting some kind of a result. What I hadn’t reckoned on was the cold!
The photograph here is a composite of six five minute shots.
I set the camera (a Canon EOS 7D) up as follows.
ISO 400
f5.6
Bulb Exposure
EFS 17-55mm Lens
When I got home, I loaded the images into Lightroom and exported them untouched as jpeg. Then I used a program called StarStax to build the stack. Once that was done I brought the picture back into Lightroom and tweaked it slightly to bring out the colours.
Lessons learned?
Go wider!
Wear more clothes!
Take a hot drink!
More seriously, next time I do this I’m going to take a context shot, a tree or building to set off the trails. As a first attempt I’m pleased I got a result, now I can trust the technology I can be a little more creative!
Thanks are definitely due to
Dade Freeman for setting this up
Simon Anderson for demonstrating how it should be done and sharing the techniques he used
Noctography(Mark O’Neill?) for sharing techniques and advice
Brighton Photographers Group for being a friendly and generous bunch of people!
