Star Struck.......

Well, true to their word, the weather men that is, we did have clear skies on Thursday......

We also had a very bright moon........

I was determined to at least produce a star trail to get some practice. I have included all the photographs I took in the contact sheet below.

After converting them from raw files to Jpgs, using Photoshop, I ended up with 67 shots that I wanted to use.

 

 

Loading these images into Star Stax, I compiled the images into one image.

 



I then produced the following image.

As a first attempt it fulfils my brief of producing a star trail.

There are a number of improvers though that I would like to incorporate to improve my next star trail image.

1.       The foreground is too light; I think that taking the foreground using a different aperture would improve the image. The star trails were caught at maximum aperture f2.8 and a focal length of infinity. I think stepping down to f11 would not only improve the crispness of the foreground. But let in less light, in order for me to light up the foreground with more control using a torch, as the foreground was basically lit using ambient light.

2.       The moon was too bright, allowing the sky to remain rather light at such a large aperture, picking a clear night with little or no moon would improve the image further.

3.       Waiting until a little later at night. Again due to the moon light and dark only just descending there was still too much light in the sky to produce a really dark image.

4.       Line up the camera better so that Polaris was a little more central.

5.       Maybe taking the ISO down a little as well from ISO 500 to 400 or even lower will let a little less light in. The shutter speed I would remain set at 30 seconds.

That said however, the image is quite effective and some individuals actually like the graduated sky. Personally I would have liked it a bit darker.

I guess it’s a waiting game now, I need all the elements to come together to produce an image more akin to what I envisage. No or very little moon and clear skies........

Photography is never easy...........