Star Trails and lightpainting - Altona Foreshore Reserve, Victoria

Personally I am not a huge fan of star trails shots chavezshutter, but I do kinda like this one. It is growing on me more every time I see it.
I really like the foreground and the lighting is great, a little bright to the bottom left of the main tree but the branches look fantastic. I like the darker trees further away also as they add depth.
Nicely done

Very nice one. I hope you had a good book to read during the time it took for taking about 518 photos. What was that, about 2hours and 15 minutes? And how long does something like that take to finish on the computer?

Andy Smith said:

Personally I am not a huge fan of star trails shots chavezshutter, but I do kinda like this one. It is growing on me more every time I see it.
I really like the foreground and the lighting is great, a little bright to the bottom left of the main tree but the branches look fantastic. I like the darker trees further away also as they add depth.
Nicely done

Click to expand...

Thanks Andy Smith! Most star trial shots have white, overblown star trials which I don't think are too attractive. It is a common mistake to use the same settings for regular astrophotography ( ie, max open aparture, high ISO) in star trails and this robs the final image of colours in the stars as well as they make a messy image from capturing too many stars which spin in the final image and become overcluttered.

One of the big advantages of star trials is that they are not as sensitive to light pollution and a lens with a more modest aparture like f4 can be used successfully to make a star trail, you would struggle a bit doing regular astro with an f/4. You can also drop your ISO quite sharpy in star trails on comparison to regular astrophotography. I plan to do at least a 6 hour trail leading to just before sunrise for my next star trail, this should get even more colour into the star trail. Take a look at Lincoln Harris on IG to see how its really done, amazing colours. Thanks for your comments 🙏

TMG1961 said:

Very nice one. I hope you had a good book to read during the time it took for taking about 518 photos. What was that, about 2hours and 15 minutes? And how long does something like that take to finish on the computer?

Click to expand...

I think it took over 3 hours to shoot it all, some cloud rolled over for a little while and most of those frames did not make to the final image. I had a small tent with me which I setup while I waited. This photo took a long time to edit, months of editing mainly because of aligment issues with the 18 lightpainted frames. Something I didnt take into account was that trees sway in the wind, sturdier foregrounds are a lot easier to do this technique on. The actual processing of the 500 frames into a star trail doesnt take too long at all. Sequator is pretty impressive in that regard, its pretty damn fast. Which is why I hope to get some our members into it with my guide.

Chavezshutter said:

I think it took over 3 hours to shoot it all, some cloud rolled over for a little while and most of those frames did not make to the final image. I had a small tent with me which I setup while I waited. This photo took a long time to edit, months of editing mainly because of aligment issues with the 18 lightpainted frames. Something I didnt take into account was that trees sway in the wind, sturdier foregrounds are a lot easier to do this technique on. The actual processing of the 500 frames into a star trail doesnt take too long at all. Sequator is pretty impressive in that regard, its pretty damn fast. Which is why I hope to get some our members into it with my guide.

Click to expand...

I will have a look into it later today.