How not to do star trails

[JamesF]

Got some work to do here, clearly.

Focus is off. I think possibly I disturbed it whilst putting on the dew shield. Unfortunately it isn't possible to manual focus with the lens I was using with the dew shield on. I might have to make up a new one that allows my fat fingers inside more easily.

And then having got the dew shield on, it's flopped down into the top of the frame Even then it's not big enough, as after three hours outside last night there was frozen dew on the end of the lens and I had to throw away about half my subs because they were blurred. You do seem to need a very large dew shield aperture for the kit lens when it's wide open. Even having ditched so many subs there's still a bit of haze in the bottom of the frame.

Oh, and there's the aircraft trails. Who'd have thought Cardiff was that exciting that you'd get two aeroplanes landing there on the same night?

There's some stray illumination from the lights of the cars leaving the cricket club "next door" too, but I don't think that detracts from it too much.

On the positive side, there's a nice mixture of star colours and Polaris is in-shot.

Still, lessons have been learned. There may be a clear sky tomorrow evening for a while so if I can redesign the dew shield I'll try to give it another go.

James

[allcart]

Why are you not using a dew strap James.

I tried dew shields with my wider lenses and found that the wider the lens the wider the cone has to be. It kind of makes it harder to keep straight. Except for sheilding stray light, i found them fairly useless at keeping dew at bay.

[JamesF]

Because I don't have one is the main reason

Perhaps it's time I bit this particular bullet though. I've been pondering on some DIY dew straps for a while.

James

[jimmyjamjoejoe]

That looks almost exactly like my first trails pic. I have all the same problems as you re. the dew and shield...

I think the colours are accentuated by being out of focus, since any others i've done have shown far less colour when focused.

[laser_jock99]

Not a total disaster- by slightly defocussing you can clearly see the star colours. In crisply focused images they are often just white.

Take a look at David Malin's step-defocused Orion image

[Photosbykev]

I've found that a dew strap is almost essential or a sock with the toes cut off wrapped around the lens with some hand warmers inside it lol. The dew strap works better.

[Ewan]

James all you are missing is the UFO & Santa going by :-), seriously though mate it's really frustrating when doing long exposure & them pesky planes keep coming by, i had the same problems with my dew shield using the 18-50mm kit lens.

I also need dew heaters but as i use all my kit (at present) in my back garden using a 12v mains adapter, i am looking at getting this http://www.firstlightoptics.com/dew-prevention/astrozap-dual-channel-dew-heater-controller.html then cutting the cigarette lighter connector off & using a joint box onto another 12v power supply instead.

Hope you give it another shot James, btw what remote settings were you using ?, exp time ? interval timer ?

[JamesF]

Hope you give it another shot James, btw what remote settings were you using ?, exp time ? interval timer ?

I set the camera to be in continuous shoot mode with a 30 second exposure then locked the shutter release button down on my programmable remote so basically it would continue taking 30 second exposures until I released the remote. The final images were combined using the software at www.startrails.de.

I shall give it another go as soon as I've made a dew heater. Unfortunately our recent good weather (cloudy, but no rain) has been replaced by bad weather (cloudy and raining) for the last few days.

James

[Photosbykev]

I set the camera to be in continuous shoot mode with a 30 second exposure then locked the shutter release button down on my programmable remote so basically it would continue taking 30 second exposures until I released the remote. The final images were combined using the software at www.startrails.de.

I shall give it another go as soon as I've made a dew heater. Unfortunately our recent good weather (cloudy, but no rain) has been replaced by bad weather (cloudy and raining) for the last few days.

James

I use Startrails.exe as well but recently I've been playing with StarStaX_0.52_Win which is giving good results

[JamesF]

I use Startrails.exe as well but recently I've been playing with StarStaX_0.52_Win which is giving good results

Aha! http://www.markus-enzweiler.de/StarStaX/StarStaX.html

And it runs on Linux, too. Looks like that's what I shall be using from now on then

James