Analogue Star Trails

[Nightfly]

A few star trail images from last month. Both were taken in the traditional photographic means, film. Each was a 60 minute exposure on Kodak Gold 100. A Pentax Spotmatic II with 35mm f/3.5 @ f/5.6 for the first image and a 50mm f/1.4 @ f/4.8 for the second image. The second image was started near the end of evening twilight. The neagtives were scanned on an Epson V600 scanner. Basic level adjustment in Photoshop. A few nuisance aircraft, but I'm pleased with how the film recorded.

Shot from my dark sky home in Maine.

Kodak Gold 100 Test: Star Trail 2 by Nightfly Photography, on Flickr

Kodak Gold 100 Test: Star Trail 1 by Nightfly Photography, on Flickr

[NGC 1502]

Hi Jim, very nice !! I'm a visual only observer, but I used to do

star trails on film some years back. I could trip the shutter, and

leave it for a half hour while I observed. Will have to try it again

when I'm on holiday (sorry, vacation ) this Autumn (sorry, I

mean Fall ) when I'm under a good sky.

Just off to dust off my old Pentax, very similar to yours.

Best regards, Ed.

[laser_jock99]

Nice pics- good to see some people using 'proper' film still!

[Photosbykev]

with the light pollution in the UK using single long exposures is almost impossible. It's nice to see there are still some places where the LP is low enough to use the old school technique with film.

[Beyond_Vision]

Really like the first image with the sharply focused sillouette of the trees

Regards

Kevin

[AndyH]

Superb.

Andy.

[Nightfly]

Thank you all for the kind remarks. These were done impromptu on two seperate evenings in my front yard. I've been testing different emulsions and this was an easy way to determine some basic information on them.

As photosbykev mentioned, you might not want to try film in light polluted skies.

NGC 1502: Dig out that old Pentax and show these blokes what can be done without stacking! One shot star trails, that's the stuff of zealots.

Thanks again for the remarks.

Jim