Abandoned Quarry with startrails

[pvaz]

Yesterday I tried to make some startrails shots. I went to an abandoned quarry and did a few of experiments.

This is the one I liked the most:

[Daniel-K]

very nice shot id love to do this hopefully when i get a lens for my 500d

[sanmatt]

Very nice

[Aoraki]

I aggree with the above, very nice indeed.

[pvaz]

Thanks! Still trying to get the hang of this but I'm happy with the results. Some pictures I saw online show a bit of star color but the only color I had was orange and I lost it when I removed the orange saturation to get rid of some light pollution.

[Nova]

Thats very nice indeed. Is there a primer anywhere on how to do this?

[pvaz]

I did it mostly by trial and error.

You need a DSLR with bulb mode, a tripod, an external shutter release with timer and a bit of patience.

Just put the camera on tripod. Turn off autofocus, switch live view on, zoom on a star and manual focus on it (put the lens on the widest aperture when doing this). Then stop the lens down to f/11 or so, switch to bulb mode, set the timer to about 25min and shoot. A low ISO is best since the long shutter time will get enough light.

For the foreground it depends if it's illuminated or not. This one was not so I used a tecnich called light painting. It's as simple as sweeping the foregrouund area with a flash light while the shutter is open. On this one I forgot the flash light at home so I used my cellphone's led.

[twotter]

Blimey, what a great pic

It reminds me of sci-fi films when a starship is about to jump into hyperspace!

[Chris]

Fab image! inspired me to give star trails another go