|
|
|
Bruce Harper
{K:5305} 3/30/2006
|
Hi Hugo, On this occasion there was an almost full moon so I wouldn't have needed the flash, but good point, and no, the 300D doesn't have that option so its the lenscap option for me!
|
|
|
|
Hugo de Wolf
{K:185110} 3/30/2006
|
Hi Bruce, Right. That's what I thought! If you use the Manual mode, the noise pattern wouldn't change, so basically, one 30s. exposure would already create that noise map, and would fit all photos taken with the same camera settings. When I did my 30 minutes exposure with my D2x, I used the in-camera noise reduction; I'm told that is basically the same as the lenscap thing. Don't know if the 300D has that option too. It'll just save you some time...
The ruins would improve the composition, I'd agree. Especially if you use a single, hand held flash to light them up a bit.
Next to Lighten, the Overlay mode also works quite well, I noticed.
Thanks for the explanation and the reply. Intersting!
Cheers,
Hugo
|
|
|
|
|
Bruce Harper
{K:5305} 3/30/2006
|
Cheers Hugo, thanks for your interest. The process I used was to take a 30 sec shot with the lens cap on, then the series of 30 second exposures. I delayed about 30secs to a minute between shots on this occasion, in future I would take them continuously to remove the flashing star effect you mentioned. Thinking back I would have been better off using some of the ruins to frame the star trails as they wouldn't be affected by the wind. The post processing involved using 'blackframe' which is a freebie for doing the dark frame subtraction. This I applied to each of the images and then combined them in PSE II using layers in the lighten mode.
|
|
|
|
|
Hugo de Wolf
{K:185110} 3/28/2006
|
Hi Bruce,
Very creative experiment. I've tried similar star trail shots with my D2x, and I think this is a great way to prevent an unacceptable amount of noise (even if you super impose a black image / noise map, I noticed a severely reduced image quality due to the long exposure - I tried it with 30 minutes to 1 hr)
I guess one of the draw backs in with this method is the somewhat jaggered startrail / a minor flashing star signal. Evidently, this also works best on a wind-still night, but that's obviously not the goal of this experiment.
How did you super impose them? What PS layer mode did you use? Or did you combine them using the HDR feature of CS2? And did you use the same exposure for all shots? A lot of quesitions, but this is definitely something to keep in mind...
Cheers,
Hugo
|
|
|
|
|
Bruce Harper
{K:5305} 3/24/2006
|
Thanks Judi, better PS technique would eliminate the multiple image blur in the trees but I was concentrating on the star trails and didn't think the rest of the composition warranted the time. Still I think the technique does show promise especially if it can reduce the time required for the dark frame image.
|
|
|
|
Judi Liosatos
{K:34047} 3/23/2006
|
Very good technique and use of a non shutter lock ability. Good work.
|
|
|
|
|
Bruce Harper
{K:5305} 3/13/2006
|
Thanks for the comment and the link Susie, quite informative. Actually this method does have an advantage of Dan's in that I only needed a 30 second dark frame image to enable the noise to be removed rather than having to double the time it takes to get the shot.
|
|
|
|
Susie Peek-Swint
{K:7303} 3/12/2006
|
Very creative Bruce ~ I have never tried star trails ~ digital or 35mm ~ but would be fun to try.. here is a good link to view:
http://www.danheller.com/star-trails.html
good luck with the experiments :)
susie
|
|
|
|
Ann Nida
{K:45248} 2/20/2006
|
What an interesting experiment Bruce. Looks like it was pretty successful to me. At first I thought it was an experiment with rain but then I saw the curve and realised it was stars. I would love to play aorund with long exposures like this. Great work.
Thanks again for dropping by my Farewell image.
Cheers for now - Ann :)
|
|
|
|
|
Bruce Harper
{K:5305} 2/18/2006
|
Thanks for the comment kiarang, yes I know the quality wasn't great, not much of a composition either. The focus wasn't too bad on the originals, but the combination of 8 images of the trees certainly makes the result look pretty poor. I could keep just one of the trees and mask them out in the rest and it would probably look much better, but I was really just experimenting with this as a method of getting star trails. Probably just easier to get a remote!
|
|
|
|
Kiarang Alaei
{K:49415} 2/17/2006
|
Interesting and good experince in long exposure.
pitty for quality and focus.
|
|
0 
