My very first star trail !!!

For a long time now I have been intending to have a go at star trails but never seemed to get round to it. I purchased a remote trigger over a year ago with an intervalometer, which I thought would be useful but as it turns out it is not that facility is not necessary as you set your camera to take 30 second exposures on continuous shooting and lock on the remote trigger to keep taking exposures. As I was using my Canon D7 for which I no longer have a dual battery/vertical hold I thought that battery depletion would be a major obstacle with long exposures. However, even with the intense cold of completely clear night sky the battery did not run out. and I was able to take over 250 exposures to be put together with StarStax software.

Unfortunately about 100 of those exposures were useless as I had forgotten to remove the lens cap in my anxiety to prevent condensation on the lens whilst I popped back inside the house. I did suffer from major condensation towards the end of the shoot, which took over two hours but this doesn’t seem to have affected my final image too markedly. I was absolutely delighted this morning when I processed the images to get such a reasonable final image. I would thoroughly recommend the technique to anyone who is wowed by these nocturnal displays.

The other major problem is that I had not tilted my lens up sufficiently to take in the North Star as that would have given a full circle of star trails. As I wanted to include the trees as a base I could not with the D7 have included any more sky except by turning the camera vertically to obtain portrait mode. As I was able to shoot at ISO 100 I think my next shoot will be with my full frame canon 5D camera mark I as this will give me much more sky coverage.

I found the internet technical advice enormously helpful. The video of Tony Northrop ( Here )and the technique guide written by James Vernacotola ( Here )
It looks like its going to be a great night again tonight for star trails with a crystal clear sky but I do not think I could stay awake until the wee small hours for two nights in a row !!

PS The shot was taken in my back garden looking over the Paddock with my "favourite tree" in view