Fridays Focus - Star Trails

JimFox

JimFox

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Staff member
For this Friday post your Star Trail or Streak photographs only. No static star shots please.

Star Trails or streaks harken back to old school photography where it was all we could shoot of stars unless you shot right at twilight. I still remember as a teenager camping out at Joshua Tree in my tent and the last thing I would do before turning in was to set up my camera on Bulb and lock the shutter open, and then setting the alarm on my watch (no smart phones back then) to wake me up 2 hours before sunrise so that I could turn off the exposure. Some times if I was playing around I would leave the shutter open until the first hints of light had kissed the rocks I had in the shot a bit to provide some light to the rocks. It took a lot of trial and error, but finally I had gotten down a system that worked pretty reliably.

Now a days its very easy to do star trails, either with stacking software or just leaving the shutter open long enough. The most amazing camera I had for shooting star trails was my old Nikon D800 which one summer out at the Fire Wave in Valley of Fire during a heat wave I was shooting in 105 degree weather at night and still was able to pull off a 20 min straight exposure with no noise from the sensor over heating.

Okay, enough reminiscing, please add you star trails shots!

Here is mine from White Sands.

_D8C5009_5037_dw.jpg
 
Jameel Hyder

Jameel Hyder

Moderator
Staff member
Interesting images. Don't have any to add as I never found star trails compelling enough to shoot. Perhaps some of the images on the thread might convince me.
 
JimFox

JimFox

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Staff member
Jameel Hyder said:
Interesting images. Don't have any to add as I never found star trails compelling enough to shoot. Perhaps some of the images on the thread might convince me.
Click to expand...
Hey Jameel, I totally understand you. I prefer static sharp stars over star trails usually. But every so often one turns out cool. So while I am out shooting my stars, I always shoot a group of 30 sec stars that I can either use as single images or stack into star trails. Usually, I don't like the stacked look on the them, but you never know, so I still always shoot to give myself the possibility.
 
Jim Dockery

Jim Dockery

Well-Known Member
I'm not a big fan of star streaks, and haven't tried them with digital, but those on this page are quite nice, Jim's lead up being esp. well composed and exposed (was there a full moon that night?).

The one I'm including was taken with film back in the 70s. I set up my Pentax across the canyon from one of my favorite easy access ice climbs in Little Cottonwood Canyon near SLC UT. I often went night climbing after work for a quick mid-week fix. This night turned out to be quite an adventure when I found myself perched on a 75º slab of crystal clear ice which was cracking so much with each blow of my ice axe that I was afraid the whole thing might go with me on it. I normally just ran up this stretch, so hadn't put my harness or the rope on yet (brought along for the final more difficult pitch). My partner was climbing to the side on lower angle better ice and could only watch as I very carefully tip-tapped my way across a traverse, carving small notches I could hook my tools in without a blow. We thought better about finishing the climb so rappelled off after that escapade. My concentration was intense, so I never thought about how the camera was capturing the whole thing but was pretty excited to see this slide when I finally got them back.

GWI-bad-ice-night.jpg

You can easily see the bright sideways streak of my headlamp reflected off the ice as I made that traverse, and of course the stars streaked overhead as this climb that normally went very quickly took hours.
 
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JimFox

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
Jim Dockery said:
I'm not a big fan of star streaks, and haven't tried them with digital, but those on this page are quite nice, Jim's lead up being esp. well composed and exposed (was there a full moon that night?).

The one I'm including was taken with film back in the 70s. I set up my Pentax across the canyon from one of my favorite easy access ice climbs in Little Cottonwood Canyon near SLC UT. I often went night climbing after work for a quick mid-week fix. This night turned out to be quite an adventure when I found myself perched on a 75º slab of crystal clear ice which was cracking so much with each blow of my ice axe that I was afraid the whole thing might go with me on it. I normally just ran up this stretch, so hadn't put my harness or the rope on yet (brought along for the final more difficult pitch). My partner was climbing to the side on lower angle better ice and could only watch as I very carefully tip-tapped my way across a traverse, carving small notches I could hook my tools in without a blow. We thought better about finishing the climb so rappelled off after that escapade. My concentration was intense, so I never thought about how the camera was capturing the whole thing but was pretty excited to see this slide when I finally got them back.

View attachment 5676
You can easily see the bright sideways streak of my headlamp reflected off the ice as I made that traverse, and of course the stars streaked overhead as this climb that normally went very quickly took hours.
Click to expand...
Now that is cool Jim to have then chronicled your climb also in the image. Good work.

Yeah, mine was shot with a pretty bright moon, I don't recall if it was full or not, it was probably half, but I do recall how it was bright enough to essentially turn night into day on those white dunes that reflect light so well.
 
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