Star Trails at Skyline

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
Most everyone knows I love staying up at night to shoot the Milky Way and the stars. Once in a while I will play around after shooting the Milky Way and shoot some star trails too. This is more of a fun shot, as you never quite know what you will get.

This is a 45min single exposure. Most often today Star trails are stacked from multiple shorter exposure photos, but I wanted to play around and see just how long I could shoot without getting a bunch of noise from the sensor overheating. Ben might know better, but I think the temps were still in the low 80's at night, but whatever it was, it certainly wasn't cold at night. So shooting a 45 min long exposure would definitely be a test for the Nikon D850.

Doing a quick review after I shot, it all looked pretty clean. I was shooting at ISO 200 for this, and at f1.8. But when I got home and I looked at it at 100% on my monitor I found that the ground layer was just peppered with random white dots that had to have been from the sensor overheating. So the ground layer was really unusable, and for a few days I just put this to the side. Then today I decided to give it a try and see if there was something I could do to get rid of all of that sensor noise. And I am glad to say I did! I need to write up a little tutorial on it, but it was really super easy. And then I was super glad. :)

So now on this, there are 4 or 5 faint trails going through this from airplanes. Since this is just a for fun photo at this point, I decided not to tackle that yet. If I get serious about it I will go clean those up.

All comments are welcome,

Jim

DSC_9761_dw.jpg
 

AlanLichty

Moderator
You had low 80's at night already? That's unusually warm for June in that area. How much of your battery got consumed by this exposure?

Interesting result - not a shot I would go out of my way to take but it is certainly interesting to look at.
 

Ben Egbert

Forum Helper
Staff member
Good job here Jim. Ya got to do something at night besides sleep:p

This came out well and I am looking forward to your tutorial.
 

Bob

Well-Known Member
Jim,
This is very interesting I look forward to your tutorial on how you removed the noise. I am surprised you did not drain the battery. Do you really need to use the full 45 minutes? I am going to try this myself next time I am in a remote area of the grand canyon.
Bob
 

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
You had low 80's at night already? That's unusually warm for June in that area. How much of your battery got consumed by this exposure?

Interesting result - not a shot I would go out of my way to take but it is certainly interesting to look at.
Thanks Alan! Yep, it was pretty warm out there already.

The battery was fine, one thing with Nikons is the battery just lasts forever it feels like.

Yeah, I don't go out of my way to shoot star trails, but maybe because back in the old days with film, star trails were all we could do so it's always in the back of my mind. So as I am shooting with Ben and mapping things out for the night, I also will look to the north from where we are shooting to see if the foreground is conducive to compliment shooting with the star trails. And so I saw this crack and how it pointed north and thought it would be cool.
 

Sunny Sra

Well-Known Member
I likey! may have to try this again. the last time i did star trails were when we were shooting up in BristleCone
 

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
I likey! may have to try this again. the last time i did star trails were when we were shooting up in BristleCone
Thanks! Yeah, that’s been a while since we shot there.

I have a few other recent star trail shots that I need to process.
 

Todd H

Well-Known Member
Most everyone knows I love staying up at night to shoot the Milky Way and the stars. Once in a while I will play around after shooting the Milky Way and shoot some star trails too. This is more of a fun shot, as you never quite know what you will get.

This is a 45min single exposure. Most often today Star trails are stacked from multiple shorter exposure photos, but I wanted to play around and see just how long I could shoot without getting a bunch of noise from the sensor overheating. Ben might know better, but I think the temps were still in the low 80's at night, but whatever it was, it certainly wasn't cold at night. So shooting a 45 min long exposure would definitely be a test for the Nikon D850.

Doing a quick review after I shot, it all looked pretty clean. I was shooting at ISO 200 for this, and at f1.8. But when I got home and I looked at it at 100% on my monitor I found that the ground layer was just peppered with random white dots that had to have been from the sensor overheating. So the ground layer was really unusable, and for a few days I just put this to the side. Then today I decided to give it a try and see if there was something I could do to get rid of all of that sensor noise. And I am glad to say I did! I need to write up a little tutorial on it, but it was really super easy. And then I was super glad. :)

So now on this, there are 4 or 5 faint trails going through this from airplanes. Since this is just a for fun photo at this point, I decided not to tackle that yet. If I get serious about it I will go clean those up.

All comments are welcome,

Jim

View attachment 19011
Dude, that is awesome! 45 minutes??? Dang, that’s awesome. Beautiful shot.
 

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
Dude, that is awesome! 45 minutes??? Dang, that’s awesome. Beautiful shot.
Thanks so much Todd!

Yeah I know 45 mins is a bit crazy but I wanted to push the D850 and see how far I could go. I have already done 25 min long exposures when no sensor heat noise. Now as I wrote I did get sensor heated noise, but was able to easily remove it.
 
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