Stacked about 100 shots for this image. No special software, just set each layer to "lighten". You don't have much noise left over after 100 layers except for the hot pixels. I had about 20 more shots but I think I was starting to get bleed from sensor heat or from the viewfinder (you can see the start on the right side halfway down). I'm not sure how to combat that.
Hey Jason - very nice. I love that you caught the statue in the forground and that it's nicely lit to provide contrast to the night sky. And i like the flight paths of aircraft.
When I shoot start trails, I try for fewer, longer exposures. Try about 4 minutes and it will smooth out the star trails.
I experience the same red "thermal" sensor effect on the lower right of my sensor. There is a light which burns when the shutter curtains are open. It's either warmth from that or the writing to the card.
On the star trail jaggies... Keep in mind that any monitor can only display curved lines as a series of pixels. The thinner the line, the more obvious the pixelization. And since star trails are extremely thin lines (maybe just a pixel or two wide), you are going to see some pixelization. With large images, pixelization is softened a bit with anti-aliasing, but the smaller your final image, the less that anti-aliasing will be effective. In other words, you may just be stuck with the jagged lines. (as we all are!)
The lighting on the statue looks like the orange light from common street lighting. You were probably shooting in RAW mode, but my personal experience with night shooting with .jpg is to use tungsten/ incandescent white balance and that will pretty much disappear. plus, it turns the sky a wonderful deep blue.
The haze in the corner may be some fog or a thin cloud illuminated by street lighting. With longer exposures, the sensor picks up on that when your eyes can't even tell that it's there.
One other possibility is that the lens was beginning to get a little fog on it, and the street lighting was being picked up that way.
The shoot and stack idea for star trails is a good one.
That's a very nice shot. I can see both sides of the "crop or not" thoughts.
I'm not positive it was sensor heat because it seems to be worst in a series of 10 or so shots and then improves. I don't think it was fog because I was sitting in the car right there. I'll have to review the photos.
I hardly even think about WB because I always shoot in RAW, but this would be a good time for it because this was just the stacking of the jpgs. When you stack the shots with the lighten blending mode you get to keep the image with the lightest sky (ie. the earliest shot). That gave it the blue versus how black it was by the end.
I'm not positive it was sensor heat because it seems to be worst in a series of 10 or so shots and then improves. I don't think it was fog because I was sitting in the car right there. I'll have to review the photos.
His latitude is reasonably high enough but if this image was taken on November 10th, the skies were relatively quiet that night.
Originally posted by davidw:
Originally posted by DrAchoo:
I'm not positive it was sensor heat because it seems to be worst in a series of 10 or so shots and then improves. I don't think it was fog because I was sitting in the car right there. I'll have to review the photos.
His latitude is reasonably high enough but if this image was taken on November 10th, the skies were relatively quiet that night.
Originally posted by davidw:
Originally posted by DrAchoo:
I'm not positive it was sensor heat because it seems to be worst in a series of 10 or so shots and then improves. I don't think it was fog because I was sitting in the car right there. I'll have to review the photos.
Aurora?
No. Our magnetic latitude needs a kP of at least 8 to see aurora. That's a massive storm.
