Understanding camera settings...

OP
nac

nac

Aspiring Novelist
^
Dotted trail:
I thought of asking someone about that few weeks ago. Guess who crossed my mind first. It was you, I remember you had mentioned this before. So that of askin' you, but you weren't active then. Fortunately, now you're active and you can explain how we can fix that in PP.

I went on with my second attempt in our terrace. I can see lot of light pollution. :)

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... Continuation

So what went wrong?

* There was this street light from about 50m from me on the left (the reason I want the tree off of the frame). After my eyes used with that lighting, I couldn't see where my camera is. So I had to use my torch to look for it. I thought I did a right thing by packing torch light. But see what I did with it. :( So every now and then I used my torch light to look for camera. I guess I used it about half a dozen times in that 82 min shoot.
* Since I had no tripod, I had to use make shift arrangements with stones, pouch... Even after so many tests, trials and all the angle wasn't that good. Why? because when I rig with stones, I can't get the very same angle again (at least that's remotely possible).

When I view the photos in computer, I see the flares. Any guess how in the world I could get lens flare shooting stars. :!: Is it the headlights of the vehicles passed by? No. It's my xxxxxx torch light. It's me... I screwed up. There are some beautiful foreground bokeh :-x in star trail shoot.

*i.imgur.com/SyOB6dt.jpg

*i.imgur.com/rCxIgTQ.jpg
 
sujoyp

sujoyp

Grand Master
oooh no ...soo a torch light spoiled your pic this time....nac I will still say dont try this night trail photography in summer...it may damage your camera ...or at least google it if it can damage P&S or only DSLRs

I will post this question in a photo forum and look for answer :)
 
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OP
nac

nac

Aspiring Novelist
^ It doesn't seems to be, sujoy. Even for DSLR it's fine I guess.

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Six Common Myths About Long Exposures
 
sujoyp

sujoyp

Grand Master
I read that nac....but camera does gets hot...the person there did not consider summer temperature of 40-45 ....I have started a thread for this question...If sensor have no problem then I will also try that today itself ;)
 
sujoyp

sujoyp

Grand Master
[MENTION=125321]nac[/MENTION] I got a nice reply from a prominent forum member

There's a cut off if the sensor temperature goes above a certain limit and the camera will shut down automatically (I've never reached that - but I did do some reading a while back that indicated as such).

I've also seen plenty of star trail shots made in hot climes - so there's more circumstantial evidence showing that it won't be an issue.
Click to expand...
 
OP
nac

nac

Aspiring Novelist
Sujoy, You read how I did it. To avoid such things gather enough info before starting. To know where the stars are/celestial pole etc you can use a simulation software called "Stellarium". I find it useful.

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Prashant, If I rotate, I can get the continuation of the trail. But what about the foreground subject?
 
OP
nac

nac

Aspiring Novelist
With your camera, you could easily get celestial pole or things like nebula and all, I think. And you don't have to spend too much when testing. 30sec or less (note when not shooting for star trail you have to keep your exposure duration ideal or less in respect to focal length you use to avoid noticeable trail) exposure a piece for about 10-15 min @ highest ISO could make it possible. But it's a time consuming process (I mean PP). Deepskystacker is a software I used. Need to read the instruction before trying to process (actually even before shooting) your images with this software.

Note: Just I "think" it's easy and possible with D7000 coz of the sensor size and it's low light capability.
 
OP
nac

nac

Aspiring Novelist
Stellarium I really like this software. You can see where the stars/moon/earth/planet @ a given date/time. It's a simulation and not a heavy one.
Deepskystacker It's a simple software. But processing time is toooooo much. Esp. when you're processing lot of images. You go bed, wake up next morning it will still be processing it :) So don't load hundreds of images to process unless you have a super computer. :)
There were some user tutorial for this software you can find online and also youtube videos.
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Star trail attempt 2 happened yesterday night without any fuss. Went to terrace, tried north. Wasn't good. So put the camera @ pretty much the angle as 1st and went down to watch that "Canon ad" :D Checking once in a while. Battery lasted for 111 minutes (+5 test shots).
 
sujoyp

sujoyp

Grand Master
nac is it required to check all those star details...cant we just keep our camera and shoot directly :p
 
marvelousprashant

marvelousprashant

Cyborg Agent
Shooting close to pole stars will give you curved trails. Shooting away from it will give you straight ones. It depends on how you want your photo to look.

Also it is not really necessary to use full resolution images for star trails. So you can
1. Shoot full resolution raw
2. Edit white balance, colour tones, noise, etc
3. Copy and paste the settings to all images (LR does it pretty quickly)
4. Output all images in lower resolution... maybe 1080p or 4mp
5. Stack them

This way the star trails software will process them faster
 
OP
nac

nac

Aspiring Novelist
For those who don't have a clue to find where the milky way is.

There are many sites explain how, what, where and all. This is one of them...
David Kingham | Ten Steps to Photograph the Milky Way
Many people are surprised to find out the milky way is not visible the entire year, at least not the brightest portion that is easily visible to the eye. The best viewing times are February thru September in the northern hemisphere. To learn more you can use the planetarium software Stellarium to determine exactly when it will be out. Quick tip: Look SE in the spring a couple hours before sunrise, look South in the summer around midnight, and look SW during the fall an hour after sunset.
Click to expand...

If your location is already there in the stellarium pick it, else punch in your lat/long coordinates and look at what time it's there in the sky. When I was trying, I preferred when it's at highest point (why? because, there will be less light pollution than the horizon level). In the following sample picture, I picked Delhi and it peaks around 8pm @ 30 deg on south. On a clear sky night, point your camera on south and tilt it 30 deg or based on where you want to frame your milky way and click.

*i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/tkphotos1/delhi%20milkyway_zpslbbn2htp.png
 
kool

kool

Cyborg Agent
[MENTION=39722]sujoyp[/MENTION] [MENTION=125321]nac[/MENTION] as per ur recommendations I bought SX150 3 years ago. after 1 year I stopped using it because of slow performance , and slow flash charging etc. Now I don't get time to use this camera.

So my siblings are using it for bday, marriage pics. I just need help here. Just tell me the best settings for taking selfie and low light photography. Can I get desired result like iPhone selfie ?

I never get vibrant color image. Always get kinda dull output in auto or easy settings. I am using YU YUPHORIA mobile which gives better image.
 
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