Startrail - What have I done wrong?
Discussion
As the title says really. Went out to do some star trails last night after grasping the understanding of a lot of exposures merged with the startrail software creat awesome pics, but why do my start (i only used 5 pictures here) go in a straight horizontal line and not in a circular fashion as I have seen?
Think it's simply that the camera is pointing in the wrong direction! Star trails will show best when the camera is pointed at the celestial pole (ie just of the pole star in the Northern Hemisphere). Using a wide angle lens, pointed North ish will show them best. If you imagine a sphere rotating on an axis, you've pointed the lens at 90 deg to the axis of rotation, where the trails are parallel to the axis of the lens.
Face north for circular star trails. The other thing that affects the appearance of your trails is focal length - looks like you weren't that wide angle and longer lenses have the appearance of straightening the trails because effectively you're zooming in on a crop of the wide angle frame.
ESE or WSW will give you diagonal star trails which curve in the corners. Dead south gives a frown effect
As an aside, looks like your trails skipped a little and you were using uneven exposure lengths. I try to pick a single exposure length so the ambient light remains the same throughout the stack. Personally I like the direction you've composed this for the foreground lighting but if you'd had the moon behind you you'd have been able to expose a stop wider/ longer without losing the star trails to the glow from the moon, so they'd have appeared brighter against the sky.
ESE or WSW will give you diagonal star trails which curve in the corners. Dead south gives a frown effect
As an aside, looks like your trails skipped a little and you were using uneven exposure lengths. I try to pick a single exposure length so the ambient light remains the same throughout the stack. Personally I like the direction you've composed this for the foreground lighting but if you'd had the moon behind you you'd have been able to expose a stop wider/ longer without losing the star trails to the glow from the moon, so they'd have appeared brighter against the sky.
With so much light pollution around here I thought I'd try the planes coming into land instead. unfortunately the speed they come in does give the dashed line approach Camera now back on tripod having attempt number 2 with a longer shutter speed - fingers crossed for a better outcome
plane trails by CVP1, on Flickr
Camera now back on tripod having attempt number 2 with a longer shutter speed - fingers crossed for a better outcomeplane trails by CVP1, on Flickr
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