Saturday, October 6, 2007

DSLR and Star Trails - Part 3

Catch up with Part 1 and Part 2.

I finally got around to doing another test with my Pentax K10D and 16-45/4 lens as I was camping on the Maine coast. I set up the tripod and started the exposure a couple hours after sunset. The stars were out big and bright, there was no sign of the moon, and it's an isolated area but the sky still seemed to be pretty bright.

I locked the shutter open (ISO 100@f/5.6), popped the flash a few times on the foreground rocks, and let the sky do its thing for 1 hour 50 minutes. The battery still held up through the dark frame and I was happy with how the sky came out. Unfortunately for the first time it seems there is some obvious noise coming in, especially in the upper left/center.

2 comments:

Miserere said...

This shot isn't quite as nice as your 2nd one, but still very good! I don't understand where that noise in the upper left/center is coming from. If you hadn't said the Moon was down, I would have thought it was the Moon. I can't imagine a planet would be bright enough to cause it...

Keep at it, Alan!

Anonymous said...

the purplish glow in the top is amp noise, and it is caused by a component in the camera that heats up and that heats up the sensor. thus the amp noise is created.