star photography - where to go

[Fordo]

I'm doing quite a bit of time lapse lately with my d40 and my laptop- getting some stunning pieces of video.

I'm desperate to do some time lapse of the stars- I want the pole star in the middle of frame, and then leave the time lapse running all night, and the end result, should be all the other stars rotating around the pole star. (as the earth rotates)

The question is, where in the uk (im in south east) could i travel to, to get a really clear sky with minimal might pollution, and minimal 'getting mugged' potential. (Also would be great to have something like a huge satellite dish in the foreground)

Anyone have any ideas where i could go?

I know id need to wait for a time when the moon is least visible, to make sure the stars look as bright as possible.

[Goldeeno]

No idea for the star bit, but i live in a small village, find a quite field down a quite lane or as a farmer if he doesnt mind someone standing in his field overnight , explain to him what your doing and say you wont harm his sheep , trouble would be city light pollution, you can see it for miles!

[anonymous-user]

Probably the "darkest" places in the UK are mid Wales or the North of Scotland due to their relative distances from major cities.

If you want some big dishes then try Goonhilly in Cornwall, which should be reasonably "dark" I imagine.

[AndWhy]

Try The Lunar Times for moon phase info. Use it a lot to plan night shooting. You'd want to be away from any flight paths too. If you're going rural to avoid light polution you might need to settle for rural props rather than big dishes. Or if you find such, be prepared to be interrogated re your intentions

ETA I don't need to go too far out of the city to find places with suitable ambient light and opportunities for star tails

Edited by AndWhy on Tuesday 3rd June 00:41

[GetCarter]

No light pollution here at all (North West Scotland). However, we get twice as much cloud as London per year (though not for the past two months!) April & May are the clearest months, however by this time of year it doesn't get dark till about 1.30 - July & August are nearly always crap (and you get eaten by midges).

If I were in your position, I'd wait for a high pressure to settle over the Highlands between April and Whitsun and fly drive. (It's a long drive - from London, Glasgow isn't even half way).

[Dogsey]

Try heading to a quiet area on the coast, very little light pollution from the sea.

[VxDuncan]

Think it's worth highlighting the earlier point - getting away from urban light pollution is useless if the phase of the moon is wrong. Light from the moon can be way stronger than urban light pollution and being white, harder to filter.

Go around the new moon, but take a red light torch to see around without ruining your night vision.

[ganglandboss]

Fordo, can I ask how you go about doing time lapse with a laptop?

I bought a D60 yesterday so I'm guessing a lot of the features will be similar.

I am guessing the laptop is controlling the camera in some way, telling it to photograph at preset intervals? If so is this specialist software?

Cheers,

Dave

[GetCarter]

Most webcam software will let you do this. Lots of free stuff out there if you google.

[Fordo]

ganglandboss said:

Fordo, can I ask how you go about doing time lapse with a laptop?

I bought a D60 yesterday so I'm guessing a lot of the features will be similar.

I am guessing the laptop is controlling the camera in some way, telling it to photograph at preset intervals? If so is this specialist software?

Cheers,

Dave

Nikon make a software package called camera control pro. Version 2 is just out (Although i use version 1). 30 day demo here:

mac version http://support.nikontech.com/cgi-bin/nikonusa.cfg/...

windows version: http://support.nikontech.com/cgi-bin/nikonusa.cfg/...


It allows you to control every setting of the camera from the laptop, and has a time lapse setting. Pictures are downloaded straight o laptop, so you can have time lapse for as long as your battery lasts, or until your hard drive is full!

(note, only works with nikon cameras, and you might have to update the software so it can download the latest module for your camera)

I found version 1 a bit buggy, but prob because i was using the mac version. still got some excellent result though.

Hope you get some good stuff with it. what are you thinking of shooting with time lapse?

[Fordo]

AndWhy said:

Try The Lunar Times for moon phase info. Use it a lot to plan night shooting. You'd want to be away from any flight paths too. If you're going rural to avoid light polution you might need to settle for rural props rather than big dishes. Or if you find such, be prepared to be interrogated re your intentions

ETA I don't need to go too far out of the city to find places with suitable ambient light and opportunities for star tails

Edited by AndWhy on Tuesday 3rd June 00:41

nice site- thanks for that

[ganglandboss]

Fordo said:

ganglandboss said:

Fordo, can I ask how you go about doing time lapse with a laptop?

I bought a D60 yesterday so I'm guessing a lot of the features will be similar.

I am guessing the laptop is controlling the camera in some way, telling it to photograph at preset intervals? If so is this specialist software?

Cheers,

Dave

Nikon make a software package called camera control pro. Version 2 is just out (Although i use version 1). 30 day demo here:

mac version http://support.nikontech.com/cgi-bin/nikonusa.cfg/...

windows version: http://support.nikontech.com/cgi-bin/nikonusa.cfg/...


It allows you to control every setting of the camera from the laptop, and has a time lapse setting. Pictures are downloaded straight o laptop, so you can have time lapse for as long as your battery lasts, or until your hard drive is full!

(note, only works with nikon cameras, and you might have to update the software so it can download the latest module for your camera)

I found version 1 a bit buggy, but prob because i was using the mac version. still got some excellent result though.

Hope you get some good stuff with it. what are you thinking of shooting with time lapse?

Cheers for that!

I don't really know what I'm going to shoot to be honest. It's my first SLR and I am a complete novice. I have been watching the photography forum for ideas and tips and this sounds interesting.

I might set up a time lapse on my cat to see if it actually moves from it's chair!

Does the software you have mentioned allow you to convert the time lapse images to a video sequence?

[Fordo]

ganglandboss said:

Does the software you have mentioned allow you to convert the time lapse images to a video sequence?

unfortunately no- I use Apple's motion, or adobe's after effects.

I'm sure theres some free software somewhere that will do the job though.

(or if you get stuck, and if you can get the image to me on cd or something, id convert them into whatever video format you need)

[RameshUK]

Hi Everyone,

When you take pictures of star trails you have two options.


a) You can either set the camera in BULB mode and using a remote take one very long exposure 5mins to 45 mins or more.

or

b) Take many exposures say 30s and stack or overlap the images using software

http://ggrillot.free.fr/astro/starmaxEng.html

This is better as you get less light pollution in the images.
Make sure you've switched noise reduction off.
Also you can use a dark frame to subtract from the images (useful for hot spots)

Don't forget to make sure you're batteries are fully charged and ideally use a power supply.

Noise reduction is switched off as the delay it introduces causes gaps to appear between the trails.

Enjoy !

[VxDuncan]

RameshUK said:

Hi Everyone,

When you take pictures of star trails you have two options.


a) You can either set the camera in BULB mode and using a remote take one very long exposure 5mins to 45 mins or more.

or

b) Take many exposures say 30s and stack or overlap the images using software

http://ggrillot.free.fr/astro/starmaxEng.html

This is better as you get less light pollution in the images.
Make sure you've switched noise reduction off.
Also you can use a dark frame to subtract from the images (useful for hot spots)

Don't forget to make sure you're batteries are fully charged and ideally use a power supply.

Noise reduction is switched off as the delay it introduces causes gaps to appear between the trails.

Enjoy !

You'll also get less sensor noise (the main advantage), by a factor of 1/number of exposures, as you are averaging. If you are really fussy you should take the same number of exposures, under the same conditions (temp, ISO etc) with the lens cap on to create a series of "dark frames" as suggested. This way you don't add a load of random noise from your dark frame into your lovely smooth averaged light frames. Bit of a pain though.

Fairly easy to average (stack) in Photoshop. can explain if you like.