Night / Startrail Photography

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Full moon was out once again and the conditions and timing were perfect to head out do another full moon night shot. Shot at 250 iso, next time I’ll put the 5D mk2 on 50 iso and add the extra 2 and 1/3 stops to the shutter speed and see how it does with noise. As I have seen and heard of some good reports and seeing it is winter and the camera will be at it’s coldest might also help reduce noise. Might so I have read anyway as the sensor wont heat up as much causing noise. !!

Click the image to see the larger view.

0 thoughts on “Night / Startrail Photography

  1. this one is nice!

    im not sure if this is right, but if you take a test shot at high iso, like 3200 or whatever, can you then divide that shutter speed by the iso (eg 32/ or maybe its 3200) and that will give you the right shutter speed to shoot the image at a low iso, like 100 or 50?

    i havnt realy looked into it that much, i just read it somewere, so sorry if i sound crazy lol

    • The math is easy Mitch. Get a shot at a nice round number, something like 1 sec, 10 sec, 30 sec at whatever ISO you need. Once you get a shot that you like with the right exposure you can start dropping your ISO, every ISO stop down, you double the exposure time. So, as an example:

      Test shot: 10 sec, f/8, ISO 3200

      This exposure will be equal to:

      20 sec, f/8, ISO 1600
      40 sec, f/8, ISO 800
      80 sec, f/8, ISO 400
      160 sec, f/8, ISO 200
      320 sec, f/8, ISO 100

      The same goes for changing the aperture by one stop, so lets say 320 sec. isn’t enough, close the aperture down to f/11 (one stop darker than f/8) and you can double the time again to 640 sec.

      So let’s continue the list:

      320 sec, f/8, ISO 100
      640 sec, f/11, ISO 100
      1280 sec, f/16, ISO 100

      The way I usually test is to shoot at f/2.8 (or wider depending on the lens) at a high-ish ISO for my test shot and then I start closing the aperture until I get to something with a bit more DOF, then I start dropping the ISO, while I’m doing this I just keep doubling the shutter speed in my head until I hit the exposure time I want.

  2. Nice image, I’m amazed at the images I’ve been taking in museums without a flash. The 5D Mk2 leaves my old 40D for dead.
    PS: Are you still in the market to offload a 17-40mm L Series Lens?

  3. Looks great Matt! I’ve never really tried to get a ‘daylight’ looking shot at night, yours turned out really good!

    I wouldn’t bother about ISO50, because you loose a bit of dynamic range to the simulated low ISO mode.

    You’re brave heading up to the 7 minute mark on this one, I tend to draw the line at around 8 minutes on the 5D2 for dark images, but I imagine you could probably push that to the 10-12 minute range with a brighter more detailed image like this.

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