Light Painting/Star Trails Advice

danny_bhoy

danny_bhoy

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The forecast is for clear skies tonight so I'm off out to try some more star trails.

I want to light paint my main subject so that I don't end up with it silhouetted.

My question is: if I'm taking say 100 x 30 second exposures to be merged, do I have to light paint the subject during each exposure or at regular intervals (say once every 10 exposures) or just once?

Hope that waffle made sense.

Cheers,

Danny.
 
100x30 seconds exposures is going to leave tiny gaps in the tails between exposurers isn't it? Next time I'm out I'm going to experiment with 2min exposures.
 
Starstax also has a basic feature that allows you to average the foreground from a select few frames?

I used the feature for this shot:



It's 8 hours of exposures, but only the first 10 minutes or so actually exposed the walls as seen in the shot. The rest of the shots were exposed for the sky with the walls being far darker. Only did some minor dodging in PS afterwards, no real layering.

I'm sure someone using PS for the whole process could do something far more complex and thorough, but for a quick few button clicks I thought it worked well?
 
As Mark said, no need to paint all the frames just paint what is required to get the effect you want then leave it be on the lighting front, I would suggest doing light painting at the start and at the end that way you can try a different light painting at the end and included/exclude either the start or end light painting to get two images from one set of star trails :thumbs:

c-m said:
100x30 seconds exposures is going to leave tiny gaps in the tails between exposurers isn't it? Next time I'm out I'm going to experiment with 2min exposures.
Click to expand...

Very small gaps, in fact not even noticeable at less than 100% crop, and software like StarStaX now features a gap filling feature in the software to smooth out that tiny gap :thumbs:
 
ACW said:
Starstax also has a basic feature that allows you to average the foreground from a select few frames?

I used the feature for this shot:



It's 8 hours of exposures, but only the first 10 minutes or so actually exposed the walls as seen in the shot. The rest of the shots were exposed for the sky with the walls being far darker. Only did some minor dodging in PS afterwards, no real layering.

I'm sure someone using PS for the whole process could do something far more complex and thorough, but for a quick few button clicks I thought it worked well?
Click to expand...

Thanks, that was useful info......although I know for a fact that I haven't got the patience for an 8 hour stint :)
 
markmullen said:
The advantage with 30 second exposures is you don't need an intervalometer, you just set it to continuous drive and lock the cable release on.
Click to expand...

True. But the Nikon D5100 and probably others has an inbuilt timer which will shoot up to 999 shots. I tested it the other day on a time lapse of my street. Going to try it out next weekend hopefully.
 
keety said:
has anyone got a any recommendations for good torches to light paint??
Click to expand...

There is no panacea torch however for general use I love my LED Lenser P14
 


@danny_bhoy
Danny this one is about 45 exposures layered in photoshop.
I lit a few of the frames with a torch/phone/speedlight and then chose the one that looked most even and layered that over the final image using lighten blend mode, then masked out the sky to get rid of the random stars.
 
kestral said:
What are the two bright lights on the horizon?
Click to expand...
the orange one is the glow from a nearby town about 5 miles up the road.
the white one behind the structure is a lighthouse, i had to compose so that the bright light was hidden behind the legs or else it'd be far too bright :)
 
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