"walk of stars" Photo

Photographer’s Note

I need your help!

This time I tried the very first time to take a picture of a star trail in Namibia, as you can see.
What happened ist, that you can see loads of white and coloured spots (points) in this photo - even on the ground where I dind't see a single star. ;-)

What might be the reason?
(Dirty lens, dirty sensor)

Of course - I sharpened the photo but even on the RAW-photo you can see this dots already.

Thank you for your assistance.

Greetings Enrico

www.oribi.de

PS: shutter speed: "bulb"; about 30-45 min. with 1 (running low) battery but with enough energy for this type of shot.

The warm color comes from the fire that we hat that night and because I started shortly after sunset to take this photo.

No filtes were used.

Zivko, pasternak, Elaine_Blath, linask, koray, mcenteesalas has marked this note useful

Critiques | Translate

chander (228) 2006-10-17 6:03

Nice shot Enrico. earth's rotation on its axis captured beautifully by simplest procedure we have in astrophotography :-)
I think that the dots are because of the sharpening done in processing the image. Try not to sharpen the image in the original, i believe that this problem will just go away. I am adding this picture to one of my themes "starry nights"

vbourrut (30539) 2006-10-17 6:03

This is just excellent ! I love those kind of picture ! good job

pasternak (13032) 2006-10-17 6:14

Gorgeous! How long had it to be exposed to see such an effect???

Cheers
Alexander

postvikram (1199) 2006-10-17 6:16

Hello enrico,
beautifully done indeed. Great capture of the roatation here.
The low angle is also great to look at.
I think the grains would be because of the camera trying to enhance the pixels.Maybe it might go away if you tried not sharpening too much like chander said.
As you have a long exposure by itself I think you can go easy on the sharpening settings and get a neat tiral. I invite you to see this one too.. one of my favourites by Kevin Lang (KevinRL).You might have seen it before but I just wanted to let you know..

DarkoG (2284) 2006-10-17 6:17

Very good picture with nice clean star treks.
It would be useful if you tell us how long was the exposure.
And I think that car lights must be covered, cos they atract too much attention with their strong brightness.
Regards Darko

drayde (376) 2006-10-17 6:25

Great long-exposure shot!
The noise is normal when doing long-exposure shots with digital cameras. This even happens with the lens cap on. In fact, this effect can be used to redice the noise as the noise is always the same (with the same camera and the same exposure time).
See e.g. http://www.isi.edu/~johnh/PAPERS/Heidemann01b.pdf

Elaine_Blath (6170) 2006-10-17 6:39

Hi Enrico,

fantastic shot, and goes immediately among my favourites! How long did you expose it?

Take care, Ivana

AthaPan (0) 2006-10-17 6:52

Hi Enrico

I once tried to do this, but the stars were not moving so fast and my batterie gave up:-)

Your version is pretty cool and well managed.
COncerning your question, this is partially the result of the so called "hot pixels".... but in your case these are stars, which are so far away and their light is not visible for the human eye, that just only a long exposure could visualize this one.

So you see you did a great job here.
Well done
sakis

PS. I did a small ws, just have a look if you like

[workshop] [compare] +

mdetay (4265) 2006-10-17 7:30

Hi Enrico,
You need some help - you must be joking!
This is a perfect shot.
Well done.
Cheers from Hong Kong where it is impossible to see the sky.
Michel

recepyuksel (17786) 2006-10-17 8:01

Excellent and nice work, bravo...

Alberto_Trek (256) 2006-10-17 8:05

Hallo Enrico,

was für ein wunderschönes Foto! Ich möchte wissen, wieviel Zeit dafür du brauchtest, das Foto machen. Zehn, fünfzehn Minuten? Auf jedem Fall eine größe Arbeit.

Freundliche Grüße, Alberto

Malko40000 (1328) 2006-10-17 8:50

With the sky colors and stars moving and the car that gives us the idea as if glowing from a touch of an UFO
Very interesting and creative.
Morris

Haymotion (1793) 2006-10-17 8:53

Compo intérressante et bien réussi..
Dommage que tu n'as pas marqué le temps d'exposition, ca m'aurait bien intérressé...
Sinon idée original et réalisation tout a fait bonne
Bien vue
Vince

stefanocer (10335) 2006-10-17 9:57

I'm impressed by your shot , very nice , I'll try also , Compliments.
Stefano.

dkeus31 (25984) 2006-10-17 14:55

Hello Enrico,
Nice long exposure, not a big fan of the car, but it remains OK.
About the white points, that's hot pixels, you should have done the same picture at similar conditions (temperature) with the lens cap on the objective and substract the resulting image.
Didier

linask (2778) 2006-10-17 16:31

Great example of photo with very long exposure. I think you hat to use some very strong ND filter to get such long exposure ?

vapours (7913) 2006-10-17 22:08

Spectacular shot Enrico, I'm always a sucker for these types of shots, they just do a great job of putting our existance into perspective.

Did you manage this 45 min bulb from 1 battery? Or did you use a battery pack?

saguzar (862) 2006-11-29 15:22

Hi Enrico,
I´m amazed with this one! Very creative. Time exposure is very good.Thanks!
Regards
Hernán

koray (605) 2007-03-08 10:20

wonder work. thanks to share...

picus (866) 2007-06-04 7:08

Hi Enrico,

This is a very nice shot, and you got a pretty good result for such a long exposure. I experienced the same problems (battery charge, noise, sensor heating up, etc in my night shots of the Namibia heaven) I ended up 'inventing' a new technique, that you can see in my gallery, with a virtual exposure time of several hours and no noise at all. Give it a try if you get the chance to go back to Namibia!

(http://www.trekearth.com/gallery/Africa/Namibia/photo457573.htm)

Cheers,
Pascal