Beautiful star trails..

[iceman]

Inspires me..

Star trails by Lincoln Harrison (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2031704/Australian-photographer-Lincoln-Harrison-endures-15-hour-photo-shoots-capture-stunning-night-images-star-trails.html)

[Octane]

Saw that on news.com.au yesterday.

I dig the saturation.

H

[Omaroo]

Love the saturation too Humayun. Really nice captures. Sort of makes me itch to get out and do some.



:lol:

[iceman]

Ditto!

[mishku]

oooh, amazing. makes me want to redecorate my house :)

[naskies]

It's pretty awesome stuff. Here is his Flickr stream (with a few technical details):

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hakka69/5902362972/

He posts on the Photography forum of the Whirlpool website (http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum/132) under the name "Hakka". He said that the above image took him 15 hours of post processing in total :eyepop:

[midnight]

Stunning.

For an amusing side story to this, check out the feedback comments and in particular, read and laugh at the "worst rated" tab. Fair dinkum there are some boneheads out there.

Darrin...

[naskies]

I think those comments are a great example of the Dunning–Kruger effect (i.e. cognitive bias where novices are unaware of their own ignorance) :)

However, the comment that they must be High Dynamic Range processed (Lulu, 17:03) was a good one. The article gives the false impression that they were single long exposures... no mention of stacking, tone mapping, etc.

(Misrepresentation by the media is a pet peeve of mine.)

[Liz]

Marvellous images indeed!!

[Hakka]

Hi guys, they're my shots, thanks for the comments.

"However, the comment that they must be High Dynamic Range processed (Lulu, 17:03) was a good one. The article gives the false impression that they were single long exposures... no mention of stacking, tone mapping, etc."

I provided the full tech details to the papers but they didn't print them.

Most of them consist of a HDR foreground image taken during twilight, then multiple startrail shots of around 1-2 minutes each, stacked using photoshop.

The first pic in the link in the 1st post, titled 'Nightshift', consisted of a HDR foreground and 720 x 60second exposures at f4.5 ISO800. Shot during the new moon and winter solstice for 12 hours of complete darkness & 180deg rotation. Shot with D7000 and 10-24, 15 hours shooting and 15 hours PP.

The second shot in that link 'Dead Tree Stars' was lit by a setting crescent moon, no HDR used in this one. 1 x 120 second shot for the foreground and 300x 60 second shots for the stars, f4 ISO400. D3100 and 10-24.

Reading the daily mail comments i got a good laugh from the 'scientific explanations' on why these shots are impossible.

Thanks.

Hakka.

[iceman]

Hi Lincoln

:welcome: to IceInSpace!

Would love to see more of your work - feel free to post them here on IceInSpace!

Cheers

[Hakka]

Thanks Mike,

I have 2 more that weren't in the papers, no HDR in these 2.

Rockstars

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5096/5494490646_4f7c440193_b.jpg

D7000, Nikkor 10-24
stars: 270 x 120sec, f4.8, ISO400
foreground: 60sec, f4.8, ISO400, lit by the glow from the sunset over my right shoulder and off camera flash to the left.

Dawn Stars

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4103/5190753368_58caa3edaa_b.jpg

D3100, 10-24
130 x 59sec exposures f5.6 ISO400 for the stars
16 x 0.62sec exposures f5.6 ISO100 for the sky and foreground at sunrise.
This was my first attempt, I'd only had the camera a few weeks when I shot it. I've been hooked ever since.

Hakka.

[iceman]

Lovely.
Your shots inspire me to get out and shoot some more.

We don't embed photos using the IMG tag (or HTML) but you can attach them using "Manage Attachments" or simply link to the external site.

[Omaroo]

Hi Lincoln

I sent you a pm on Whirlpool, did you receive it? :)

[Hakka]

Hi Chris, yes I just sent a reply.

[niko]

I do love a startrail and these are inspiring as Mike says

Just one question - how come the strails are egg-shaped rather than totally round?

cheers

niko

[Omaroo]

I'm putting it down to artistic license Niko. It's beautiful, and it's absolutely legitimate in this sense. These photos weren't an attempt to capture the sky with scientific precision, they were captured and processed to look fabulous. In this sense they're unique and probably my favourite star trail photography.

[iceman]

I would've imagined it's the ultra wide angle lens causing that 'distortion'.

[Omaroo]

We should have Lincoln comment here, but my guess is that the same lens was used for both fore and background in each image's case. The foregrounds don't suffer the same level of distortion as far as I can determine. Maybe the FOV was different for each before the merge?

[Hakka]

There was some distortion from the 10mm lens, I think nightshift had some correction applied from memory but there is still some perspective distortion present. Between the foreground and star shots, the only thing that changed was the ISO and shutter speed.

I had to do a bit of a repair job on the area just below the horizon in NightShift, the temp dropped from 16 to -2 deg C during the shoot I think this slighly altered the focus, causing the foreground image to be slightly out of alignment with the startrail shots. To cut a long story short the fix resulted in the reflections of the treeline not having the same amount of distortion as the rest of the shot.

The shape of the star circles didn't really look like lens distortion to me because they flare outwards at the top, if there were tall buildings in this shot they would lean in towards the center due to the UWA lens distortion. After some research I believe it is caused by 'differential atmospheric refraction'. There's some info on google about it, I read a bit and it made my head hurt. Its to do with the way light bends around the horizon as it passes through our atmosphere.

Hakka.

[niko]

Thanks Hakka

They are really wonderful

[SkyViking]

Those star trails are very beautiful, well done! And some of the comments on the news site are just hilarious :D I guess it's what you'd expect from the ignorant masses...

[bloodhound31]

Thanks for posting this Mike! How do you find these gems? I am very inspired to do some more work!

Baz.