[iceman (Mike)]

Thanks for the comments, guys.

Originally Posted by RB

That's fantastic Mike !!!

Great work, those dark skies really yield nice contrast in the trail.

Love the picturesque view in the northern shot.

Thanks RB. I wanted a lovely foreground for the southern shot too but cabins and street lights meant I had to choose a spot that at least blocked them out. I did find a nice spot down a track towards the beach, but it was 50m down a track and dragging a long extension lead plus leaving the laptop + camera in the middle of the bush unattended didn't sound like a great idea

Originally Posted by Martin Pugh

Fun stuff Mike and nicely done.

what's the longest exposure you can go to with the Canon 350D before noise becomes objectionable?

cheers
Martin

Thanks Martin. At ISO800, about 4 minutes without ICNR. These were at ISO200 so the noise is still very low even at 10min exposures. I used 1 dark frame to get rid of the hot pixels which are in the same spot in every image.

Originally Posted by AlexN

awesome pics Mike! star trails are awesome..

What program do you use to stack images for star trails... I've never done them before but am keen to do so....

Thanks Alex. Check out www.startrails.de Couldn't be easier to use.

Originally Posted by renormalised

Great trails, Mike

The last shot looks like grooves on a vinyl record!!!

Thanks I think it looks like entering a vortex

Originally Posted by Bloodbean

What did you use to keep the camera powered? Love the shots!

Troy

Thanks Troy. I use an AC Adapter on the 350D to keep it powered all night long. I have the laptop setup on a table next to the camera on the tripod, and use ImagesPlus to program the run.
The images are downloaded straight to the camera after each exposure.

For the north shots, there's a larger gap between exposures because of the way I programmed the shots (delay + converting RAW to jpeg to display). The next day for the southern shots, I reduced all the delays and turned off displaying the image so there's only a tiny gap between the exposures.

Originally Posted by jase

Dang Mike! - You're a bit late for the CWAS entry considering the theme this year is star trails. Lovely work indeed. Looks like Nambucca was productive. Please show us more from your imaging fest when you get a chance.

Thanks Jase - I really wanted to produce some star trail images like this in time for the CWAS competition but things conspired against me and I never got a chance. Nevermind, I still love these type of shots and with my light pollution at home I don't often get a chance so am happy to take the opportunity to do them now from this lovely location.

Got lots of data from the week so far and still a couple of days to go. Will post more as I get time to process it.