Experimenting With Night Photography

We're approaching winter and this summer's excitement of planetary pictures has finally gone. Saturn and Jupiter will have to wait until next year, Mars will take a little longer.

After about a week of straight clouds I've been itching to get outside. I found a couple really beautiful examples of night photography online, specifically star streaks, so I thought this would be a good time to try again. I've only really tried star streaks once and I had very mid-range results.

When I first got outside there were still some fast moving clouds clearing out, for a while I thought the night might be a bust, but I quickly found out that some clouds can make for some really cool long exposure pictures.

Long exposure of the night sky with fast moving clouds. f3.5, 30 seconds, ISO 320

Once most of those clouds finally drifted away I had some skies clear enough for star streaks. The idea with star streaks is you take 30 second exposures one right after another for a good chunk of time (~10+ minutes) and then software like StarStax will combine them all into a single image.

Star Streaks around the north star. 13 pictures at f3.5, 30 second shutter, ISO 320

One of the things I don't like is that the stars looks like series of dots, you can see the tiny gaps in between exposures when the camera is saving to the memory card. I don't have a remote shutter, so I'm just trying to be quick on the button without moving the camera at all.

Star Streaks in the southern sky (which also apparently is a major airplane route) -

13 pictures at f3.5, 30 second shutter, ISO 320

The above picture is pretty good because the stars move faster in the southern sky, meaning I get less of the dot effect that bothered me in the north star picture. What I don't like is how out of focus the tree looks.

Usually these pictures are really beautiful when there is some foreground interest with a full majestic sky behind, so I thought I'd practice with what I had on hand. My lucky subject ended up being a Christmas stocking holder, though because of my terrible composition I'm photographing mostly the underside of the table.

Star Streak with a foreground object. Object is really out of focus

At first I thought this picture was fine, but when I got back inside on my computer I realized that the stocking holder was really out of focus. By using f3.5 my depth of field was too shallow. I was focused on the stars, but the foreground was out of focus. Next time I'll have to use a higher f number, meaning I'll have to bump up the ISO.

I tried the next night with much better results. The trees are noticeably sharper in this image.

Star Streaks in the east, still caught an airplane and apparently I had a smudge on the lens. Trees are much sharper. 30 seconds, f7.1, ISO 1000

The last effect I wanted to try was light painting. When you take long exposures you can start playing with light a bit. If I flick a flashlight on for a brief moment one of the frames will have a brighter foreground, which I can use and still preserve the dark night sky.

f3.5, 15 seconds, ISO 320 - You can see the stars, but the foreground car is pretty flat and boring

f3.5, 15 seconds, ISO 320 - Flashlight was clicked on for a few seconds during the exposure. I over-did it a bit, but the effect works nicely. The car pops but there are still stars in a dark sky.

f3.5, 15 seconds, ISO 320 - Instead of using a flashlight to illuminate the car from my vantage point I put a light inside the car. Again I over-did it but the effect is pretty interesting.