Need advice/pointers for night shoot please

[DaninMD]

Hi there. I have an idea for a shot that I want to capture. have already scoped out a couple of areas and I 'know' how the final shot should look...but I don't have a lot of experience with long exposure night shots or with stacking/composite photos.

The photo is sort of a play on Planes, Trains and Automobiles...not sure I will get the train in there or not for the first shoot (but I do have another location where I could). Basically I am thinking of capturing planes arriving to the airport, I live near a pretty busy airport and when I drive by at night, you can usually see about 3-4 planes in the sky lining up for their descent to the airport. there is a great observation place I have in mind where I could have some pretty nice background with trees/etc and the foreground is a 2 lane roadway that is also pretty busy at night.

I was thinking of multiple exposures to capture the plans from a distance till they fly overhead. maybe 10-12 plane trails overheard, all originating from a pretty common point in the sky. I would also plan on doing some exposures (shorter) with cars driving by so that I get headlight/brake light trails horizontally in the frame.

So I guess I am looking for a little bit of guidance on the shoot. i.e. ISO? aperture (was thinking f6?). would focus at hyperfocal I think.

do I need an additional exposure for the background/foreground trees?

and lastly, which program would I use to put this together? I have LR5 and CS4 right now. I am guessing there would be 8-12 shots for the planes, 4-5 for the cars and maybe 1 for background/foreground detail?

Gear I will be using is a Canon 6D and 17-40 f4 lens. I have a good tripod and can use the mobile app for shutter control.

any pointers would be great appreciated.

 

[KmH]

You can't make composite images with LR so you'll use CS 4 and layers.

You can edit each individual frame in LR before you import all the images into CS 4.
Making composite photos in Photoshop - Bing

For selecting the lens aperture use an online DoF/Hyperfocus calculator:
Online Depth of Field Calculator

ISO will depend on how much or how little light you have to work with, and how long you leave the shutter open.
In other words, the ISO/shutter speed values you use for approaching planes will be different than the values you need to use for cars on the road.