Star Trails in Acadia National Park

CronoDL · May 29, 2014

Hi everyone,

This is my first time posting a photo on this forum. I took this a month ago in Acadia National Park, and it was my first time attempting star trails. Being out in the dark with all the stars out was beautiful, and I'm looking forward to going back to Acadia.

Thanks for looking!

Star Trails in Acadia by DannyLamNYC, on Flickr

Ec1981 · May 29, 2014

Wonderful star trails

runnah · May 29, 2014

Woo maine!

Nice pic.

jsecordphoto · May 29, 2014

Acadia is such a great place for shooting at night. There was a group of about 10 of us that were going up there last month, but the weather was pretty crappy so we cancelled the trip.

D-B-J · May 29, 2014

runnah said:
Woo maine!

Nice pic.

I thought the same, haha.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

JustJazzie · May 29, 2014

Incredible shot! Thanks for sharing!

CronoDL · May 29, 2014

Thanks for the kind words everyone. Maine is certainly a great place for landscape photographers.

mmaria · May 30, 2014

hey, that's nice! more please

MetroRuss · May 30, 2014

Nice photo, do you mind sharing your work flow and camera settings?

kanuski · May 30, 2014

Beautiful shot. I was wondering how you managed to get Polaris so close to the horizon. From your location it is about 44 degrees off of the horizon. I think I need a 14 mm!

EOV · May 30, 2014

Mesmerizing.

AR76 · May 30, 2014

Impressive shot you've made. I'd love to see that as a large print on Kodak Metallic or Fuji Pearl.
I'll join MetroRuss's request for settings and workflow please.

ruggedshutter · May 30, 2014

I love it!!! I'd love to know how you went about taking this. I have tried in the past with out much success.

CronoDL · May 30, 2014

Thanks again everyone. Here's a breakdown of what I did.

I've seen some photos online before showing that it's very easy to position myself so that Polaris is right over the Bubbles at Jordan Pond. That made it easier for me to choose a spot without having to scout too much. I started this sequence around 11:30pm, and I knew the moon wasn't coming out until about an hour or so later, so the moon wouldn't be washing out the sky. But since the moon wasn't out at all, the mountains and trees had no illumination at all, which explains why they're totally black. A bit of moonlight would have probably changed things a quite a bit. The Photographer's Ephemeris app is essential for landscape photographers, but most of you know of that already.

The reason why Polaris seems low is that I actually pointed the lens up a fair bit. I don't remember exactly how much, but I probably pointed it upwards around 15 degrees or so. The Samyang/Rokinon 14mm 2.8 (with speed booster on NEX-6) is so wide that I can still capture a lot of foreground while taking in huge amounts of sky. I set the lens to focus at infinity, and I left it wide open at 2.8 to get the most light possible.

Since it was pitch black (I used a headlamp to walk around), I had to take some test shots for framing, and also for exposure. Once I got my framing down, I used Sony's Time Lapse app on the camera to set 30-second exposures for 60 frames, which ends up being half an hour. Long Exposure NR was turned off. I believe these were either ISO 800 or 1600. I also took a couple of black frames with the lens cap on, to reduce noise when stacking the shots later.

In LR5, I adjusted for a good exposure and synced the settings for all the photos. I used a free program called StarStax, which merges all the photos and uses black frames for noise reduction. StarStax has different options to optimize the merged photo, but in general it's a breeze to use.

That's it in a nutshell. It's actually very fun and peaceful taking these kind of shots. I'd do it more often, but I live in NYC, and it's impossible to escape the lights or constant airplanes within an hour (and probably more) of driving.

Danny