Star Trails in the City

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Hey guys.
It's 1 Degree Celsius here and for some stupid reason I had a sudden impulse to attempt star trails for the first time.
Aside from venturing out of town to avoid lights, any tips?

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I'm no expert at this and really haven't tried it myself, but most of the star trails that I see, you don't get as much or any land showing, just the sky.
 
Pretty neat.

I've been thinking about trying this out my self. So how did you set up for it?

As for ideas, I'm thinking about trying a Polarized filter to help cut down on the ambient light...I'll be shooting using a muh brighter cityscape type background.
 
I'm no expert at this and really haven't tried it myself, but most of the star trails that I see, you don't get as much or any land showing, just the sky.

On the contrary, star trail images tend to have a lot more impact and drama when elements of the landscapes are included. As for the trails themselves: longer is better. To get them you need really long exposures, or a few stacked shorter ones. The earth rotates once in 24 hours so even with a 1 hour exposure your star trails will only be a short arc, 1/24th of a circle or only 15 degrees of arc.
 
I like this, the only thing I see mucking it up are those clouds, you can kind of see the sequential pattern of them going across the sky. I just got an intervalometer and started playing with it. Did you use stack your photos, and how long of exposures and delay between?
 
I have never gotten any shots like these but I would love to, I like the fact that its not just the sky in the photo, I think that makes it much better. The symmetry of the dock is incredible as well. Overall this is a great photo in my opinion.
 
Yeah I always wanted to do it with a foreground for more impact. Honestly when I left the house I thought it was to cloudy and considering I was in town I thought the light pollution would be to strong. I just wanted to take 15 mins of Images and practice stacking them to see how long a 15 min star trail was. So I'm extremely happy considering my expectations.
I used a cable release and just hit the shutter every time I heard the shutter close. Was to cold to do anymore than 15 mins but I'll get a intervalometer and do it for hours one day.
There was 26 usable photos out of the 30 30 second exposures at f/5 1000 ISO. Stacked them in CS6 trying the maximum Statistics script and layer stacking/lighten.
It only took me 2 photos to get everything symmetrical, made me feel pretty good. It was .28degrees out in photo shop Haha!
 
I like this; it's got something a little different from the regular 'star trail' shot...
 

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