Rodney Campbell's Blog

Churchlight

Note: These photographs (especially the wider shots) look much better when larger. To see larger versions in an inline overlay slideshow gallery viewer click any of the images.

Whilst I was staying in Orange a friend had arranged for me to give a talk and tutorial shoot on star trails (and astrophotography in general) to members of the Orange Camera Club

So a group of us met for dinner in town on the Saturday evening. I gave a bit of an impromptu presentation in the restaurant. We then ate, chatted and asked questions and prepared ourselves for the cold night ahead 🙂

Unfortunately once we were on location and started shooting it became apparent that quite a lot of whispy cloud was moving in

Still we spent some time practicing shooting, and hopefully most people got a good grasp on the fundamental techniques

A few of us die hards started some star trails and sat in the car chatting for about an hour before calling it a night

Besides the clouds sweeping through making havoc of the trails frames I also tried something new this time. Two minute frames (instead of my usual one minute in darkish skies)

Besides creating half as many images to deal with in post processing and storage (the upside). It was likely to have the potential effect of brightening the ambient background of the sky. Leading to not as much contrast between the stars and the sky (especially for the dimmer stars). I was expecting the effect on the moving clouds to be even more disruptive. However I’m actually pleasantly surprised with the result and will likely try this again. Particularly when I’m under the very dark skies of northern Australia very soon