Star Trails - David Mathre Photography

Nine-Years Ago (04-November-2006) — New Jersey

Backyard Autumn Night Sky Over New Jersey: Star and Jet Trails.

Learning from mistakes. It took a while to figure out how to make star trail images with a digital camera. My first attempts to do long exposures ran into problems with digital sensor noise, the length of time the shutter could remain open, and camera battery life — especially on cold nights. The camera had an option for “long exposure noise reduction”, however this required taking a second exposure with the shutter closed and then subtracting the sensor closed image from the sensor open image. The result is missing every other exposure needed for a smooth composite star trail image.

Star trails looking southeast from my backyard. Composite of 27 images taken with a Nikon D2xs camera and 17-35 mm f/2.8 lens (ISO 100, 17 mm, f/2.8, 28 sec). (David J Mathre)

Other than the Big Dipper, Orion was probably the second constellation I learned to recognize.

Four-Years Ago (31-July-2011) — New Jersey

Backyard Summer Nighttime Sky Over New Jersey.

Star Trails taken by three cameras. (1) Looking North: Nikon D3s camera and 24 mm f/1.4 lens (ISO 400, 24 mm, f/4, 30 sec). (2) Looking South: Nikon D3 camera and 24 mm f/3.5 PC-E lens (ISO 400, 24 mm, f/4, 30 sec). (3) Looking South and Up: Nikon D3x camera and 14-24 mm f/2.8 lens (ISO 400, 14 mm, f/4, 30 sec). One hour composite star trail images. Dew settled on the 14-24 mm lens making the center of the image darker and making it look like there are few stars.

Individual images from the slide shows can be viewed here.

Seven-Years Ago (31-July-2008) — Colorado

Summer Nighttime Sky Over Colorado.

Star trails from my room at the Marriott Residence Inn in Boulder, Colorado. Composite of 180 images taken with a Nikon D3 camera and 24 mm f/3.5 PC-E lens (ISO 200, 24 mm, f/5.6, 30 sec exposures). Raw images processed with Capture One Pro 8, and combined using Photoshop CC 2014 (scripts, statistics, maximum). Note that these images were taken using the in-camera intervalometer and noise reduction so for every minute, only 30 seconds of exposure. I’ve learned how to do it better since then — using an external intervalometer and doing the noise reduction post processing.

Seven-Years Ago (30-July-2008) — Colorado

Summer Night Sky Over Boulder, Colorado.

Startrails from my room at the Marriott Residence Inn in Boulder, Colorado. Composite of 200 images taken with a Nikon D3 camera and 24 mm f/3.5 PC-E lens (ISO 200, 24 mm, f/5.6, 30 sec exposures). Raw images processed with Capture One Pro 8, and combined using Photoshop CC 2014 (scripts, statistics, maximum).

Summer Nighttime Sky Over Boulder. Composite of 200 images taken with a Nikon D3 camera and 24 mm lens (ISO 200, 24 mm, f/5.6, 30 sec). Raw images processed with Capture One Pro, and the composite generated using Photoshop CC (statistics, maximum) (David J Mathre)

Sunday (24-May-2015) — New Jersey

Backyard Springtime Night Sky Over New Jersey.

Startrails Looking North From My Backyard in New Jersey. Composite of 400 images taken with a Fuji X-T1 camera and 14 mm f/2.8 lens (ISO 200, 14 mm, f/2.8, 30 sec). Raw images processed with Capture One Pro and Photoshop CC. In the past I used the startrails.exe program to create the composite image. This time I made the composite using Scripts/Statistics Stack Mode = Maximum within Photoshop CC 2015.