Sky at Night

My third star trail shot with the Olympus E5. 26 Nov 2010. The only good thing about the unprecedented cold snap currently gripping the UK is the clear sky opportunities :-) For this shot I used the 7-14mm lens and mounted the E5 on a tripod outside my house and composed around Polaris (around which the trail spins) and the table for which I added a bit of self portrait trickery :-) To do this I sat at each position for 30s and move to the next position. A torch was placed on the table for each pose. IS0 set to 400 opened the aperture as wide as it went (F4) and shot 15s exposures continuously all night from approx 7pm to 7am the next morning. Noise reduction was switched OFF. Camera was powered via external using extension lead from garage. To prevent the camera and lens from dewing and freezing over my home made dew shield was used. However, this did not prevent the snow from falling and covering the camera! As you can see from the clouds in the trail snow rolled in early hours and the snow spots on the lens can just be seen bottom right of frame. Oh well! The following morning I retrieved the camera where temps dropped to -5C. The shutter release button was frozen solid with snow/ice. After downloading the 2500 images and running through stacking software the final composite, that you see, was produced. The image was imported into Aperture with a tiny levels adjustment and removal of some annoying plane light trails. NO noise reduction filter was applied and reduced from the original JPEG size to this one you see with No sharpening.

My second star trail shot with the Olympus E5. 25 Nov 2010. The only good thing about the unprecedented cold snap currently gripping the UK is the clear sky opportunities :-) For this shot I used the 12-60mm SWD lens and mounted the E5 on a tripod underneath a clump of trees at the bottom of my field and composed around Polaris (around which the trail spins). IS0 set to 400 opened the aperture as wide as it went (F2.8) and shot 15s exposures continuously all night from approx 7pm to 7am the next morning. Noise reduction was switched OFF. Camera was powered via external using extension lead from garage. To prevent the camera and lens from dewing and freezing over my home made dew shield was used. The following morning I retrieved the camera from a frozen field where temps dropped to -5C. After downloading the 2500 images and running through stacking software the final composite, that you see, was produced. The image was imported into Aperture with a tiny levels adjustment and removal of some annoying plane light trails. NO noise reduction filter was applied and reduced from the original JPEG size to this one you see with No sharpening.

Another historic capture. My first star trail opportunity with the Olympus E5. Monday 15 Nov 2010 was a cold clear night. I mounted the E5 on a tripod with the 7-14mm lens at the bottom of my field and composed around my house and more importantly Polaris (around which the trail spins). I set the IS0 to 640 opened the aperture as wide as it went (F4) and shot 15s exposures continuously all night from approx 7pm to 7am the next morning. Noise reduction was switched OFF. Camera was powered via external using extension lead from garage. To prevent the camera and lens from dewing and freezing over my home made dew shield was used. The following morning I retrieved the camera from a very misty and frozen field. After downloading the 2500 images and running through stacking software the final composite, that you see, was produced. It is worth explaining that the cloud cover moved through during the night which results in the final orange/red colours (light pollution). It adds to the effect and also helped drown out the plethora of image polluting airplane trails, a few of which are still clearly visible. The most important thing to me was the distinct lack of noise within the image, when compared to similar shots I have taken with the E3. I rarely pushed the E3 beyond ISO 320 for shots like this because of noise. The E5 on ISO 620 produces a much cleaner, noise-less image. There is definite improvement in the noise department from the new E5 sensor and its processing engine. This is very pleasing indeed to me. I would also add that this image had very little post processing. It was imported into Aperture with a tiny levels adjustment. NO noise reduction filter was applied and reduced from the original JPEG size to this one you see with No sharpening.