Stary....House?

Coming home from the store I happened to notice it was a clear night. Not by looking up actually, but just because it was so freaking cold! It's 35 in Bozeman right now...7 C if you're from that part of the world. But it was a clear night, so I set up the camera in front of my house.

I knew right away exactly the shot I wanted. In front of the house, looking slightly up, start trails. Simple, but nice. I haven't done a photo of the house yet, so it's about time.

I threw on the 10mm lens, then picked a stop where I could see the most starts. I am in a small city, so there's a lot of light pollution. Only the bright stars are visible.

After I got my spot picked out, I did a test exposure at 30s, f2.8 and ISO6400. Way, way over exposed. So much. I bumped down to ISO800 and tried again. Much better. Checking the histogram is the only sure way to tell correctly what is going on, the bright view finder lies when it's dark out. Just make sure you have image data all through the histogram. One stop underexposed is OK if you're trying to freeze stars, but since I was doing star trails, theres no excuse to not do a proper exposure.

I could have shot at 30s, f2.8 and ISO800 to get a properly exposes shot. But there's two problems with that. Noise, and no star trails. Luckily, there's the same solution to both! Lower the ISO and raise the time and f-stop. I had six stops to go to get to a 30 minute exposure time, which is what I wanted. A few hours would have been nice, but I don't have that tonight. I have four stops of ISO to go down to ISO100, then go to f6.3 and I'm right in the ball park of a 30 minute exposure. A few minutes doesn't really matter with that long of an exposure. Three minutes would only be maybe 1/6 a stop, so I don't have to be perfect.

Once I got the shot (after doing a failed one because I forgot to switch to bulb and only did a 30s exposure), editing was really easy.

I upped the clarity, highlights, and shadows to give lots of contrast. This brought out detail in the highlights of the house, and also darkened the sky a bit to make the start trails pop a bit more. I also cooled the picture a lot to get rid of the yellow tint street lights give. Finally, I upped the clarity in the sky to make the stars pop even more.

Simple photo, simple edit. With great results, I think!

See you tomorrow!