UKH

That's a big statement to make seeing as I took this shot five days into the new year.

But what you recon?

https://www.flickr.com/photos/the1lemming/51809738358/in/dateposted/

Lovely.
(But nah, I bet you can top that some time in the next 11 1/2 months.)

That is a great shot. I have to say I really like your shots of Ynys Llanddwyn. One of my favourite places in the world

That's good of you to mention my Anglesey shots as it was an awful night with strong winds and a lot of spray hitting the lens. However it did make for an impromptu pro mist filter 😀

That's really good. I've been trying to get good star-trails shots over the past 18 months or so, using app on my phone, but haven't achieved one to that level yet. Is that a straight photo, or have you done any Photoshop work/layering on it please?

Nice shot, but where has the top half of it gone

What lens did you use ?

I have a micro four thirds camera which has some impressive noise issues when doing long exposures at night. This means that I had to use Noise reduction. Many Astro photographers would be screaming at their screens reading this comment.

I used my Panasonic GH5 and Laowa 7.5mm lens, and took 250 shots at 10 second exposures. I had to wait 10 seconds after each shot while the camera did internal Noise Reduction. Everything was shot in RAW

For post production I used an old version of Lightroom 5 to delete all aircraft and satellites that were captured in the 250 frames. It took a very long time. I then converted the RAW shots to a TIFF file format to edit further.

I used a free piece of software called StarStax to mix all the 250 TIFF shots into a single image.

I then chose one of the 250 shots which had a good foreground subject and used a free photo editing software called GIMP to remove the sky. I then used GIMP to mix the StarStax image and the GIMP image which had the foreground.

Finally I titillated the composite image using photo editing software called Luminar. I find that I get better results editing photos with Luminar than I do with my old version of Lightroom.

All this could have easily been done with Lightroom and Photoshop but I refuse to pay a monthly subscription to use software that I probably only use once every month or two. I am willing and happy to pay a one off licence fee but I'm not being ripped off paying monthly.

I used:

StarStax

An old copy of Lightroom which is 9 years old

Luminar 4

GIMP 2.10

I have a micro four thirds camera and used a fully manual lens from Laowa 7.5mm.

https://www.venuslens.net/product/laowa-7-5mm-f2/

This lens has been permanently fixed at infinity with duct tape. 😀

Yeah i remember you are on the GH5, i m on G9 which is also MFT, i don't see it as a limiting factor really, certainly not worth the debate that continually rages with FF vs MFT etc

The Laowa lenses do look good for the money, seem popular for astro stuff, the 7.5 is rectilinear correct ?

The lens is excellent for video work as well, and yes it is rectilinear. This entire little promotion video of a friend's caravan was shot entirely with this lens.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUiN8wqYVwc&t=62s

Micro 4/3 can work well for Astro. Noise is a particular problem when things are underexposed. Decent NR software lightly used can really help. Couple of images here. 
https://flic.kr/p/2k1Jrcr

https://flic.kr/p/2k3N7fH

https://flic.kr/p/2k1NhJQ

James

Might be a reason for the noise in this shot

https://www.flickr.com/photos/the1lemming/51377632042/in/dateposted/

However my camera is for all intent and purposes, noise invariant. I was hoping to save the highlights by bringing them back in Post.

But those hot pixels won the battle. I just could not remove them.

This is my favourite

https://www.flickr.com/photos/190854271@N04/50571100317/

Its very good - but do you think you could repeat it with the highest spike of the tower lining up with the centre of the star rotation?

(in the spirit of constructive criticism rather than being an arse)

That was my plan, but poorly exicuted. 😀

There is a really lovely hawthorn in a field on my way to work - and I thought it would be a great idea to take a picture a day and make a time lapse showing it coming into flower and out again one spring.

40 pictures into the project the tree started to flower.

I had been photographing the wrong tree - the one I wanted was in a different field.

All of these images are taken on micro four thirds cameras with the Laowa F2. Looking forward to some clear nights when I have some time to visit somewhere good. I have a few places that would make great star trail shots that might be worth a visit. Good luck with yours!

James

How about a bit of Blackpool sparkle?

https://www.flickr.com/photos/the1lemming/51828728118/in/photostream/lightb...