5 questions about this photo:
Q1. What equipment did you use?
Canon 5D MkII and Canon 24mm f1.4 MkII lens. The camera was powered by an external 12v battery which also powered the dew control heating tape wrapped around the lens to prevent the lens misting up (but the heater died after an hour so I had to regularly check for any condensation on the lens)
Q2. What settings did you have on your camera?
10 second exposures at f2.8 @ ISO 1600 continuously for 6 hours.
Q3. What software did you use during the post-production?
The final result was 2016 images captured on a 64Gb CF card. I also shot 20 dark frames with the lens cap on to use for noise reduction. The raw files were converted to 16-bit tiffs in Capture One Pro. The tiffs were then individually checked to remove any aircraft trails, about another 6 hours work.
Startrails.exe was then used to compile the 2016 images and 20 dark frames to produce a single tiff file. The composite image was finished in CS5 ready for printing and display.
The computer used runs Windows 7 64-bit on an i7 system with 2 x 200Gb solid state drives for temporary working space, 24Gb of 1600Ghz ram and 4 x 2Tb drives for local storage.
Q4. What is the location?
Penmon Point on Anglesey in N. Wales, UK
Q5. How did you come up with the idea of this shot?
The idea was to take the next step up in star trailing. Most trails are maybe 1 or 2 hours maximum so I was aiming for as long as possible, i.e 6 hours from sunset to sunrise.
Extra Q: Please share an interesting or funny fact that happened while working on this photograph.
While the camera was shooting the sequence I was wandering around the beach taking pictures and generally enjoying the night when I almost fell over a seal that had come up onto the beach to have a nap. I don't know who was more scared, the seal or me, from the smell I think it was probably me! :)
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