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1000 Seconds at Macritchie Reservoir
50 frames. 20 second exposure. And a lot of patience.
On a clear night sky, almost an hour after the moonset at 10:14 PM, I started shooting for star trails at Macritchie Reservoir. Albeit the moonless Singapore night sky, it was still not ideal for astrophotography as the sky never gets pitch dark because of the massive light pollution; I nevertheless had to try it.
Prior to that, I had already begun shooting on a different location (Marina Barrage) a few hours before dusk. See sample photo:
Throughout that day I was contemplating on whether I should pursue the star trails shoot at Macritchie Reservoir. Checking every hour if the weather report is accurate and suitable for what I was planning. Determining which is the best way of transportation (train, bus, taxi) as the two spots were very far apart! And considering that by nighttime the Marina Barrage shoot would already have exhausted me.
I wrapped up shooting at Marina Barrage at almost 9 in the evening, it was a sunset shoot and then some nightscape. Even after leaving the place I was still unsure of my next step, do I carry on with the original plan or just go home and get some Zzzzz's? I was tempted to leave my fate to my phone's toss coin app. :D
At the Marina Bay train station, I already proceeded to the Circle Line which is the train en route to my home. I waited for the train for a few minutes... but when it finally came... I just let it passed me by. I took a deep breath for luck, grabbed my bag & tripod and hurried to the Red Line train to go to Macritchie, I just had to give it one more push before calling it a day.
I had to endure 8 train stations and a 20 minute bus ride heading toward the reservoir to make sure there is no turning back.
At the site, there were a few trace of clouds but it was generally clear. I decided not to go to the inner parts of the reservoir where the path is dark and just shoot on this Gazebo-like structure where there are nearby lamp posts. I took out my android phone, launched Google Sky Map and pointed it to the sky. Polaris was at the right side of the Gazebo but not yet visible as it was still on the horizon. Knowing this would be nice as the concentric formation of the star trails should be visible in my frame starting at the right side. I did a few test shots to get the right framing, focus and exposure. I settled for ISO 800, f5.6 aperture (largest at 18mm on my Sigma ultra wide angle lens) and a 20 second shutter.Fresh set of batteries, already done beforehand. Set my K-x to remote and prepared to do it the manual way! Yes, unlike the Pentax K-5, my camera doesn't have an intervalometer for a hassle free interval shooting. So every 20 seconds I had to trip the remote, making sure there is less gap as possible in the shooting time.
After about more than 10 frames of continuous shooting, I realized I forgot to do a critical thing... I haven't deleted the photos from the previous weeks of shooting! The last time I checked at Marina Barrage, I still had some 60 more shots on my 8 GB memory card; this leaves me with even less frames as I made some test shots just a few minutes ago. I was in shambles! Do I start it all over again? I did a mental calculation of how long some 60 shots or less would last, but having a "20 second timer" to add to the pressure of this "math quiz" was daunting! I decided to just continue shooting until the card fills up. I got 50 frames, then the camera refused to shoot anymore. I went home on a taxi exhausted after the half day of shooting.
The next day, it was time to do the second half of the work. Post processing!
Loading 50 layers of 12 MP photos on a "2008 state of the art" version of the GIMP was not a good idea. My i5 processor system was almost giving up on it. Making a few changes on the visibility of the layers or saving an XCF file would take 20-30 minutes, at one point I mistook that it already hanged and due to that lost my work.
I had to start again from scratch, this time adding more patience to my workflow. I realized as well that the few clouds that crossed my frames that night would already require a ton of work, masking out each on all 50 frames!
I literally finished at midnight having only done the processing for this image. The result may not be perfect at 100% zoom as the star trails were not smooth maybe because of the multiple frames and the lack of a consistent intervalometer (compared to a single frame [ultra long] exposure technique). The trails may be faint and not as vivid or bright as other star trail photos because of the light pollution. But nevertheless, I am proud of what I have done in this photo. All the hard work I did for those 2 days were all worth it!
This is my 200th photo on Flickr. Already a milestone for me, as I pursue this passion.
Thank you for reading this far! ;-)
God's handiwork is truly amazing! Best viewed in black. Press L + F11
1000 Seconds at Macritchie Reservoir
50 frames. 20 second exposure. And a lot of patience.
On a clear night sky, almost an hour after the moonset at 10:14 PM, I started shooting for star trails at Macritchie Reservoir. Albeit the moonless Singapore night sky, it was still not ideal for astrophotography as the sky never gets pitch dark because of the massive light pollution; I nevertheless had to try it.
Prior to that, I had already begun shooting on a different location (Marina Barrage) a few hours before dusk. See sample photo:
Throughout that day I was contemplating on whether I should pursue the star trails shoot at Macritchie Reservoir. Checking every hour if the weather report is accurate and suitable for what I was planning. Determining which is the best way of transportation (train, bus, taxi) as the two spots were very far apart! And considering that by nighttime the Marina Barrage shoot would already have exhausted me.
I wrapped up shooting at Marina Barrage at almost 9 in the evening, it was a sunset shoot and then some nightscape. Even after leaving the place I was still unsure of my next step, do I carry on with the original plan or just go home and get some Zzzzz's? I was tempted to leave my fate to my phone's toss coin app. :D
At the Marina Bay train station, I already proceeded to the Circle Line which is the train en route to my home. I waited for the train for a few minutes... but when it finally came... I just let it passed me by. I took a deep breath for luck, grabbed my bag & tripod and hurried to the Red Line train to go to Macritchie, I just had to give it one more push before calling it a day.
I had to endure 8 train stations and a 20 minute bus ride heading toward the reservoir to make sure there is no turning back.
At the site, there were a few trace of clouds but it was generally clear. I decided not to go to the inner parts of the reservoir where the path is dark and just shoot on this Gazebo-like structure where there are nearby lamp posts. I took out my android phone, launched Google Sky Map and pointed it to the sky. Polaris was at the right side of the Gazebo but not yet visible as it was still on the horizon. Knowing this would be nice as the concentric formation of the star trails should be visible in my frame starting at the right side. I did a few test shots to get the right framing, focus and exposure. I settled for ISO 800, f5.6 aperture (largest at 18mm on my Sigma ultra wide angle lens) and a 20 second shutter.Fresh set of batteries, already done beforehand. Set my K-x to remote and prepared to do it the manual way! Yes, unlike the Pentax K-5, my camera doesn't have an intervalometer for a hassle free interval shooting. So every 20 seconds I had to trip the remote, making sure there is less gap as possible in the shooting time.
After about more than 10 frames of continuous shooting, I realized I forgot to do a critical thing... I haven't deleted the photos from the previous weeks of shooting! The last time I checked at Marina Barrage, I still had some 60 more shots on my 8 GB memory card; this leaves me with even less frames as I made some test shots just a few minutes ago. I was in shambles! Do I start it all over again? I did a mental calculation of how long some 60 shots or less would last, but having a "20 second timer" to add to the pressure of this "math quiz" was daunting! I decided to just continue shooting until the card fills up. I got 50 frames, then the camera refused to shoot anymore. I went home on a taxi exhausted after the half day of shooting.
The next day, it was time to do the second half of the work. Post processing!
Loading 50 layers of 12 MP photos on a "2008 state of the art" version of the GIMP was not a good idea. My i5 processor system was almost giving up on it. Making a few changes on the visibility of the layers or saving an XCF file would take 20-30 minutes, at one point I mistook that it already hanged and due to that lost my work.
I had to start again from scratch, this time adding more patience to my workflow. I realized as well that the few clouds that crossed my frames that night would already require a ton of work, masking out each on all 50 frames!
I literally finished at midnight having only done the processing for this image. The result may not be perfect at 100% zoom as the star trails were not smooth maybe because of the multiple frames and the lack of a consistent intervalometer (compared to a single frame [ultra long] exposure technique). The trails may be faint and not as vivid or bright as other star trail photos because of the light pollution. But nevertheless, I am proud of what I have done in this photo. All the hard work I did for those 2 days were all worth it!
This is my 200th photo on Flickr. Already a milestone for me, as I pursue this passion.
Thank you for reading this far! ;-)
God's handiwork is truly amazing! Best viewed in black. Press L + F11