Star Trails and Light Painting

The other night, while we were out shooting the eclipse and doing some light painting, I wanted to take advantage of the situation and attempt to get some star trails.  With the full moon, there was a ton of ambient light so I wasn't sure how things would turn out.  I set up my first camera with the backhoe in front of the night sky, filling most of the frame.  I then dialed in my settings for a 30 second exposure.  Once I got the results I was looking for, I locked down the shutter and let it do it's thing.  For the next hour and fifteen minutes or so, the camera did it's thing while we carried on with some light painting.  The images were created using the Canon 1D Mk IV and the Canon 16-35mm f/2.8L lens.  The files were processed in CS5 and stacked using the Stacker Action from www.starcircleacademy.com.

The second image was done using the same technique with a second camera.  The big difference here is that this camera managed to catch all of the light painting that was going on.  It made for a pretty chaotic image, but kind of cool anyways.  If you look closely, you can even see some star trails.  This image was created using the Canon 40D and the Canon 24-70mm f/2.8L lens.  The same process was used to build the composite in post processing.