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Stars and star trails        Images © Mark A. Chappell

These images are long exposures taken in the eastern Sierra.   The top image was taken in the South Tufa reserve on Mono lake in eastern California; it's a 30 second exposure with the foreground illuminated with my flashlight.   The other four images are hour-long exposures.   Three are aimed at Polaris (the North Star), and all show the apparent rotation of the stars over time (of course, it's the Earth rotating, not the stars themselves).   The image below at left shows the view across Mono Lake from the South Tufa reserve. The other pictures were taken near Convict Creek in Mono County, California.             Long exposures with digital cameras are a compromise between ISO (sensitivity), aperture, exposure time, and the inexorable increase in sensor noise over time: a longer exposure = longer star trails but more noise.   I've yet to take an image of star trails that I'm really satisfied with.   They're hard on batteries in digital cameras as well, and one is basically limited to one or two pictures per night.   This is one scenario when film -- without sensor noise -- may be more effective than digital equipment.

Canon 30D or 1D II, Canon 17-40 or Sigma 12-24 lenses (2007)