r/pics Aug 13 '21

Long Exposure I took of myself climbing in The Needles of South Dakota with LEDs tied to my body.

Post image
833 Upvotes

View all comments

27

u/shatteredankle Aug 13 '21

This is a composite shot. The Milky Way was shot at f/1.4, ISO 1600, and 15 sec. The climbing was shot at f/11, ISO 320, and 368 sec.

The climb itself is just over 100 feet tall.

3

u/Jakubada Aug 13 '21

where can i read up what all of that means? i only understand that you shot the milky way before and added if afterwards so the night sky wont get blurred,right?

2

u/shatteredankle Aug 13 '21

/u/christjan08 gave you a good answer.

The one thing that I'll add, is that with a longer exposure time, the stars start streaking through the sky rather quickly. This depends on the focal length, but with a 24mm on a full frame, I stick with a maximum exposure length of 15 seconds. Anything longer than that, the stars start looking blurry.

Obviously, it takes me longer than 15 seconds to do a climb like this, so I shot the stars from the same position with the intention of replacing the blurry stars from the climbing exposure. Here's the 368 second exposure without the stars composited in.

lonelyspeck.com is a great resource if you are interested in learning more about astrophotography specifically.

And if you have any other questions, feel free to ask away.

2

u/karmalizing Aug 13 '21

You know, I kind of like the raw 368 second one exposure better overall. Great pic.

3

u/shatteredankle Aug 13 '21

It certainly gives a better sense of time passing which I like. I've got a few where I've left in the streaking stars.