Astro fun

I was going to go out into the depths of the countryside last night and shoot a star movement timelapse. Instead I set the camera up down the back of the apartment complex green (in the wild grass). I figured I would do a test run first.Here's the result of shooting 13" exposures at ISO800 (f5.6) on my 40D. I could've used the 5D with the 24 @ f2.8 with a lower ISO, but I was loathe to leave it out there just in case.The movie is up on Vimeo.

Night Timelapse test from Sean McCormack on Vimeo.

With help from John Beardsworth on Twitter, I was able to muck around and make the process of stacking these images to create a timelapse into an action.The process is straightforward: First run File>Automate>Load files into Stack. Select the files. Next my action selects the layers, converts to a Smart Object, then chooses Layers>Smart Objects>Stack Mode>Maximum, resulting in a star trail image.