Killed the stars

Well Tim and I headed out to try our hand at some star trails. Wasn't a huge success, but we learned a bit for next time.

Things to note for next time:

• The more distance from the city the better. We were way out at Samford, but the light polution from the sky was still too bright.
  
• Gotta face South to get the circle of stars.
  
• More photos, shorter exposures. I did 6 photos at 10 minutes each with 20 seconds gap in between to let the sensor cool down, though even with the cool down time I still had a fair bit of noise in my shots. Will try 5 minutes on and 20 seconds off next time
• Higher ground is better. We were near a creek and it filled up with fog which meant I was wiping my lens a fair bit to get the condensation off. Bad move, I bumped the lens so many times - as painfully obvious in the final shot.
  
• Don't leave the car sticking out into the road.... despite how much one would think there would be no cars out there at that time of nite.. there is.
  
• Take something entertaining to do cus you'll be standing around for ages.
  
• Don't drink lots of water, makes you want to piss alot
• And finally, find a more interesting foreground. I darkened my foreground in this shot just cus it was really blurry from being bumped so many times, but it wasn't exactly interesting.

So.. the image. Looks like crap - but you live and you learn.