Hi,
Just wondering how long of an exposure folks have taken with their 1Ds III, for things like star trails. I believe that I've seen stories of 30 minutes on a single battery, so I'm wondering how long of shots folks have taken with the battery or with the AC adapter.

Ted

bump...
I'm also curious...

I'm looking for a canon with a longer than 30 sec exposure... Currently have an XS (1000)

They all can have longer than 30 secs. You just need to put it onto bulb and use a remote like the RC1 (for the rebels and 5d2) and a watch

Interesting to see how long any of the bodies will go on a charge though

I did a 36 minute exposure a few weeks ago. An hour shouldn't be a problem.
But for low noise you might want to consider stacking multiple images.

I did an hour exposure back in the day with my 10D. Other than a few hot pixels, the result was incredible. My arms sure got tired though.

If you turn noise reduction off then I guess maybe an hour. If it's on then half that.

So if I have a rebel, put it on bulb and use the remote to start the exposure and the remote to end it? Or do I have to hold the remote the entire time?

The remote button locks in on Canon's remote cables... you set it, and leave it until you wan to end the exposure.

good stuff. thank you.

I think the 1Ds3 isn't very suitable for long exposure night sky shooting, because of the amp noise. Although long exposure NR should help.

Where is Stanj when you need him?

canon pants wrote:
good stuff. thank you.

On your rebel, if you use the RC1 (the little cheap IR remote) you set the camera to Bulb and also set the drive mode to remote. then you press the button on the mote to start (go away have a coffe) and press to finish.

Wow, I thought this thread had died a lonely death. Interesting that it came back 7 months later. FWIW, the 1DsIII has an amazing battery. Since this post I've taken star trail pics at 5 minute exposures, 1 sec delay then another 5 minute, etc for 7 and a half hours and still had about a 1/4 charge on the battery. I haven't tried a lengthy single exposure though since the 5 minute time with stacking works well.

tandlh, how about showing us how that turned out? I am very interesting in seeing the result of that image.

As others have pointed out you need to decide if you really want a hour+ exposure. If you do that everything in the exposure (trees, sky background, lights in the distance, buildings, etc) will be pretty bright unless it is very dark. I found a more practical solution is use a program like Startrails or one of the PS scripts to stack images. This will let you take a series of shorter exposure (ex. 3 minutes ) and combine them. This results in darker surroundings and with the stars still forming trails. To do this you need to get intervelometer that will repeated take multiple exposures of the desired length. I got mine from eBay for $30 or so.