In camera processing time? My Nikon D5500 takes about 5 minutes to process a 25 minute exposure of star trails and about a minute to process a 30 second exposure of the milky way. I...

guardineer

My Nikon D5500 takes about 5 minutes to process a 25 minute exposure of star trails and about a minute to process a 30 second exposure of the milky way. I can't do anything with the camera during this processing time. Is this normal for my camera and for other model cameras?

MrBossHK Loc: The West Valley of Phoenix metro area

Basically, YES. Look at page 243 in your D5500 Manual with regards to Long Exposure Noise Reduction setting.

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

guardineer wrote:

My Nikon D5500 takes about 5 minutes to process a 25 minute exposure of star trails and about a minute to process a 30 second exposure of the milky way. I can't do anything with the camera during this processing time. Is this normal for my camera and for other model cameras?

Probably sounds about right. Does your camera get warm at all? I've tried a few several minute longish exposures with my somewhat older Pentax K-20D and it takes as least as long as the exposure to process and save an image (no fancy in-camera effects or processing either) and the darn thing gets warm! I have not tried any exposures longer than 30 seconds with my newer Pentax camera thus far.

I've done star trails using a intervalometer doing say 5 second exposures and wait 5 seconds, and repeat for 45 minutes. Camera is much happier and does not get hot at all. That was done with a K-5.

My understand is that it was one of the differences with the professional Nikon cameras like say a D3 or D4, is that you can take long exposures with no heat worries.

rgrenaderphoto Loc: Hollywood, CA

MrBossHK wrote:

Basically, YES. Look at page 243 in your D5500 Manual with regards to Long Exposure Noise Reduction setting.

Which you should always turn off.

rgrenaderphoto Loc: Hollywood, CA

lamiaceae wrote:

Probably sounds about right. Does your camera get... (show quote)

When I do star trails on a Nikon D801 or D850, the exposures are 4 minutes long for 90 minutes total. Never saw any overheating issues. One shoot was in Summer where the nighttime temperatures were still in the high 80s

Steve Perry Loc: Sylvania, Ohio

Try this for star trails, you'll get less noise and hot pixels in the final image:

https://backcountrygallery.com/how-to-photograph-star-trails/

Also, Long Exposure Noise Reduction is what causes the "processing" wait. The camera basically shoots a dark slide to map out noise caused by the camera circuitry. It's really a good way to go for most long exposures, but not for star trails.

guardineer

Thank you all for your replies and suggestions. I will put them to the test. I don't have any heating issues, just inquiring about the long processing time.

JimH123 Loc: Morgan Hill, CA

rgrenaderphoto wrote:

Which you should always turn off.

Let me add something to that statement. If the user is prepared to handle things like dark frames to remove hot pixels, then I would say yes to turning off long exposure noise reduction.

If the user does not want to do that, then it is best to leave it on.

Also, different cameras tend to have some more, some less, numbers of hot pixels. The hotter the sensor becomes, the more you get. They are easy to spot on the individual images. And some SW tries to identify and remove them. But the sw tends to fail when you have 2 or more hot pixels in contact with each other. But even in these cases, long exposure noise reduction, or dark frames will remove those hot pixels too.

JimH123 Loc: Morgan Hill, CA

guardineer wrote:

Thank you all for your replies and suggestions. I will put them to the test. I don't have any heating issues, just inquiring about the long processing time.

You can, or will, have heating issues as the number of exposures goes up. I have seen the message on the LCD telling me that the temperature is too hot and it stops taking images. But it takes a lot of long exposures to get there.

JimH123 Loc: Morgan Hill, CA

Steve Perry wrote:

Try this for star trails, you'll get less noise and hot pixels in the final image:

https://backcountrygallery.com/how-to-photograph-star-trails/

Also, Long Exposure Noise Reduction is what causes the "processing" wait. The camera basically shoots a dark slide to map out noise caused by the camera circuitry. It's really a good way to go for most long exposures, but not for star trails.

Well, if you use long exposure noise reduction for star trails, you end up with dashed lines. I think there is SW to connect the dashes, but I have never given it a try.

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

JimH123 wrote:

Let me add something to that statement. If the us... (show quote)

I was not talking about hot pixels, I was talking about thermal heat from the camera itself (not good).

Steve Perry Loc: Sylvania, Ohio

JimH123 wrote:

Well, if you use long exposure noise reduction for star trails, you end up with dashed lines. I think there is SW to connect the dashes, but I have never given it a try.

In the video, I explicitly say not to use long exposure NR for that exact reason. I was simply explaining what it was.

SharpShooter Loc: NorCal

guardineer wrote:

My Nikon D5500 takes about 5 minutes to process a 25 minute exposure of star trails and about a minute to process a 30 second exposure of the milky way. I can't do anything with the camera during this processing time. Is this normal for my camera and for other model cameras?

The more your camera does, the longer it will take.
You can also try to shoot at a slightly lower than max mp to speed things up. If you don't need the resolution it might make a difference as well!
SS

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Steve Perry wrote:

Try this for star trails, you'll get less noise and hot pixels in the final image:

https://backcountrygallery.com/how-to-photograph-star-trails/

Also, Long Exposure Noise Reduction is what causes the "processing" wait. The camera basically shoots a dark slide to map out noise caused by the camera circuitry. It's really a good way to go for most long exposures, but not for star trails.

Excellent video!

Also -
http://digital-photography-school.com/tips-for-successful-star-trails-photography/

guardineer

Thanks to everyone again. I did watch the star trails video. I knew of the stacking method but had decided that I would forego the pain of Photoshop. Steve, you convinced me to try. I guess an analogy is skiing. After retirement I took 16 lessons. Knowledge, skills and practice made me a better skier, the same must be true of post processing. And no fear of broken legs!