Drone Gallery CES 2015 (Part III)

Here is the complete image gallery of drones.

All seen at the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show.

#CESdrones

We saw many varieties of unmanned systems on the show floor in 2015. I took images of every one that I could over the four days in Vegas.  Here is a gallery of those images.  It is a good resource for years to come.  We can look back upon this gallery and see how the market evolves.

Lets take a look at some of the highlights from 2015's #CESdrones...

The DJI Inspire1 was the star of the unmanned systems group. The booth drew the biggest crowds and garnered the most attention from attendees and buyers.

Zano was the smallest big this this year, showing its tiny modular concept.

AirDog lead the pack of Follow Drone projects as the first in that space....

but Hexo+ took all the honors for the category of Follow Drones. Visit http://hexoplus.com/ for more information.

Unmanned Systems is a group of devices that are not all Aerial.  Here is TTRobotics TTR-SB Seawolf, underwater GoPro platform.

Special Projects, like SkySpecs anti collision avoidance system will be vital to commercial use safety. 

There are tons more in the gallery. CES2015 was a blast for a geek like myself. This was my 4th year in a row at the show.  Expect me to continue this spotlight next year at the Consumer Electronics Show. 

#CESdrones - George Krieger (xarray)

Click the image above for the gallery...

contact George Krieger at george@xarray.com

Drone makers become Camera makers and compete with GoPro.

Part II 

Consumer Drones are all about the cameras

The DJI Inspire1 

The #CESdrones have leaders and followers.  Last year there were only a few OEM's. This year there was a mob of them.  Drones were seen in almost every hall.  The market for consumer drones is growing exponentially.  It has revealed a clear winner in these early stages of unmanned systems. It has shown that DJI Global has captured the largest market share of the consumer business. Most consumer drones are purchased for capturing imagery and DJI has risen to the top of that segment.

DJI Phantom series Vision+ platform with proprietary camera and RAW image support.

I saw drones everywhere from the first hour I walked around the show floor, which was during setup on the day before the show opened to the public. In every building and almost every show hall until the show ended. The only place drones were not seen, was in the skies over Las Vegas.  The area has very strict and well known rules forbidding unmanned systems from flying there.  Inside the Las Vegas Convention Center flying was allowed for those who had a protected area, designed for safe demo flying. (Attendees were not allowed to fly)  

DJI Global's X3/ FC350 camera mounted on a prototype handheld gimbal

Over the past 2 years DJI has actually specialized in photographic drones so much, that they are now a camera OEM, as well.  It started with their FC40 camera.  Then they released the Vision+ camera, and now it is the Inspire1's camera called the X3 model #FC350. This is the companies first 4k offering and they even showed a prototype handheld gimbal for it at their CES booth.

Sprite Limited is an action camera OEM and new Drone manufacturer

Copying is a Form of Flattery or a Market Strategy?

It is kind of ironic that DJI has become a small sensor camera manufacturer, because they are being treated very much like GoPro.  Other manufacturers are copying DJI Global product's look and features.  When I asked one booth attendant what the difference was from the DJI model, she said "It's Cheaper!!!"  That is probably a very true statement.  Companies that copy product designs  and release them as cheaper alternatives, are not good at making them work as well as the originals.  They lack the software and user design features that make the original worth owning. Some drone OEM's even fail to include basic safety features that are key to making the original a good seller.

AeroView's Product line at CES (notice no round edges in this copy)

So, if DJI Global owns market share who else is in the game?

The only other major manufacturer at CES this year was Parrot.  With 3D Robotics not showing and Walkera having a very small booth, with a useless crew, not much else was here from the top players.  It was like DJI scared them all away. Several specialized OEM's represented this year, including Harwar and Hubsan. The biggest contingent on the 2015 CES show floor were crowd funded & award winning drone companies like Nixie, Hexo+, AirDog, Ghost, and Zano.

Hexo+ is a crowd funded follow drone system. (A drone designed to follow and image you)

Why was 3D Robotics a no-show for CES2015?  There have been a few speculations, but most likely it is a combination of product cycle and money. 3DR had no real new products to show this year, and CES is expensive, as well as time consuming.  Many companies take a year off the show floor, when they are in development cycles.  The other expected new OEM was GoPro, but they did not offer any news of a drone in their future.  The interesting thing was that they also did not deny that they were working on one.  That is not much to go on, but since DJI is making their own cameras and testing handheld gimbals, GoPro might be losing aerial purposed sales.  I guess there is only so much you can assume about things that were NOT at CES.  You never know what is coming next in this arena.  I hope we see less copies and more innovation.

Lets see some New Drones

Parrot Showed off their Exom system for mapping and filming using SenseFly.

A closer look at the Parrot Exom camera

Parrot is not just a drone OEM, they are born from an Automotive Infotainment group that also makes consumer products for smartphones and tablets.  Now they are a camera OEM, as you can see from their Exom and Beebop products.

Parrot Beebop Drone with proprietary camera. It features image stabilization without a gimbal

If the CES booth told us anything, it is that Parrot is getting into mapping this year.  They showed several platforms that can use their SenseFly system, including the Ebee Agricultural Mapping fixed wing platform.

Parrot Ebee Mapping Platform (uses the SenseFly system like the Exom model)

Parrot showed their mapping and camera prowess with realtime 3D mapping demo based on the Nvidia Tegra Chipset.  The project uses 2 BeeBop cameras to do stereo-imaging, and provides a real time visual output of the image building.  Mapping is the next big thing for unmanned aerial systems. 3D and "4D" mapping are going to be a huge part of the mapping innovations coming out. (4D mapping is 3D mapping with a 4th dimension of information) 

Parrot BeeBop 3D Mapping project powered by Nvidia Tegra

Walkera was at the show, but had a very small booth. They did present a new flagship product called Voyager3.  The booth attendants were not very helpful and knew almost nothing about the new offering.  

Walkera's Voyager3 with a proprietary camera that lowers as the landing gear raises.

From what I was able to find out, the new platform will have a 4K camera and retracting landing gear. The proprietary camera will lower as the legs raise providing a 360 degree unobstructed rotation.  The final configuration of this new aircraft looks very similar to the Inspire1 from DJI.  The features are very different and do not seem to be as good as the Inspire1.  In their defense, Walkera did say that this product was still under development.

DJI's Inspire1 being presented on stage by Eric Cheng director of Photography at DJI

DJI shipped their first batch of pre-ordered Inspire1 drones just days before the show.  The Inspire1 was announced and demonstrated back in the fall. The expected release date in December was missed due to something going wrong with the production.  The exact reason was never really specified, but the result was surely a better released product and a lot of angry customers.  Those angry customers would have been much worse off if DJI did ship on time.  It was a hard time for DJI, but a good decision in the long run.  Now Inspire1 is shipping the production unit and I have been told by several Beta unit pilots that the new one is much better at everything.  I got to fly an Inspire1 Beta unit about a week before writing this. I saw some of the issues with it and it was still one of the best machines I have ever flown.

Harwar industrial drone used by border patrol and private security firms

Harwar was one the specialized OEM's on the show floor, but they really don't make consumer aircraft. Their main business is commercial use drones for surveillance.

Hubsan X4 Pro with a feature so important they had to write it down on a piece of paper

Hubsan showed off quite a few drone models in their booth.  They had minidrones, fixed wing styles and this curious model called the X4 Pro. The main feature was 4K live video that you can share.  Considering that there is no way to transmit true live 4K video I am sure the transmission is not 4K just the source.  They could give me no information to back up this hand written sign.

Hubsan's GPS Spy Hawk 

To summarize the consumer drones at CES this year, I would have to say that there is starting to be a real crossover between the unmanned systems space and the action camera space.  The biggest thing I saw in drones was new cameras. Less and less aerial platforms are using GoPro's and are instead starting to make their own cameras.  There is even a couple of camera manufacturers that are now making drones, like Sprite Limited and AEE.  

Sprite Limited is an action camera OEM that now makes drones.

These two markets are going to become more and more blurred over time. A drone is nothing more than a tripod for a small sensor camera. But a tripod that you can move in 3D space. The two products are in need of the other.  A drone without a camera is as bad as a camera without a view.  After seeing all this camera and drone crossover happening, it is hard to imagine that GoPro is not making their own drone platform.  There were also news stories that popped up back in November on the Wall Street Journal that hinted about this possibility.

Action camera OEM AEE  is now a drone OEM as well.

Stay tuned for my next report on the drones of CES. We will talk about the crowd funded drone phenomena.

Trace Live Networks claim to be a content company whose main product is a social network and a camera platform.  It was easily the most forward thinking camera OEM's that had a drone aspect.  One of their cameras is mounted in a follow drone. Their main focus is the live aspect and sharing live streams through their social platform. I think that this combination of social content and drones is here to stay.  DJI already has one such project, www.skypixel.com.

George Krieger is a tech enthusiast, teacher of Aerial Imagery as a Master at TheArcanum.com and a photographer, that has used capturing imagery as a way to do physical therapy.  All images copyright 2015 George Krieger.

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Unmanned Systems take over the CES Show in 2015 (#CESdrones) Part I

Part I The Future is Automated

all images copyright George Krieger 2015

This year was a breakout year for Drones at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada.  The main section called Unmanned Aerial Systems was huge, compared to last year's group of only 2-3 OEM's.  This year saw so many drones, in so many areas, that I still do not have a good number on how many I saw.  

Let's get right into it and show you what I found, that flies, at CES this year.


One of the most interesting projects at CES was a Kickstarter called Spiri. Created by Patrick Edwards-Daugherty it was successfully funded on September 11th 2013 to the tune of $140K beating their $125K goal soundly. 

Spiri on the CES show floor

 Spiri is designed to be a flying API. It will provide a stable flying platform for programmers to utilize. From my talk with Patrick, I found out that they built this with gaming and Geo-spacial Perspective in mind. They want to augment coding to be safe for flight by making a safe hardware platform. The programmers would need to know nothing about drones to utilize this platform. The functions of stability and safety would be built in, and part of every available command.  This way the program may fail but the unmanned autonomous system would stay in flight and not be affected by a fatal error in the added software. Certainly this will advance innovation by taking many of the hurdles away from adding drones into your code.

Spiri is already a successful Kickstarter and they are getting support from large operations like here at the Freescale exhibit, where Spiri was featured.

Another amazing project that I saw at CES 2015 was the Collision Avoidance project by SkySpecs.  Daniel Ellis, CEO of SkySpecs was walking this DJI S900 

SkySpecs, Guardian Collision Avoidance system

version of their system through the halls of CES. We chatted for a few minutes, and now I can see their vision.  The Guardian system from SkySpecs is an automated co-pilot that senses potential collisions and gently takes control, just long enough to correct the flight path, then returns to operator control.  The pilot of the craft should hardly notice that they have been assisted. For things like inspection drones and search and rescue operations, being able to forget about colliding into anything and focus on your objective is vital. The result should be safer flights with less focus on flight paths and needing a spotter and more immersion into the core focus of the project the drone is doing.  It is an infrastructure that could be built into most platforms as it gets smaller and lighter.  See their site www.skyspecs.com for more information and if you want your company to be an early adopter the application is here                                       http://www.skyspecs.com/earlyadopter/

UPDATE:
I spoke with SkySpecs today about their early adopter program.  From the questions they asked me and the information I was told, they are choosing a limited number of testers to fly a S900 with their collision avoidance prototype on-board. Since they are providing the aircraft, and not just the added features, they will charge a monthly fee to "rent" the system and test it.  The current whisper price is $400 per month on a 6 month contract.  They claim the system can stop an S900 from hitting a wall, while going full throttle. They said it would stop it dead in its tracks. Using 270 degree LIDAR, SkySpec's collision avoidance system is able to detect objects in the same plane as the aircraft. It can then take control of the system and make navigational commands to "avoid" the object it is tracking.  It then returns control to the pilot, allowing continuation of the flight. There is a 90 degree gap in the coverage which is well within the view of the cameras we use.  For most purposes collision avoidance is not needed forward while using FPV.  You should be able to see what is in front of you.

This system will allow pilots to immerse themselves into their flight's purpose and concentrate on their professional, creative, or scientific goals. Scientists will be able to collect water samples, and not have to worry about hitting the trees. Inspection crews will be able to focus on the inspection, instead of worrying about the airborne unit hitting the crane boom. Search and rescue will be able ti use goggles and keep their attention on finding and rescuing rather than flight paths and tricky terrain or crowded environments.  Cinematic pilots will be able to film, instead of filming half the time and hoping to keep the shot in-frame when using line of sight to check where the camera drone is.  In addition, the system will augment the fail safe return to home functions, by adding collision avoidance to the path.

The Follow- Drones are coming to film you!

The first follow-drone was a huge kickstarter success.  Airdog, the Auto-Follow Drone was seeking $200K and got over $1.3 million vaulting them into aerial legends.  

AirDog and its wrist beacon/controller called an AirLeash 

AirDog's basic concept has been copied by several other unmanned projects, but they are the original as far as I can tell.  Their features are basic but well rounded and seemingly functional. The arms can fold and the frame is made for very rough use.  Features include:

• DURABLE  Durable and weather resistant construction

• FLIGHT TIME 10-20 minutes flight time depending on flight speed

• BATTERY Interchangeable 14.8 V, 5000mAh, LiPo batteries

• WIND RESISTANCE Wind resistance up to 28 knots (14 m/s)

• TOP SPEED Top speed, 40 mph (software limited)

• RANGE AirLeash range up to 1000 feet (300 m)

• OPERATIONAL CEILING Operational ceiling, 14000 feet above sea level (4300 m)

• WEIGHT Total weight 4 lbs (1.85 kg) with battery and GoPro camera

AirDog can be pre-ordered here for $1295 usd

https://www.airdog.com/pre-order-yours

Follow me with your eyes.

Trace Live Networks was showing a follow-drone called the FLYR1. The difference in their technology was that it only uses the camera for this function... no gps or electronic beacons.  Nothing to home in with except the camera. 

Trace Live Networks FLYR1 drone will follow you using only the camera.

After the Trace loses view of its objective it will gently land and wait for you to get it.  Trace is focused on action sports capture but is not limiting the Trace device to be a drone.  There are 2 other options for Trace. It can be tripod mounted and they have a little RC style car they can mount it on top of too. Another thing about Trace and their Live Network, they are not calling themselves a drone or camera company. They consider themselves a content company.  Pre-order signup is available but there is no set price yet. Go to http://www.trace.com/ for more information.

In this space there is another Kickstarter legend called the Hexo+. 

HEXO+ winner of the CES Envisioneering award this year.

HEXO+ went for $50k in crowd funding and got over $1.3 million just like AirDog. They call themselves "Your Autonomous Aerial Camera-Drone"  They had a rocky time at CES, from what I heard. They crashed their only prototype during an interview before the event even started.  Then they came in and won 2 awards for their efforts.


Here are their detailed specs to compare with AirDog:

General

• Dimensions: 62 x 52 x 12 cm - 24 x 20 x 5 inches
• Total weight: 980 g - 2.2 lbs 
• Hexacopter design with 30° tilt propellers 
• Speed range: up to 70 kmh - 45mph
• Flight time: 15 min with 3S battery, gimbal and GoPro attached

Flight controller

• Filming distance range:  Technically, the drone can be as far from the GPS as 2 kilometers, but we advise you to research and respect your local regulations. 
• Auto take-off and auto landing
• Trajectory anticipation 
• Video target locking* 
• GPS + onboard sensor position tracking
• Processor with MAVLINK protocol

Gimbal 

• High performance 2D brushless gimbal
• Easy attach/detach from drone body for transportation
• GoPro mount
• Camera
• GoPro Hero3+ Black Edition or Hero3 White Edition available

App

• iOS and Android versions 
• Intuitive 3D framing or intuitive live view framing* 
• Favorite framing presets
• Subject framing lock
• Emergency landing 

Get yours pre-ordered for $1149usd here 
http://hexoplus.com/products/hexo

Next we will look at the Drone Clones and how some smaller companies copy rather than  innovate. 

So in summary, the unmanned aerial systems of tomorrow, will have more autonomous features than manual control. Having a drone camera follow you during action sports activities will be the norm. We also learned that drone platforms will include a flying API platform and collision avoidance to allow you to focus on the goals for flying in the first place. Safety and stabilized programmable flight with more functions than most piloted aircraft will be the norm.  Aerial sensors are going to change the way we live and how much we know about our surroundings.  Remember this is the Consumer Electronics Show, so we are not seeing the purely B2B drone operations here. I suppose that will  be most evident at the NAB show in April.


All images and writings by George Krieger.  Write to george@xarray.com for permission to use this article or the images contained in it.

A Drone's unique perspective shows us the Real Shape of a Rainbow.

Captured at 390ft altitude with a DJI Vision+ Flying Camera copyright George Krieger

A new perspective can show us things we never knew existed. . . and it can change how we think of even common things like rainbows

From my Facebook, Google+ and Twitter post:
"Double Rainbow Over The Monterey Bay this morning!!!

This happened at dawn just before the rain started falling.  I took 3 perspectives of this double refractive beauty to see if I could show you something special about rainbows that you probably did not realize.  You will see that perspective is everything to how things look in our mind."

You have learned since childhood what the shape of a rainbow is...  and You Were Brainwashed !!!  

The main things we were taught about rainbows as kids was  that what we see is the same thing that a prism does. Which is not the whole truth. Rainbows are caused by water droplets which are not prisms but have prismatic qualities.  The science teacher always showed us a prism that split light into the different frequencies we see as color just like a rainbow does. The problem is that rainbows are based on spherical water droplets with a "prismatic" bending effect rather than a light straightening triangular prism which directs light differently. Most importantly they never told us that rainbows are not "rainbow shaped".

The best explanation I could find about rainbows states that they are actually shaped like cones and that there are almost always double rainbows if you look hard enough:

From the URL http://mysite.du.edu/~jcalvert/astro/bow.htm
The variables influencing the rainbow are the altitude of the sun, and the size of the raindrops in which the rainbow is seen. The rainbow is a cone making an angle of 42° with the antisolar direction, which is normally beneath the horizon for an observer on the surface. When the sun is at an elevation of 42°, only a little arc at the top is visible at the horizon. As the sun sinks, the arc of the rainbow rises in the sky, until at sunset it forms a semicircle. The eye interprets the light arriving on the cone as a circle somewhere in space, though the rainbow is really only a direction. If the observer is at a slight elevation, some of the rainbow can be seen beneath the horizon, in front of not too distant objects, which gives the impression of a physical existence not too far away. The story of the "pot of gold" at the end of the rainbow takes advantage of this illusion to send fools on a quest. The rainbow just keeps receding as they try to approach it. We should realize that the rainbow is a cooperative effect of many raindrops, with considerable depth, and that our visual impression is the best the visual sense can do with its data. When you see a rainbow, try to estimate its apparent distance from you, or its apparent size.

 Let me show you what a rainbow really looks like.  The following three perspectives demonstrate the science behind this basic optical effect. Here are the images followed by my explanation of what you are seeing and where it was taken from.

Image No.1 | Ground Level | Nikon D800E |  by George Krieger
We are only seeing 1/2 of a rainbow or less from ground level!!!

Image No.1:  (Ground Level) To us a rainbow is a 1/2 spherical arc generated by sunlight refracting through  water droplets in the air. We see this only because our visual perspective is too close to the earth.  If we go further up we can see more. Here we are limited visually to the true magnitude of this phenomena.  

Image No.1 | 200 ft Altitude | DJI Vision+  |  by George Krieger

Image No.2:  (200 ft Elevation)  Here is a clue as to what a rainbow really looks like. Look at the shape it is clearly more of a circle than in image No.1 and the only thing that has changed is the elevation of your perspective and the drone was flying about 20 feet away from the original picture to the left. But we are still too close to earth to see what is really happening when we get a rainbow.

Image No.1 | 390 ft Altitude | DJI Vision+  |  by George Krieger

Image No.3:  (390 ft elevation) Now we are just high enough to see what I wanted to show you. Here you can plainly see that a rainbow is indeed a more circular shape (actually it is a conical projection made when light passes through a mass of spherical shapes  and refracts its light in a common direction). It is sort of like a large bubble where you can see the optical effects around the edges but not in the middle.  
Again the only thing that is different here is elevation and your perspective. This is what the light bending event we call a rainbow really looks like. If we were higher up (and still at a viewable angle) we would see the rainbow as a complete circle looking just like lens flare (they both work on the same principle of optics called refraction).

Here is the Video I shot while landing to visually explain the phenomena..

The next time you see a half of a rainbow you are gonna feel cheated unless you have a drone or a way to get some elevation in the right place to see the whole thing, sorry about that.



Imagery and write up by George Krieger george@xarray.com
Cameras used at each position:
Ground level image taken with a Nikon D800E (and really bad settings)
Aerial Images taken with the DJI Global Vision+ Flying Camera (Drone)
Location Our back deck in Seaside, California..

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ISS Star Trails Time Lapse

ISS Star Trails Time Lapse

This is an update to this post about capturing the ISS flyover

http://georgekrieger.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-international-space-stations.html

Click the image to see the time lapse. It will take you to my smugmug account where the video seems to play best.

Just a short post to show you what I am working on. When I was making the final still image for the ISS project #SpotTheStation I watched the image build layer by layer.  It was very cool and thought it would be fun to make a complete TL from all the imagery I shot that night.  I am working on a high resolution video that incorporates most of the imagery I shot that evening.

Thanks to everyone for their interest in this project and special thanks to the ISS crew for taking the time to look at my imagery of them passing by one night and my crazy friends for getting me interested in this.  More to come...... 

George

The International Space Station's #SpotTheStation Project is Out of this World!

The ISS makes two passes over Hollister California in this series of long exposure images by Photographer George Krieger.

Did you know that The International Space Station orbits our planet every 90 minutes or so and can usually be seen with the naked eye several times a week from most areas of the world?  It is so bright and visible at times that it can be imaged with a long exposure by even consumer level cameras. Using a full frame DSLR and a shutter release enables you to take many exposures in a row easily. By using imaging software one can create an artistic rendition of many images taken over a long period of time into one image like the one above.

A few months ago I was asked if I wanted to participate in a project to take long exposures of the International Space Station when the next crew was aboard in late May.  It sounded like a tough challenge and a creative joy to do an image like that so I agreed with enthusiasm and little thought as to how hard it might be.  As the time for this project neared I did a little research on the ISS.  It travels at around 17,500 MPH in a low orbit ranging approximately 260 miles altitude above sea level. The ISS orbital path is visible from 95% of the inhabited land on earth and as it is the second largest object in orbit it reflects the sun in the same way as the Moon does becoming visible after dark.   The speed and altitude of the orbital trajectory means that the ISS is visible for only about 6 minutes from horizon to horizon.  There are web sites and smart phone apps that can help you find where the ISS is but to figure out where it will be in the sky before it gets there is a little more difficult.  Ok so this was a tough challenge but not too tough.  I started finding the Apps and sites I would need to predict and capture the images which were stacked to make the image above.

I had a folder full of phone apps and a few websites to play with and e launch date was approaching soon so I went out and tried a test shoot of the ISS to see if I could find it in time to capture it. The location  was easy to choose since the Fog covered most of the coastal areas only Fremont Peak would have a clear view.  I arrived only 5 minutes before the flyover and setup trying to get focus and frame the shot . . . but it worked out and I got my first ISS image. 

Now I was ready to try the challenge and #SpotTheStation after the new crew launched May 28th.  

On launch day I watched my friend Romeo Durscher who had asked me to participate resharing all the launch images and links to watch the docking to the ISS. Now it was time to shoot this thing.  I used the web site http://www.heavens-above.com/ to find the next ISS passes and trjectories then used Google Earth to figure out where I wanted to go.  The weather made the decision easy as Fremont Peak would be the only place I could get to above the fog and low clouds.  I got there in plenty of time and after flying an aerial video of sunset relocated down the road a few miles to get the view of Hollister and setup may cameras and started taking images waiting for my 6 minute window.  

The ISS blazed across the sky and went right where all the apps and information led me to believe it would making for a great capture.  it took about 7 images to make this stacked composite image of the ISS's first pass.

Image by George Krieger

When got home I stacked and processed these images and posted them while getting ready to meet some friends for a Alpha Test of a new broadcasting technology.  Immediately a local traffic reporter from KSBW TV messaged me on Facebook and asked to use then image on-air that morning. Also Romeo had seen it and was sending it to Reid Wiseman aboard the ISS.  I got the local news station a copy and rushed out late for my drive to Stanford.  

Shared on NBC and ABC locally

By the end of the day I had found out that my image was seen in space and they wanted to use it as well to help spread the work about #SpotTheStation.  Reid Wiseman wanted me to tweet the image to him so he could share it from space!  How cool is that?  Well for a geek like myself ....Wow what an honor!  

But this was only part of the image I was making. You see I kept on shooting for another 90 minutes until the ISS made a second pass.  I had taken over 300 images on my main camera before it was all over. I captured two ISS passes from the same spot and all the star movement in between them as well.  

The final  image I was working on was about to begin while the first 7 shots were being shared around the world on twitter and the local news.  I wanted to get this done and publish it so folks could see what I was really making.  The process I had to use to do this took me a lot of time to get right.  Many of my exposures had plane trails in them or car headlights over exposing areas of the image, those had to be removed as well as any other annoying frames. After culling I took the image count from 309 to 148 and started to simultaneously stacking them and building the necessary images to create a timelapse video as well from the same imagery.  After processing, stacking, time lapsing. reprocessing and getting the final still image finally done I still have a video to make for this too!   

UPDATE: New video excerpt of this image being built in a new post

http://georgekrieger.blogspot.com/2014/06/iss-star-trails-time-lapse-this-is.html

More information about the images used to make this:

Camera: Nikon D800E

Lens: Nikor 14-24mm F2.8

ISO 1250

Shutter speed 20 seconds 

using F stop 3.2

total images taken by this camera in this position was 309 of which 148 were used

Apps used to find the ISS

Compass App (almost any one will do)

Google Earth

http://www.heavens-above.com/ website

Processing software used 

Lightroom 5

Startrails.exe

Well here is the second part of my #SpotTheStation project have fun with it while I am working on the next installment.

There are two ISS trails one right through the center of the image and the other coming from the lower left and only bright enough to be seen 1/3 the way across the image. The rest of the lines are star trails and a few planes that were left in. This is a stacked composite with the foreground averaged over all the images. These two passes were about 90 minutes apart on  June 3rd 2014.

UPDATE: 2014-10-29  @Astro_Reid retweeted my latest #SpotTheStation image from space!  Making my second this year!!!   Here is the newer image taken in Big Sur, California.

It shows the ISS coming out of a 79 degree transit and heading SouthEast.  It was stacked from 191 images that I took while the ISS flew by at 17,500MPH.  We waved and I am sure they waved back now.

The title of this latest image is 

ISS Flyover. . . CHECK!

all imagery copyright George Krieger and you can write george@xarray.com for lic and permission requests.  If I have submitted this page for republishing I have already given you lic permissions.