The last 2 new moons

[zenith]

Attached are my best pics from each of the last two new moons.

To start is my second attempt at a large pano using just a tripod. It worked out pretty good, 2 rows of 18 pictures at 24mm, Canon 6D, 20sec, ISO 6400, f4 (Sigma Art 24-105 zoom), stitched in Microsoft ICE. Images from 2 different nights to give the illusion of no clouds!

The next is a mistake time-lapse made from 5 minute exposures. I accidentally had mirror-lockup on, and as a result I missed every second image, so 5 min pic, 5 min gap, 5 min pic...I was experimenting with longer subs to get better colours in the stars. ISO 400, 5 min, f2.8 (Samyang 14mm f2.8), stacked in StarStax.

I hope you enjoy,
Cheers.

[multiweb]

Two very cool shots. :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:
I like the foreground and framing on your milkyway shot.
Depth of field is also very cool on the startrail.

[astronobob]

Very Decent images Tim,,,
How do you like, the Microsoft ICE Prog ?
Looks to do the job rather well :thumbsup:

[zenith]

Hi Bob,

Its really good, free as well. Its from Microsoft research, so it doesn't look or feel cumbersome and bloated. It can stitch things that Photoshop is unable to, as you set a few inputs into how it joins things, and also how it projects them.

First image is setting how many rows/cols and how you moved the camera.
Second image overlays the individual images, and you move the horz/vert sliders until it looks like a pano. You can set how much it is allowed to hunt around to stitch.
Third image is the stitched result, where you can choose the best projection and also rotate/zoom/warp it.
Then you crop and export it, and you're done (well, its ready for more tweaking in something else for contrast/levels/curves/noise/sharpen etc etc).

It can read .cr2 files, but sometimes I first need to convert and rotate them and save as tiff, especially if you shoot in portrait mode and there is no horizon. Sometimes you also need to fix vignetting in the source images before stitching otherwise you can get bands, but it does not happen every time.

I highly recommend giving it a go.