Last one from "magic moon phase" night, I promise

[CapturingTheNight]

Hi all,
This is actually the sort of shot I went to this location at this time to do. I love doing these straight horizon panoramas of the night sky. If you want to try this for yourself the best advice I can give is wait for the plane of the Milky Way to be relatively low in the sky if you can (a few hours before the central bulge sets in the west is best). The central bulge was practically overhead for this shot and it took a lot of photos even with a super wide angle lens to capture enough of the sky and foreground to minimise the inevitable distortion caused by this sort of projection.

This is the last in my series from this night. Even though I have a few more data sets I could use I think these three are enough. Any more and it becomes too 'samey'.
The first two in the series..... http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=92809 and http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=92932

"Milky Waybow"
Same equipment as detailed in the first image thread.
24 images
About 270 degree field of view horizontally and about 130 degrees vertically
higher res version can be found here http://500px.com/photo/9115960
118389

Cheers

Greg

[gregbradley]

These are great shots.

I am curious. 14mm is a very wide field of view on a full frame camera (I have the 14-24mm F2.8 Nikkor).

So you must overlap a lot I take it. Is that to increase signal to noise ratio whilst at the same time developing a panorama?

I suppose you need to be snap and pop and get the photos done fairly quickly so they will stitch together without too much movement from the Milky Way.

Panoramas are my favourite type of DSLR imaging and I do a lot myself.
You have a great system going there.

Greg

[Ross G]

Another great photo Greg.

I think this one is my favourite.

Like Greg B, I am interested in your technique.

Thanks.

Ross.

[Deeno]

Love the way the dead tree is reaching out to the milky way.
Nice!

[multiweb]

Awesome field Greg. :thumbsup: What are the two cities on the horizon (out east?). They come up in a lot of your shots. I guess you might be shooting from the same location.

[strongmanmike]

With readily available software these days, the arcing Milky Way is no longer anything new but this is an excellent example with natural looking forgroud lighting...and even a tree for DM :D :thumbsup:

Mike

[CapturingTheNight]

Thank you very much once again Greg :D You are right that the 14mm is a huge field of view in it's own right and I could easily cover this same field with only 3 or 4 images, but I take a lot more shots for my panoramas for a few reasons. It is not to improve the signal to noise ratio as you aren't really stacking them together you are more just using sections of each image. The main reason is to have a heap of overlap so that I have flexibility in what areas of each image I use. Also the super wide angle lens (well mine does at least- not sure about that awesome nikkor) distorts the angles of things particularly around the edges, so I like to only use the very center portion of the individual images. Coma distorting the stars around the edges can also be an issue. You are right that you do need to be reasonably quick but it's not entirely critical. I would have spent 15 minutes taking these shots and the star movement over that time is negligible in this field of view. PtGui Pro has no problems at all stitching them together.
Another reason for taking so many shots is to basically make sure you have the whole scene. I always take lots of data outside of the field of view that I ultimately want to capture so that it is easy to crop to where I want it. It's not unusual for me to have images with the tripod legs in shot.
Also, there is nothing worse than getting home and discovering that you missed a section of sky. These sort of scenes are generally one offs. You generally can't go back to the same spot with the same conditions like you can with deep space objects.
Hope this helps a bit.

Thank you very much Ross :D See above...

Thank you veru much :D I'm glad you like it.

Thank you very much Marc :D The smaller one on the left is Holbrook and the larger (but further away one) is Albury. They are pretty much directly south of me. The glow from Wagga Wagga (north) can be seen at the top of the first image "The Hanging Gardens". I do a lot of my shots around my local area.

Thank you very much for the great feedback Mike :D You are right. With software like what I use (PTGui Pro) these sort of panoramas are very easy to produce and are somewhat a dime a dozen. I'm glad I could do something that stands out from the crowd.
Cheers

[jjjnettie]

:) Amazing and beautiful. Thanks for the view. :)

[CapturingTheNight]

I'm glad you like it :D Thank you JJJ

[lonyaee1]

Honestly, this is awesome pic Greg!

I like it so much...

Very nice work


Solocigars (http://www.solocigars.com/products/cohiba_siglo_VI_box_25.html)

[iceman]

Greg panorama! After trying to do a few out in the Kimberley's, I now know first hand what you're saying about making sure there's enough overlap.

Unfortunately most of my panorama attempts will be failures due to nowhere near enough coverage.

Lovely work!

[CapturingTheNight]

Thank you so much James :D

Thank you so much once again Mike :D Yeah I discovered very early on that you need heaps and heaps of overlap and plenty of room around the edges to make stitching easier. I hope you can salvage a few of your panos. Can't wait to see your pics.

[stevous67]

Sensational set of images Greg! Absolutely amazing, and totally ready for wall hanging in prime locations in your home.

Well done

Steve

[CapturingTheNight]

Thank you so much Steve :D

[silv]

the motif is so well chosen that it leads to such an atmospheric image. You really had a romantic eye in creating this one -
and you were capable to get that message across through diligently mastering your technique.
great work :thumbsup:

I love this image for its beauty, though.
Not for technical reasons or how you accomplished it.
(I think that is a step up: when mastering the technique is no longer a thing to show off but has become a mere tool, again, that can be used to be intuitively creative.)

Lovely. Thank you for sharing.

[rogerg]

Great photo :)

[CapturingTheNight]

Thank you so much for that great feedback Silv :D I really appreciate it.

Thank you so much Roger :D