Well, despite my complaining about the weather being less than optimal for nightscape shots, read cloudy :-), it fined up on Sunday night and I headed out at 8:30pm into the mountains.
New spot, at Mount Victoria, and armed with my head filled with things to try, off I set.
Unfortunately, this is probably the best shot that I got, as I was far too optimistic in my pano setup.
For those interested, I shot a 270 degree approx pano, in portrait, 15 x 50% overlapped frames wide, and 4 high. manual focus and correct, Bulb, f3.5 (widest my lens does) etc etc, but for some reason my sleepy mind said 'shoot at ISO 6400, it'll be fine'. Then in the middle of shooting I kept reminding myself, shoot it again at ISO 3200, but for some reason I just didnt.
So, yet again, I spent a REALLY long night and pretty much only took one pano and put all my eggs in the one basket.
The issue was that the milky way was directly overhead and Im left with a pano that wont stitch
Anywho, here is the best of a bad bunch.
it is 6 shots in landscape, stitched vertically.
as per usual,
Canon 7D
Canon 18mm-200mm Zoom
18mm
f3.5
ISO 6400
25 seconds