Milky Way Panorama

[weathermon (Mike)]

Here's a panorama I took a few weeks ago at Nebo, west of Mackay on a clear night. Image details:

7 pics combined, ISO6400 30 seconds at F3.5 on Pentax K5. I also captured a massive fireball during an exposure for a timelapse!

[matt34 (Matt)]

Good work Mike.

Some feedback (if you dont mind) would be to try and give yourself some more room at the top to help with distortion. Also the white balance looks a little pink to me.

[weathermon (Mike)]

Thanks Matt! Yeah it is a little purple - I want to eventually get myself a Samyang 8mm lens as well so I can fit a bit more in.

[matt34 (Matt)]

no worries Mike, the other option until you get a new lens is look at a 2nd row of shots, it can be tough, had a lot of gaps in panos due to adding additional rows etc and not having the overlap I need.

[Retrograde (Pete)]

Nice work!
Yep maybe a little purple (but I can't talk most of mine are a bit too purple as well).
What lens did you use on the K-5?

[mithrandir (Andrew)]

Rather than taking a second row you can shoot in portrait mode. I know of two issues with multiple rows.

1. Unless it is during astronomical night light level changes during the time it takes to get all the frames can produce complex gradients across the field.
2. Without a panorama head it's difficult to get the frames precisely aligned.

Given those considerations, with two rows you probably do best if you shoot the frames in the order:

2 3 6 7
1 4 5 8 etc

to minimize the gradients and is hard work manually.

As for using a fisheye like the Samyang 8mm, if you need to stitch you'll need some pretty smart software to deal with the distortion. While it won't affect you with the K-5, the Samyang 8mm is an APS-C lens, as the vignetting using one on my Sony a7s proves.