milkyway panorama from the bahamas

The stitching came out odd on this. I actually shot the panorama from in front of me up and then backwards/upside down on a ballhead but photoshop decided to curve it like a rainbow so I can live with that. I wish I had gone side to side vertical format now but still had alot of fun. This shot was taken on treasure cay, abaco, an island of the bahamas.

Gear used: Full spectrum t2i, tokina 11-16mm shot at 13mm, 8 shots 25 seconds each @iso 1600. no darks or flats used but bias frames were applied. Processed in CS6 and slightly balanced with gradient xterminator.

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …/70374000@N08/9​562558250/

decided I could live with more light pollution and stretched it a bit harder.

getting better.
Must have been lots of fun.

BTW you do realize that though you get more with more vertical as opposed to horizon frames as you say (Picture one bottom and top), you can always make a mosaic of view to include everything you want when sky is the limit (Image 2). Of course you see images are not correct as there should be at least a 15 to 20 percent over lapping of each frame with others.
If you go that way, calculate your exposure, and practice on tripod during daytime. Assuming each image is 30 second, for a matrix of 15 images, you don't want to spend any more that 10 minutes total as sky is moving and the faster you act, the better result should be.

Well just a thought and have fun before these nice warm summer nights are all over.

samsen wrote in post #16229019
getting better.
Must have been lots of fun.

BTW you do realize that though you get more with more vertical as opposed to horizon frames as you say (Picture one bottom and top), you can always make a mosaic of view to include everything you want when sky is the limit (Image 2). Of course you see images are not correct as there should be at least a 15 to 20 percent over lapping of each frame with others.
If you go that way, calculate your exposure, and practice on tripod during daytime. Assuming each image is 30 second, for a matrix of 15 images, you don't want to spend any more that 10 minutes total as sky is moving and the faster you act, the better result should be.

Well just a thought and have fun before these nice warm summer nights are all over.

Good call samsen, if I could go back and do it again I would setup the camera in the orientation of the boxes on the lower left and shoot side to side, I did the upper left box orientation vertically. Its interesting that you pointed out the 10 minute time gap because I thought about stacking a few frames but I was not sure how long I had between each movement before DSS would loose its ability to align frames. For this mosaic I just used regular old photoshop stitch.

samsen wrote in post #16229019
getting better.
you don't want to spend any more that 10 minutes total as sky is moving and the faster you act, the better result should be.

Well just a thought and have fun before these nice warm summer nights are all over.

This is where a robotic Panohead would be ideal, program in how many shots and the area of coverage and this could get it done quickly and efficiently. Of course all this comes with a price.

Web link to GigaPan Epic Robotic Panohead

Good one Jimmy.
GigaPan is an impressive system though all that I have personally seen, were running small point and shoot cameras that are definitely not standing enough to deal with High ISO and low light situation of AP. Yes there are the heavy duty ones to run heavy DSLRs and bigger lenses but then they cost too much:

LINK to price
LINK to clip

Well this is not tracking a Nebula or a far away star (Though I have manually done that with eye guidoscope, and know it is possible but for sacrifice of quality even when you build your own manual star tracker) and here with some practice, you can do it fairly well and nice. Trick is to do the practice in day when light is more and time could be cut off significantly to get hang of procedure, overlapping etc then move to night.

when you are doing a 7 shot panorama with a wide lens 11mm-16mm you dont need any tracking to do a panorama. Its all about leveling and framing. Understanding parallax helps too. I did this one overhead because it has worked for me on another milkyway panorama which I will post later on when I get home, However I should have shot this one in vertical composition while leveling to the horizon instead of zenith.

calypsob wrote in post #16241227
However I should have shot this one in vertical composition while leveling to the horizon instead of zenith.

Wes, can you explain this statement in more detail? I understand leveling to the horizon (I believe so) how would you go about leveling to the zenith. Or am I missing what you're saying altogether? Thanks

Sorry it does sound confusing now that I read it again. Basically I always use a hotshoe level when doing panoramas. Mine has 2 level lines, one for horizontal and one for vertical. The ballhead that i use, a black diamond bh5, has a slot in it which allows you to point the ballhead forwards, 90 degrees from the vertical position. When I setup the camera, I use the ballhead while it is in this position to level the tripod and camera, the camera and lens are pointing at zenith during this step. Basically it is just how I make sure I am 100% level before I begin an overhead panorma.

Leveling to the horizon goes exactly how you would imagine, level the tripod and adjust to the horizon, unlock your alt/azimuth friction knob and take a shot every 15 degrees according to your ballheads scale, if it has one. You have to be more precise when you do an overhead panorama, with a ballhead, because it is harder to maintain a straight line. A fluid panhead would probably be better for overhead panoramas.