Milky Way Panoramas - PTGUI

Hi Folks,

Not sure if this should be in here or in the astronomy part of the forum but as it is mainly post processing I will see how it goes in here.

I have been trying to stitch together a panorama consisting of 25 images, it may be a bit overkill but I wanted to make sure I captured every aspect .

I have been trialing out PTGUI as LR and PS can't do the job adequately. I have tried Huggin but found it a bit awkward to use. However PTGUI seems to have done a good enough job but.....when I try to flatten the horizon the milky way portion becomes distorted and stretched. If I try to keep the Milky Way looking reasonable the horizon looks way off.

I have also tried different projections but nothing seems to work correctly.

What would be the best way of getting the best of both worlds? Any advice would be much appreciated.

I have included screenshots from PTGUI below.

Thanks,
Andy

How are you shooting and what is the approximate FOV for your scene? You are essentially shooting a section of a spherical panorama, and this is the kind of projection distortion that results in such a case. Describe your capture process.

You can try to modify the HFOV and VFOV of your projection and see if that tames some of the projection distortion. Otherwise, you will probably need to start with a projection that gets you close to what you want and then use Photoshop-like transform tools (warp, etc) to push pixels around to preserve the sky and get the horizon looking straight enough. I.e., depart from physical reality to map the pixels in a pleasing way.

kirk

Kirk, these were shot in vertical format on a 70D using a Samyang 14mm.
I didn't keep note of how much I rotated the camera per shot, I just tried to keep a good overlap between the images.
I have captured images in a full 360 degrees around where I was standing and started with the bottom row for 1 revolution, followed by a second row and the third row was almost straight up.

I found the following FOV figures for the Samyang on a canon crop.
1.6x=21mm, HFOV: 78° | VFOV: 56.6° | DFOV: 88.5°

The lower row of 9 images cover around 180 degrees (I do have more in order to complete a 360 degree shot).

I am trying to achieve something similar to what is described on the following website:
http://www.diyphotogra​phy.net …bungle-bungles-was-taken/

I guess this is the process you are describing with regards to using the warp tool in PS?

Cheers,
Andy

Yes - the warp tool. You can see how extreme his warp mash is by looking at the grid and the handles in the PS screenshot he posted. Also, the Milky Way may have been lower in the sky relative to his horizon, changing the initial spherical projection that formed the base image prior to his warping operation - may that required less warp deformation to get the result he achieved? I do not shoot the Milky Way, so forgive me if I am making assumptions that make no sense!

You can also try the Puppet Warp tool as well - maybe it will give you more control or better results.

kirk