Priest Lake Milky Way Aurora

Here's another pano from my trip to Priest Lake. This has the best color of the Aurora but I lost the top of the Milky Way in the merge.

 

I found that many of my attempts at photomerge in Photoshop didn't work. The lack of defining details in the sky and the effort to get the lake and the Milky Way in the frame made it difficult. In the past I always was able to point up at the foreground object, making it much easier to get images that merge easily.

 

My best success with this round of panoramas were the ones that had two rows, one with the full lake in view and one pointing up toward the Milky Way with part of the lake in view. The less dramatic the tilt upward, the more success I had but the less of the sky was in frame.

 

This one included 7 for each row. Photoshop couldn't merge one of them but it didn't matter.

 

I should look into a leveling attachment on the head of my tripod that would help with this.

 

Another thing I learned from this trip was the importance of framing individual exposures to stand alone, in addition to taking pano shots. I focused so much on the panos that I missed some good opportunities to take individual shots.

Done