Milky Way at Island Point, Western Australia
Nikon d5500
85mm
ISO 3200
f/2.5
Foreground: 58 x 6 seconds
Sky: 335 x 30 seconds
iOptron SkyTracker
This is a 393 shot panorama of the Milky Way rising above Isand Point about an hour south of Perth in Western Australia.
Yes, you read that right - 393 shots! Why so many? Well this was really just a test, I've never shot a full panorama with this lens and I had a feeling I might run out of time before the core hit zenith so I went out to see if I was right. Unfortunately I was. I started off at the horizon (bad move) and for the time it took to shoot each row the core was moving further and further away. I'll be starting at the top row in the future!
It took roughly four hours to shoot and with a ball head tripod once you get to zenith you are literally just moving the camera around itself, so not ideal. When I got home and stitched the panorama there was quite a bit of sky missing so I had to go back a couple of weeks later to finish it off. Speaking of stitching, PTGui wanted to output the full res image at 15 gigapixels while MS ICE wanted 3TB of free space before even thinking about outputting the pano. I had to settle for a much smaller file size, less than 1 gigapixel.
Milky Way at Island Point, Western Australia
Nikon d5500
85mm
ISO 3200
f/2.5
Foreground: 58 x 6 seconds
Sky: 335 x 30 seconds
iOptron SkyTracker
This is a 393 shot panorama of the Milky Way rising above Isand Point about an hour south of Perth in Western Australia.
Yes, you read that right - 393 shots! Why so many? Well this was really just a test, I've never shot a full panorama with this lens and I had a feeling I might run out of time before the core hit zenith so I went out to see if I was right. Unfortunately I was. I started off at the horizon (bad move) and for the time it took to shoot each row the core was moving further and further away. I'll be starting at the top row in the future!
It took roughly four hours to shoot and with a ball head tripod once you get to zenith you are literally just moving the camera around itself, so not ideal. When I got home and stitched the panorama there was quite a bit of sky missing so I had to go back a couple of weeks later to finish it off. Speaking of stitching, PTGui wanted to output the full res image at 15 gigapixels while MS ICE wanted 3TB of free space before even thinking about outputting the pano. I had to settle for a much smaller file size, less than 1 gigapixel.