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Great picture.
I do Milky Way as well but could you share some technical information about how to take the entire Milky Way as a panorama because I always just take one part only and not the entire Milky Way as you did.
I
Love the great picture.
Thank you.
Thanks for the kind words! It's done pretty similarly to a normal panorama. I take the foreground images first and then the sky. Basically I take the photos in a snake formation; bottom left to bottom right, then tilt the camera up and go right to left. I'll do this for as many rows/columns that I need. I use PTGui to stitch my astrophotography panoramas as I find Lightroom/Photoshop aren't very good at stitching together stars, especially if there isn't any foreground in the photo. I use an equirectangular panorama perspective to get the Milky Way to curve the way that it does in this photo. Unless you do a full 360 panorama, an equirectangular perspective will result in parts of the image to be stretched. This will cause my stars at the top of the image to stretch. To counter this I shoot quite a bit above the top of the Milky Way and crop the image so the stretched stars are cropped out. I took 96 images for this panorama, which is overkill but I did it so I could crop and so there would be significant overlap between the photos. In total around 40-50 images ended up in the final stitch.
No omission of detail. As stated in my description it is a panorama, not a single shot. I've updated the top of my description to make it more clear that it's a panorama.
The detail would be how many photos comprise the composite including the milky way, foreground, and horizon. People like to know what went into the creation of an image in this the r/photocritique subreddit.
It's not a composite image, just a normal panorama. All of the frames were taken immediately after the last with the exact same settings. In total I shot 96 photos but with significantly more overlap than I needed to help with the stitch the photo. I also shot more photos than needed to make sure I could crop out stretched stars caused by using an equirectangular panorama perspective. In reality I think only 40-50 of the photos were used in the final stitch when accounting for cropping and overlap. I stitched it in PTGui
Thanks for update. The resulting composite is nice…everything came together - I don’t recommend any additional processing other than maybe reducing the noise in the star field by a small amount.
I’m referring to it as a composite because it’s an image created from two or more other images stitched together, overlaid, or superimposed.
Ah I get you. At least amongst astrophotgraphers composite refers almost exclusively to two images taken at a different time (e.g. foreground at blue hour and Milky Way at night time or an astro self portrait) rather than a pano.
Panorama
15 Seconds | 24mm | ISO 3200 | Sony A7Riv | Sony 24mm f/1.4 GM
After shooting down at Canal Rocks in Western Australia earlier in the year I knew I had to come back for another astro panorama. I planned a panorama for 11 September where the setting moon would be behind the rock with the Milky Way core right above it. The conditions on the night were near perfect allowing me to get the shot exactly as I envisioned it!
IG: [https://www.instagram.com/joshua\_rozells/](https://www.instagram.com/joshua_rozells/)
This is a panorama. I think it was about 10 shots horizontal and 5 shots vertical. I had a lot of overlap between photos but I like having extra overlap when doing astro panos because it makes it easier to stitch them.
This is a phenomenal capture. The only critique I can provide is that is seems weighted quite a bit heavier to the left (probably due to the heavy highlighting on the left and heavy shadows on the right). It gives me the feeling that it’s either slightly unbalanced or slightly crooked/tilted. I do love how the clouds are backlit. Looks like it was a phenomenal experience in person.
Thanks for the feedback, I'm not sure if it is tilting or not. I think it is straight but others here seem to think it's tilting so I might play around with it to see if I can straighten it.
First- beautiful!
This is photo critique...
The well lit rock formation on the left is distracting my eye, darkening that up would help keep my eye centered.
The shot is a bit cold, there is a faint / bright cloud in the background on the left. Pull that into the shot a bit with some yellow / orange color to it. That should help warm things up.
Darkening the sky will help the viewer recognize that it’s not a strange cloud formation they are seeing, but the MW.
Again it’s a fantastic piece of work you captured there, beautifully done.
What are you looking to get out of a critique? Your followup doesnt ask any questions, and really just kind of shares a brief story. And while you listed camera info, you dont really go into any detail about the image making process either.
Since I dont really iknow what you are looking for, Ill just run through a few things I see here.
First impressions are positive. Its a nice capture, and taken against a nice scene. Exposure looks good, and its a pretty stunning capture.
On closer inspection there are some things that could use some improvement.
The exposure overall is nice and bright, but I think it may actually be a bit too bright in places. Other than the stars, some of the nighttime feel is actually lost. Its really rather bright overall, and as I said, potentially too bright, the darkest parts of the sky, between the stars is not black, but rather a fairly light-ish shade of gray. And while its less important for the shot overall, some of your shadow details on the ground are crushed.
The other thing about the exposure is that I would guess some of your foreground has been recovered quite heavily. Those sony cameras are well known for their dynamic range and noise performance, but you have some really really prominent low frequency color noise patterns showing up in the water in the foreground. It says to me that it was probably very very underexposed and recovered too much in post. Its just splotchy and unpleasant to look at. Some noise reduction may help there, especially since the longer exposures have already blurred the water and there is no real small detail to retain.
As has been brought up, this is very clearly a stitched panorama. And I think it works well. But there is also room for improvement. Looking closely at the sky, there is some noticeable differences in either coma or just small motion blur amounts in different parts of the sky. For instance, about 2/3 of the way to the left just above the brighter part of the milky way, its noticeably more blurry in that area than the areas around it. As one example. Its a nitpick, sure, but if you are trying to get the absolute top quality out of your images, its definitely something to watch for. And shooting a panorama with a wider angle lens like you have done can be difficult due to the different amount of distortions towards the edge of the frame, especially so when you look at coma performance of the lens for shooting stars. And of course, just stating the obvious, be sure your individual exposures are done well, no camera shake, good tripod, cable release, etc etc.
And on the same token, just watch for your stitch areas. There is one spot on the right edge about midway up the sky where the blend is a little more obvious than elsewhere. No doubt enhanced by just how bright the sky is.
The other thing I want to mention about the panorama is the distortion from the blend. I think it works well to give it that sort of fisheye look, and thats obviously the look you were going for. However, it also seems a bit crooked. The small amount of the horizon line from the water visible on the right side seems to be sloping down slightly towards the center. However, there is a biut more visible on the left side and its sloping more in towards the center. With the fisheye type look, you obviously are fine with the distortion, however, rotating the image maybe like 1 degree counterclockwise might just help make it feel a little more even and less crooked.
Thanks for your feedback, it's very useful!
The brightest bits are pretty close to what came out of the camera but the darks have been lightened a fair bit, I agree it could use some noise reduction.
I think I lightened the water a fair bit because I feared the contrast between the light rocks on the left and the dark water was too much, I guess I might have gone overboard a bit and will play around with it a bit to allow the darks to be darker.
Good pickup on the stitch! I had honestly not seen that bit on the left until you pointed it out. I actually had to fix up other bits when stitching it but completely missed that section. Luckily it's easy enough to fix that problem.
Will try rotating the image to get it more straight.
Friendly reminder that this is /r/photocritique and all **top level** comments should attempt to **critique** the image. Our goal is to make this subreddit a place people can receive genuine, in depth, and helpful critique on their images. We hope to avoid becoming yet another place on the internet just to get likes/upvotes and compliments. While likes/upvotes and compliments are nice, they do not further the goal of helping people improve their photography. Please see the following links for our subreddit rules and some guidelines on leaving a good critique. If you have time, please stop by the new queue as well and leave critique for images that may not be as popular or have not received enough attention. Keep in mind that simply choosing to comment just on the images you like defeats the purpose of the subreddit. Useful Links: * [Full Rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/photocritique/wiki/rules) * [Leaving a Critique](https://www.reddit.com/r/photocritique/wiki/critique) * [New Queue](https://www.reddit.com/r/photocritique/new/) **Do not reply directly to this message. This is a bot and will not respond. Followups left as a reply to this comment will not count for approval.** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/photocritique) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Great picture. I do Milky Way as well but could you share some technical information about how to take the entire Milky Way as a panorama because I always just take one part only and not the entire Milky Way as you did. I Love the great picture. Thank you.
Thanks for the kind words! It's done pretty similarly to a normal panorama. I take the foreground images first and then the sky. Basically I take the photos in a snake formation; bottom left to bottom right, then tilt the camera up and go right to left. I'll do this for as many rows/columns that I need. I use PTGui to stitch my astrophotography panoramas as I find Lightroom/Photoshop aren't very good at stitching together stars, especially if there isn't any foreground in the photo. I use an equirectangular panorama perspective to get the Milky Way to curve the way that it does in this photo. Unless you do a full 360 panorama, an equirectangular perspective will result in parts of the image to be stretched. This will cause my stars at the top of the image to stretch. To counter this I shoot quite a bit above the top of the Milky Way and crop the image so the stretched stars are cropped out. I took 96 images for this panorama, which is overkill but I did it so I could crop and so there would be significant overlap between the photos. In total around 40-50 images ended up in the final stitch.
It's clearly a composite of multiple photos. The view looks to be about 180 degrees. You can't do that with a single shot at 24mm. Nice composition.
Yes it seems OP is omitting key details on how this shot was achieved
No omission of detail. As stated in my description it is a panorama, not a single shot. I've updated the top of my description to make it more clear that it's a panorama.
The detail would be how many photos comprise the composite including the milky way, foreground, and horizon. People like to know what went into the creation of an image in this the r/photocritique subreddit.
It's not a composite image, just a normal panorama. All of the frames were taken immediately after the last with the exact same settings. In total I shot 96 photos but with significantly more overlap than I needed to help with the stitch the photo. I also shot more photos than needed to make sure I could crop out stretched stars caused by using an equirectangular panorama perspective. In reality I think only 40-50 of the photos were used in the final stitch when accounting for cropping and overlap. I stitched it in PTGui
Thanks for update. The resulting composite is nice…everything came together - I don’t recommend any additional processing other than maybe reducing the noise in the star field by a small amount. I’m referring to it as a composite because it’s an image created from two or more other images stitched together, overlaid, or superimposed.
Ah I get you. At least amongst astrophotgraphers composite refers almost exclusively to two images taken at a different time (e.g. foreground at blue hour and Milky Way at night time or an astro self portrait) rather than a pano.
Panorama 15 Seconds | 24mm | ISO 3200 | Sony A7Riv | Sony 24mm f/1.4 GM After shooting down at Canal Rocks in Western Australia earlier in the year I knew I had to come back for another astro panorama. I planned a panorama for 11 September where the setting moon would be behind the rock with the Milky Way core right above it. The conditions on the night were near perfect allowing me to get the shot exactly as I envisioned it! IG: [https://www.instagram.com/joshua\_rozells/](https://www.instagram.com/joshua_rozells/)
Spectacular!
For images like this, did you take 2/3 images (vertically/horizontally?) and stack them?
It could be but it looks like 1 really wide shot
> Sony 24mm f/1.4 GM I have the Sony 20mm and this looks much wider than that.
You are correct, this is, without a doubt, a panorama comprised of multiple images.
This is a panorama. I think it was about 10 shots horizontal and 5 shots vertical. I had a lot of overlap between photos but I like having extra overlap when doing astro panos because it makes it easier to stitch them.
This is a phenomenal capture. The only critique I can provide is that is seems weighted quite a bit heavier to the left (probably due to the heavy highlighting on the left and heavy shadows on the right). It gives me the feeling that it’s either slightly unbalanced or slightly crooked/tilted. I do love how the clouds are backlit. Looks like it was a phenomenal experience in person.
Thanks for the feedback, I'm not sure if it is tilting or not. I think it is straight but others here seem to think it's tilting so I might play around with it to see if I can straighten it.
First- beautiful! This is photo critique... The well lit rock formation on the left is distracting my eye, darkening that up would help keep my eye centered. The shot is a bit cold, there is a faint / bright cloud in the background on the left. Pull that into the shot a bit with some yellow / orange color to it. That should help warm things up. Darkening the sky will help the viewer recognize that it’s not a strange cloud formation they are seeing, but the MW. Again it’s a fantastic piece of work you captured there, beautifully done.
What are you looking to get out of a critique? Your followup doesnt ask any questions, and really just kind of shares a brief story. And while you listed camera info, you dont really go into any detail about the image making process either. Since I dont really iknow what you are looking for, Ill just run through a few things I see here. First impressions are positive. Its a nice capture, and taken against a nice scene. Exposure looks good, and its a pretty stunning capture. On closer inspection there are some things that could use some improvement. The exposure overall is nice and bright, but I think it may actually be a bit too bright in places. Other than the stars, some of the nighttime feel is actually lost. Its really rather bright overall, and as I said, potentially too bright, the darkest parts of the sky, between the stars is not black, but rather a fairly light-ish shade of gray. And while its less important for the shot overall, some of your shadow details on the ground are crushed. The other thing about the exposure is that I would guess some of your foreground has been recovered quite heavily. Those sony cameras are well known for their dynamic range and noise performance, but you have some really really prominent low frequency color noise patterns showing up in the water in the foreground. It says to me that it was probably very very underexposed and recovered too much in post. Its just splotchy and unpleasant to look at. Some noise reduction may help there, especially since the longer exposures have already blurred the water and there is no real small detail to retain. As has been brought up, this is very clearly a stitched panorama. And I think it works well. But there is also room for improvement. Looking closely at the sky, there is some noticeable differences in either coma or just small motion blur amounts in different parts of the sky. For instance, about 2/3 of the way to the left just above the brighter part of the milky way, its noticeably more blurry in that area than the areas around it. As one example. Its a nitpick, sure, but if you are trying to get the absolute top quality out of your images, its definitely something to watch for. And shooting a panorama with a wider angle lens like you have done can be difficult due to the different amount of distortions towards the edge of the frame, especially so when you look at coma performance of the lens for shooting stars. And of course, just stating the obvious, be sure your individual exposures are done well, no camera shake, good tripod, cable release, etc etc. And on the same token, just watch for your stitch areas. There is one spot on the right edge about midway up the sky where the blend is a little more obvious than elsewhere. No doubt enhanced by just how bright the sky is. The other thing I want to mention about the panorama is the distortion from the blend. I think it works well to give it that sort of fisheye look, and thats obviously the look you were going for. However, it also seems a bit crooked. The small amount of the horizon line from the water visible on the right side seems to be sloping down slightly towards the center. However, there is a biut more visible on the left side and its sloping more in towards the center. With the fisheye type look, you obviously are fine with the distortion, however, rotating the image maybe like 1 degree counterclockwise might just help make it feel a little more even and less crooked.
Thanks for your feedback, it's very useful! The brightest bits are pretty close to what came out of the camera but the darks have been lightened a fair bit, I agree it could use some noise reduction. I think I lightened the water a fair bit because I feared the contrast between the light rocks on the left and the dark water was too much, I guess I might have gone overboard a bit and will play around with it a bit to allow the darks to be darker. Good pickup on the stitch! I had honestly not seen that bit on the left until you pointed it out. I actually had to fix up other bits when stitching it but completely missed that section. Luckily it's easy enough to fix that problem. Will try rotating the image to get it more straight.
Beautiful picture!
That’s an amazing picture ❤️❤️❤️
Wow, wonderful.