Excellent - wonderful video!!!! Last Nov/Dec I stumbled across the PlanIt app. Since the milky way was under the horizon, I just have not picked it up. So, loading it up right now. Been doing all of this by hand, and looking just exactly for this functionality. This will help quite a bit. I do have a suggestion for you. In Stellarium, if you go to [f4] the Sky and Viewing Options Window, there is the Milky Way Brightness/Saturation setting. Increase it from 1 to about 5 to 6. What this does is brighten the milky way on the screen so that it's a lot easier to see, and make out.
Very helpful! I had always heard that you start where the Milky Way is setting to start your first row and move up for each row after, but it makes total sense that if the Milky Way is rising, you want to start at the left and work your way down to the horizon with each row. Thanks for clarifying that! I haven't done a panorama yet but am now inspired to give it a try.
I think it's always tricky with the top row since it feels less wide than the bottom row. It feels like it changes its width during the rise up the sky.
Great info again, I used to start from bottom up but now shoot from top down (get more sky to play with) using a tree or marker on the horizon both north and south helped without an index head. Cheers for sharing your knowledge its helping heaps 👍
G’day mate great inspirational and informative content. Love the channel. Just had my SWSA gti delivered last week and went out for some testing. Using Canon RP and 50mm F1.8 managed to rip off a few nice test shots. Took awhile to get my head around polar/star alignment plus manual pano overlap indexing made it a little more work intensive so I ordered a pano head and 2 way. Now I’m attempting my first planned full arch and foreground based on your tutorials. Wish me luck. 😂
Awesome stuff mate, can't go wrong with the star adventurer. Good luck with the panos! It can be a steep learning curve but just keep at it and learn from the mistakes.
Another great tutorial, full of information that will make for a successful night out shooting a tracked panorama. As usual, solid, really useful information and much appreciated. 😁👍👌
Only discovered your videos recently, brilliant. Thanks. Could you use a Genie pan/tilt head on the tracker? I’m hoping to get a last arc opportunity next week.
This is just the prefect video, just ordered an full spectrum mod A7IV from Spencer Camera and wanna pair it with the Sony 50mm GM for this astro season. Having used the 24 GM last year for 360 astro. Maybe in 2025, might gradate to the 135GM 😅
Another great video John, appreciate the time you are giving by creating informative content. I particularly liked to 'gem' of following a star as it travels through the sky (for the start/end position of the row). I would have just gone back to my starting position as per normal panorama, but no that won't work as the start has moved through the sky - great gems of information. For possible future video, I would like to get your process for aligning to the SCP, so I could do multi minute tracking. Cheers
Thanks @@johnrutterphotography appreciate that. I'm currently using a 'phone app', but would like to progress to using a reticle and be able to identify the relevant stars for the Southern Hemisphere. Cheers
Great video as always!! I got a question here… i wanted to ask if we should count the number of clicks when we move horizontally back to the original starting position. Would that affect the possibility to miss part of the milkyway since milkyway is moving ?
Hey John! Fantastic info there! Folks were always confused as where to start the first shot. So: For multiple row, the first shot of the sky： 1 - If the Milyway is raising, start from the top, then to the right. For second row, start from beneath the first shot (30-50% overlap), then to the right. Not continue from left to right where the last shot of the 1st row was left. 2 - If the Milkyway is setting, start from the horizon, to the right , then back to middle row, and so on and so forth. Am I correct? Keep up the great work!
Great video like all your videos :) But what I don't understand from a mathematical standpoint is, that you always turn back the tracker while the shooting session. What I did in my last panoramic arch image is that I aligned the 2-way head level to the ground and the starting point of the panorama as it will be at the final end position of the milky way (with help of photopills night AR and knowing which stars are left and right at starting time). Then I searched for a star which should be in the center bottom of the image and turned back the tracker as far as that star was in the image as it should be for that panel, save-checked the edges and the top of the arch while the tracker kept in that shifted position, turned it on and left it rotating. So I could make sure that all panels are always in the right position relative to the final arch position. While shooting I only had to turn the index rotator and set the elevation angle on the 2-way-head for each row. I never had to re-align anything with the stars or make any other changes. With this method I could make the panorama with a 35mm, covering 240 ° horizontally and 70 ° vertically with only 18 shots (25 % calculated minimum overlap). My rows were 7 shots for the first at +15 ° with 36 ° offset, second 7 shots at +40 ° with 36 ° offset and 4 images for the third top row at 65 ° with 60 ° offset. I shot the panorama in landscape orientation, as I calculated that this will require less images than shooting it in horizontal orientation (Landscape orientation mostly requires less images probably due do the effect that the higher the image the more angle is covered and thus wasting more area in the upper parts of a panel). As I am in northern hemisphere and I shot the "winter milky way" in the evening I had to shoot it bottom up as most of it was setting. In the beginning the arch was pretty steep. The only thing what I had to do special was shooting the right column last as it was located before the median line and thus below horizon when I started the session.
That's very interesting, it's just the way I've always done it.🤔 thanks for the detailed information, I do agree that there is alot of wasted images on a 3rd row high up.
50mm with 240 ° / 80 ° FOV in landscape gives me 29 Images with an overlap of 20 % minimum (8x at 10 ° offset 30 °, 8x at 30 ° offset 30 °, 7x at 50 ° offset 36 ° and 6x at 70 ° offset 45 ° - when keeping the offset at 30 ° it will result in 32 images). I have not tried a complete arch with 20 % overlap, but I found that this is enough for PTGui, at least with some smaller panos this was no problem. What I didn't do in my last shots but I will maybe try in future shots is to make one complete quick run through the whole panorama (or at least the bottom parts) with significant shorter exposure times when it has reached the final position and combine that with the main panorama for a more authentic horizon transition and light pollution areas as with my technique the main panorama may not contain any foreground in some parts (and thus no transition to it).
Brilliant video John really enjoyed the experience I currently have the star adventurer gti but was thinking of getting the star adventurer 2i just for panoramas Is it best to save some money and use the gti for panorama after watching your last few videos I'm not sure might use the gti for deep sky and panorama I would love your input mate cheers Chris
A couple of nuggets gleaned from this one John and more besides the Stellarium picking a star segment is invaluable mate. Can I ask do you use a pano levelling head in conjunction with the index rotator, the Planit app determines the overlap based on chosen focal length? Cheers! 👍🙏
If I understood you start the left limit of the panorama with the region that would be at the left extreme at the final of the night and from there you shoot the 19 sequence going right. If I remember other video every row you finish you come back the tracker to horizontal position. Wouldnt it be possible just to keep the camera the whole night iwthout changing it and making the panorama varing vertially and mooving to the right afer each column finished? It would be great if you make a video showing the procedure step by step without of course waiting the shooting time. Amazing channel. Following you now
That's correct mate, with the levelling tho, this is the way I've found it to be easiest, shoot across and keep levelling the dec bracket as I go and once I finish a row, return to the start and go again
Hey Ian, I normally shoot at 2.8 on a 1.4 lens but this can change depending on the location, sometimes it's as low as f4. I shoot all samyang 1.4 prime lenses
