![]() ![]() A geared head like the Manfrotto 410 would provide an advantage here. On the topic of ballheads, I really love my Acratech GP, but in the dark and leveling things up on a single axis any ball head is going to have problems when it comes to Astro work.You need to combine that with the K5 level function, to level the bottom image, or you loose even more to the stitching crop when you combine everything together. The gimble capability on my ballhead comes in very handy for vertical stitching.All of this translates to bumping up the ISO, or adjusting the shutter speed up by probably another minute or two - which will impinge on the 5 minute maximum - plus the stars begin to trail in the corners. If I need to wider than 25, I have a 20, but that's another half stop of light at f3.5, then its f4 for the 12-24 and f4.5 for the 8-16. It's just for me with the 31Ltd having the f1.8 and my next best with an f2.8 at either 28 or 25, you go to the width, but loose a stop of light. I guessing you loose less than 5%, but with a fixed focal length prime, either go a bit wider, back up with your feet, or find a better location. There is an element of cropping applied - not much, but if it is not planned, and you shoot too tight, then you start to loose your composition. Also, when stitching vertical, you tend to loose a bit of width due to the projection used to stitch the images together.I am finding that location becomes reasonably critical when you include an item of landscape to this, especially if you are going to cut or mask it in - from shooting a second image with out tracking enabled.Also, the approach for me is not solid always being perfectly repeatable. I still have not approached adding any color to the Milky Way band other than what just comes as a byproduct of the processing I have been using.It may have been better to use Photoshop, but I only have lightroom and I really do not like Adobe's software subscription business plan. I was also using their PhotoFXLab umbrella utility to composite the 2 masked images together. ![]() I sent them samples and wrote a problem report. Topaz Remask has problems with the blurring of the landscape vs the clean cut of the landscape shot (shot with out the GPS Astrotracker on).On the sky, I am finding LR4 noise reduction is just fine.Also, I have found that a series of say 5 shots at 30 seconds stacked (and I use Oloneo HDR software here), removes essentially all traces of noise and an excellent image becomes an outstanding one. The landscape component I actually made worse by not reducing the ISO to 80 like I usually do.On the topic of noise, there are two distinct areas that I need to look at 1) the sky and 2) the landscape component.Maybe its their interface, a bit too heavy handed - and LR4 is just fine. ![]()
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