Ptgui tutorials software#
Ptgui tutorials iso#

The key to all panorama success is overlap. These “partial panos” are great for auroras (above) or noctilucent clouds, (below), or for capturing just the core of the Milky Way over a landscape.

While panoramas spanning the entire sky might be what you are after, I suggest starting simpler, with panos that take in just a portion of the 360° horizon and only a part of the 180° of the sky. The aurora lies to the north at left, while Orion and the winter Milky Way are to the south at right.

Ptgui tutorials iso#

To capture this panorama I used a Sigma 14mm lens on a Nikon D750, mounted in portrait orientation with the gear shown above, to shoot eight segments 45° apart, each 13 seconds at f/2 and ISO 3200. NOTE: Click or tap on the panorama images to open a high-res version for closer inspection. If it isn’t level the whole panorama will be off kilter, requiring excessive straightening and cropping in processing, or the horizon will wave up and down in the final stitch, perhaps causing parts of the scene to go missing. It can be tipped up, of course, but not tilted left-right. Or, if your camera lacks that feature, an accessory bubble level clipped into the camera’s hot shoe will work. Then to level the camera itself, I use the electronic level now in most cameras. Most cameras now have an electronic level built in that is handy for ensuring the panorama does not end up tilted. It eliminates all the fussing with trial-and-error adjustments of the length of each tripod leg. As I show above, this specialized ball head goes under the usual tripod head and makes it easy to level the main head. Though not a necessity, I find a levelling base a huge convenience. However, in most nightscapes our scene content is far enough away that parallax simply isn’t an issue. Parallax shift is certainly a concern when shooting interiors or any scenes with prominent content close to the camera. These rotate the camera around the so-called “nodal point” inside the lens, avoiding parallax shifts that can make it difficult to align and stitch adjacent frames. What you don’t need is a special, and often costly, panorama head. This allows you to move the camera at a correct and consistent angle from segment to segment. The tripod head can be either a ball head or a three-axis head, but it should have a horizontal axis marked with a degree scale. The tripod accessories here are by Acratech. An L-bracket allows the camera to rotate directly above the vertical axis, handy when shooting in portrait mode, as here with a 15mm full-frame fish-eye lens, one option for horizon-to-zenith panoramas. Here it sits on a levelling head with its own bubble level that makes it easy to level the camera. Pano GearĪ tripod head with a scale marked in degrees is essential. For Milky Way scenes you need a fast lens and a solid tripod, but any good DSLR or mirrorless camera will suffice. Nightscape panoramas don’t require any more equipment than what you likely already own for shooting the night sky. PART 1 - SHOOTING What Equipment Do You Need?

Ptgui tutorials software#

What software works best depends on the number of segments in your panorama, or even on the focal length of the lens you used. Here, I’ll step through techniques for simple to more complex panoramas, dealing first with essential shooting methods, then reviewing the workflows I use for processing and stitching panoramas. My tutorial complements the much more extensive information I provide in my eBook, at right. “Panos” can be easy to shoot, but stitching them together can present challenges. Panoramas featuring the arch of the Milky Way have become the icons of dark sky locations.