p.1 #1 · June Milky Way arch over iconic Sedona buttes
I photographed a similar composition last year but earlier this June had a chance to re-capture the Milky Way in Sedona rising over Courthouse Butte and Bell Rock.
Disclosure: The sky was shot as a tracked panorama with a 35mm Sigma Art lens, but the ground was shot (the same night) with a 20mm lens. I find that panoramas with 35mm and longer get more detail and color in the stars and sky, but the 35mm view isn't great for wide foregrounds, so I combine the two to get a good view of both. Despite these being separate shots, the Milky Way was properly lined up where it would be naturally.
p.1 #2 · June Milky Way arch over iconic Sedona buttes
That is a lovely image.
I like the idea of the wide lens for the landscape. I have done a few MW mosaics and the landscape capture and then process / stitch and align is always the part I feel I don’t have a good handle on. I might have to try it, although I have a planned image coming up that will feature Orion between two prominent local peaks - but it will be just a 3x3 stacked and stitched 20mm mosaic. But maybe I’ll try 40mm on Orion and then switch to 20 on landscape. Fingers crossed weather cooperates.
p.1 #10 · June Milky Way arch over iconic Sedona buttes
Great idea and execution on the MW Arch and foreground blend. I might have to get a tracker as I have a great MW arch location for spring/early summer that I have shot and stitched at 14 mm but it gets quite distorted. I need the tracker if I am to shoot at 35 mm without significant star movement.
Now to look for a used tracker on the buy and sell forum!
p.1 #12 · June Milky Way arch over iconic Sedona buttes
Thanks everyone for the kind words
bmike-vt wrote:
That is a lovely image.
I like the idea of the wide lens for the landscape. I have done a few MW mosaics and the landscape capture and then process / stitch and align is always the part I feel I don’t have a good handle on. I might have to try it, although I have a planned image coming up that will feature Orion between two prominent local peaks - but it will be just a 3x3 stacked and stitched 20mm mosaic. But maybe I’ll try 40mm on Orion and then switch to 20 on landscape. Fingers crossed weather cooperates....Show more →
Go for it! You can try both focal lengths as well for the foreground. Once I realized this method with combining focal lengths, I could get a lot more flexible with compositions. In addition, having two cameras really speeds things up as I can capture the stars and foreground at the same time instead of relying on one after the other and wasting precious minutes for the stars. Good luck!
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Hathaway wrote:
Great idea and execution on the MW Arch and foreground blend. I might have to get a tracker as I have a great MW arch location for spring/early summer that I have shot and stitched at 14 mm but it gets quite distorted. I need the tracker if I am to shoot at 35 mm without significant star movement.
Now to look for a used tracker on the buy and sell forum!
Bob
If you are at all serious about Milky Way photography, I think getting a tracker is the way to go. It turns almost any lens into a viable lens for landscape astrophotography and you can be less worried about having a lens with the largest aperture. Plus being able to stop down to correct lens aberrations is a giant plus.
It is also possible to shoot a Milky Way panorama with a 35mm lens without a tracker (I've done it before with a 58mm f/1.4) and I never had any issues stitching, you just need to keep your exposures short; I think I was shooting at f/1.4, ISO 3200, and like 5 seconds or so. Obviously with a tracker you will be able to stop down and get longer exposures for a better signal to noise ratio, but the result without the tracker was still fairly good in my opinion and you still benefit from the detail from using a longer focal length. Here is an example with this technique; coincidentally the subject in the foreground is also the same in the original post, Courthouse Butte in Sedona.
