Mt. Bierstadt Milky Way Pano

30x50@300dpi) I went back up to Mt. Bierstadt to try to rebate the Milky Way bow pano. Didn't quite get it, and actually ended up having to cheat a bit. I ...
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30x50@300dpi) I went back up to Mt. Bierstadt to try to rebate the Milky Way bow pano. Didn't quite get it, and actually ended up having to cheat a bit. I started shooting the horizon but there were a bunch of other people around which resulted in some unintentional light painting. I wasted a bunch of time trying to let other people shoot and waiting to start myself. So I scrapped those shots and started shooting the stars. I thought I would have an easier time getting proper overlap and framing for the stitch with my pano head on top of my astrotrac but it just ended up introducing too much vibration (slight star movement at full zoom). So I went back to the tried and true with the ball head on the tracker I started shooting the sky again. I was shooting 4 minute 30 second exposures at 1600 iso and f2.8 on my 35mm 1.4 and also 1 minute 30 second exposures to blend clipped highlights and to stack in general for more integration. Around 2:30 in the morning I had shot about 20 frames of each exposure and the milky way had worked it's way pretty much over head. I had managed to shoot the majority of half of the milky way but didn't quite have enough for the bow. Then a fog rolled in and I was worried I was going to get totally skunked because I still had no foreground yet. Sure enough it stuck around through most of blue hour until the beginning of sunrise. While I was waiting I shot 7 dark frames for each exposure to stack and use for noise reduction. I figured I had nothing to lose so I might as well just shoot the foreground again once the fog cleared since I had nothing to use at this point. I cropped the foreground shot to be close to the field of view captured for the stars then shrunk it 10 inches to match the size of the stitch I had for the sky. Then I processed it so that it wouldn't look like it was shot during twilight. and blended them. The milky way was at a slightly steeper angle, when it first made an appearance at the beginning of the night but this is pretty close to realistic. Fairly satisfied considering I figured it was mostly a loss. Still after that Milky Way bow over mountains, but I may put it on the back burner for a little bit, or at least not commit my whole night to it when far from home.
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