You've got a sinusoidal wave on the horizon -- this is fairly typical when you're getting started with panoramic stitching, but is usually pretty easy to fix.
I'm guessing you mean PTGui, in which case you can just drag the image in the Panorama Editor to get it straight, or you can use horizontal control points to define the horizon line (and optionally vertical control points if you wanted the building sides to be perfectly vertical). Instructions here: http://www.johnhpanos.com/horizons.htm
I can't tell much about the noise in the low-res Facebook image, but it's certainly not objectionable at web sizes. You'll need to continue to experiment with your D5100 to find the best trade-off of detail to noise, especially if you want to print the photos. ISO 3200 is generally the high end of what's acceptable on a crop-frame camera if you do want to print.
You could increase the shutter duration a little bit to get some more detail in the stars -- you should be able to use a shutter speed of around 20 seconds with that lens without starting to trail the stars, which would give you more than twice the amount of light in (and correspondingly more detail in the Milky Way). (Equally, you could also use this to drop the ISO to 1600 and get correspondingly less noise).
I prefer a 'midnight blue' tone to the sky rather than the brown tone in this shot, but that's mostly personal preference (and not necessarily particularly authentic). That's something that's very easy to adjust, though.
All in all, an excellent first attempt -- great job!
Also, as it's a full 360 degree panorama, it might be interesting to try this as a Little Planet. You can easily do this by adjusting the projection in PTGui to 'Stereographic Down'. More details on projections here: http://www.ptgui.com/man/projections.html
@abirkill Hey Alexis! Thank you so much for this wonderful feedback! yea, it was kind of hard to straighten it out even with dragging it. I might have to use JOHN's method. I am really familiar with his website actually read most of his tutorials about Spherical panoramas and other stitching issue. But obviously I have much to learn! lol, I realized pretty much everything you said shortly after I got home, and was kind of upset since I wont go anywhere with this kind of light for the starts in a while.. but It was my first time and I DEF learned a lot with my shutter/f/stop/ISO ratio. And will do much better next time!
Little planets are kind of my hobby I have a bunch of them in my facebook page, Here is a link if you wanna check them out. DO you do this kind of photography as well, and if yes is there any work I can see by you?
It is annoying to be surrounded by city lights. I'm fortunate to have one really great place I can go that's quite close, but I've been so many times I'm running out of compositions! In the other directions I'm either surrounded by water or city!
You have some nice little planets on your Facebook page, great job!
I do a lot of panoramic work, but I don't do very many little planets or 360 degree panoramas. I always want to make sure that if I'm stitching images, the result is also a great composition that stands alone -- i.e. it's not just good because it's a panorama, and if people don't know it's a panorama, they still think it's a great shot. I struggle to find many scenes where there's genuinely interesting detail all the way around -- although a lot of that is probably failings on my part. I certainly do want to do a Milky Way little planet, but it needs both somewhere dark enough in all directions, and also with interest in all directions. You seem to have got that in your shot!
Here's one of the only little planets I've done that I liked enough to actually post. I like the completely circular park, which works well here, but I wish that there was more interest in the bottom-right corner. There is interest, of course -- you can see the North Shore mountains which tower above the city, but because of their distance, they look barely like hills here...
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You've got a sinusoidal wave on the horizon -- this is fairly typical when you're getting started with panoramic stitching, but is usually pretty easy to fix.
I'm guessing you mean PTGui, in which case you can just drag the image in the Panorama Editor to get it straight, or you can use horizontal control points to define the horizon line (and optionally vertical control points if you wanted the building sides to be perfectly vertical). Instructions here: http://www.johnhpanos.com/horizons.htm
I can't tell much about the noise in the low-res Facebook image, but it's certainly not objectionable at web sizes. You'll need to continue to experiment with your D5100 to find the best trade-off of detail to noise, especially if you want to print the photos. ISO 3200 is generally the high end of what's acceptable on a crop-frame camera if you do want to print.
You could increase the shutter duration a little bit to get some more detail in the stars -- you should be able to use a shutter speed of around 20 seconds with that lens without starting to trail the stars, which would give you more than twice the amount of light in (and correspondingly more detail in the Milky Way). (Equally, you could also use this to drop the ISO to 1600 and get correspondingly less noise).
I prefer a 'midnight blue' tone to the sky rather than the brown tone in this shot, but that's mostly personal preference (and not necessarily particularly authentic). That's something that's very easy to adjust, though.
All in all, an excellent first attempt -- great job!
http://www.ptgui.com/man/projections.html
Little planets are kind of my hobby I have a bunch of them in my facebook page, Here is a link if you wanna check them out. DO you do this kind of photography as well, and if yes is there any work I can see by you?
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You have some nice little planets on your Facebook page, great job!
I do a lot of panoramic work, but I don't do very many little planets or 360 degree panoramas. I always want to make sure that if I'm stitching images, the result is also a great composition that stands alone -- i.e. it's not just good because it's a panorama, and if people don't know it's a panorama, they still think it's a great shot. I struggle to find many scenes where there's genuinely interesting detail all the way around -- although a lot of that is probably failings on my part. I certainly do want to do a Milky Way little planet, but it needs both somewhere dark enough in all directions, and also with interest in all directions. You seem to have got that in your shot!
Here's one of the only little planets I've done that I liked enough to actually post. I like the completely circular park, which works well here, but I wish that there was more interest in the bottom-right corner. There is interest, of course -- you can see the North Shore mountains which tower above the city, but because of their distance, they look barely like hills here...