I just remembered that about 2 weeks ago, I was asked to shoot a night time exterior of a modest house surrounded by woods that is being put on the market. Currently, there is very poor exterior lighting on that property, but the sellers are going to upgrade and wanted a photo of how it could look after the upgrade.
The reason I thought this might interest you is because my shot utilized many of the same techniques that I described in my previous post. With my camera on my 1970's vintage ultra-sturdy "Samson / Hercules" tripod,
View attachment 69049
I walked around the front of the house with a remote trigger in one hand, and a remotely triggered flash in the other hand, and took around 20 shots, each with the flash lighting a different portion of the exterior or the trees. The relation of this to the suggestions in my previous post is that:
a) I focused only once, initially. I initially used auto-focus, and then switched the focus to manual so it wouldn't change between shots;
b) Because I used a remote camera trigger, I never once had to touch the camera, and possibly disturb its aim.
c) I was constantly adjusting the flash, but because it was off the camera, this removed another potential source of camera movement / vibration.
The bottom line of the above procedure was that the aim of the camera was so rock-solid that there was absolutely no need for me to use auto-alignment in PS or anything similar. As an experiment, I actually tried using auto-alignment, but all it did was slow down my workflow. It didn't improve the sharpness of the composite image in the least.
Attached is one of composites I delivered. Because I wanted you to see the sharpness, the file size exceeded the ordinary limits for this forum, but as a work-around, one can zip the file and it gets through the forum uploading software. I also attached a lower rez version so casual readers can get an idea of what the final product looked like without unzipping the large file.
HTH,
Tom M