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Richard-CN · Feb 18, 2026

David - Sydney said:
I use the Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer Pro 2i as my tracker. Heavy but has some advantages over others and not too expensive.
Dan does a good overview at https://capturetheatlas.com/best-star-trackers/

Benro is good for automation but their SW and updates has not been good. Dan sells a course specifically for the Benro based on his experience in the field and helping workshop participants with different systems. There is 3rd party SW now for it but it seems to be mostly for control at a distance.

sweet. i had the original model of that - I see it's really gotten more advanced since then.

David - Sydney · Feb 18, 2026

Sorry to be that guy, but the Sony 14 1.8 gm is half the price,

Alastair Norcross said:
False, and it's 2/3 stop slower.

Definitely slower but he is actually under-estimating at being half the price.

In Australia, the Sony at AUD1590 is less than half the Canon cost at AUD3700 (inc tax).

By comparison the RF14 is USD2350 at apples-to-apples comparison with USD2600 ex tax at B&H.... go tariffs! (and don't forget the 5yr warranty)

The Sony 20mm/1.8 is AUD1300 locally and hence ~40% cheaper than the RF20 at AUD2300 (USD1460 equivalent).

There is no doubt about initial pricing being high but the RF20 has not dropped in price since release locally.

neuroanatomist · Feb 18, 2026

AJ said:
Thanks for the Cameralabs link. That sounds reassuring.

Indeed, and Richard is likely correct. If they got a bad copy, I do hope they had a pre-production copy. But it seems odd that Canon would put a problematic lens into the hands of reviewers (Bryan has gotten bad copies, but bought retail).

David - Sydney · Feb 18, 2026

There is one aspect of f1.4 that you can't get elsewhere is that you can use a shorter exposure time irrespective of vignetting or coma or noise.

When it is really windy and can't get long tracked exposures without being affected by wind, being able to get a 10-20s exposure can only be done reasonably with a f1.4. It would make the difference between getting any shot and none.

I check for any trailing/bump/wind after every image. Taking 2 x 2 minute exposures with a 20mm means about half an hour for a single row full panorama. Re-shooting takes that much longer and you could have a time limit with the setting sky.

Trying to take a double arch is even more challenging with limited time to get each arch at the same height in the sky. Something I might try this year but there is one (2?) time in the year for each location to do it.

Nothing worse than getting home and having images you can't use.

David - Sydney · Feb 17, 2026

kirbic said:
I've not used tape, I would worry that I would fat-finger it and move my focus, LOL. Usually, I have no issues with focus shifting. As you stated, the UWAs are pretty stable and don't change detectably during cool-down. I normally mount my camera and lens during polar alignment so they are cooling down for a good bit before I am setting up my imaging run.

Gaffer tape is my goto solution for my Samyang. Can't move the aperture ring or the focus ring with it in place. No MF/AF switch of course. Gaffer is also good for other stuff on site eg power banks to tripod legs etc. No residue as long as you take it off after use.

David - Sydney · Feb 17, 2026

Richard CR said:
what do you use for tracking?

I use the Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer Pro 2i as my tracker. Heavy but has some advantages over others and not too expensive.
Dan does a good overview at https://capturetheatlas.com/best-star-trackers/

Benro is good for automation but their SW and updates has not been good. Dan sells a course specifically for the Benro based on his experience in the field and helping workshop participants with different systems. There is 3rd party SW now for it but it seems to be mostly for control at a distance.

AJ · Feb 17, 2026

neuroanatomist said:
CameraLabs stated, "I also retested the lens focused in the corner and the result for this subject and distance looked no different from my first samples. So it’s looking like a nice flat field." Bryan/TDP is silent on the subject, but he reliably discusses field curvature for lenses that exhibit it.

Thanks for the Cameralabs link. That sounds reassuring.

tpatana · Feb 17, 2026

Nothing yet...

I currently have R3, and I feel upgrades for R1 don't justify the upgrade price. The biggest feature for me would be the pre-capture, but that alone doesn't justify the upgrade. I have big event in May 2027 and I'm quite sure I'll upgrade before that. There's another big-ish in July 2026 so upgrade before that would be nice but before May 2027 for sure. If R3-2 delivers good performance and pre-capture, I think more likely I'd get that one than R1. If there's R1-2 coming within next 12 months, that'd be interesting but I'm very doubtful we'll see R1-2 before 2028

Richard-CN · Feb 17, 2026

AJ said:
I think Chris Niccolls and Jordan Drake did their testing with a production sample.
Their astro image at the Okotoks Big Rock clearly shows a blurred corner,
I'm not saying I fully trust their review - they spotted smoke and where there is smoke there may be fire.
Maybe their out-of-focus corner is due to decentering rather than field curvature? Either way it's cause for concern. I'm sure a more systematic review will come along that shed some light on this.
In any case, a 16/2.8 lens profile would result in hefty distortion and vignetting corrections but it would not affect focus.

I think there was something wrong with that lens, and then they doubled down with some dubious workflow decisions.

Richard-CN · Feb 17, 2026

Malm said:
Concerning the focusing: I use the RF 85/1.2 for astrophotography and this 'focus by wire' is a little bit tricky. I only use the manual focus for night photography and fix the focus ring afterwards with a tape (and don't switch off the electricity any more).

what do you use for tracking?

Michael T · Feb 17, 2026

Please make it styled after the F-1 and not the AE-1. The AE-1 was plastic looking thing. The F-1 had much more classic styling, maybe call it the RF-1.

neuroanatomist · Feb 17, 2026

AJ said:
I'm not saying I fully trust their review - they spotted smoke and where there is smoke there may be fire.

When trust is damaged, rebuilding it is hard. If they believed that it was appropriate to use the RF 16/2.8 profile to correct the RF 14/1.4 RAW images and draw conclusions about lens performance based on those images, they're either trying to intentionally make the lens look bad or they're incompetent at testing lenses. Why the heck not just use DPP to convert the image? I get that DPP is kludgy, but with a new camera or lens it's often the only viable option. I downloaded a RAW image from the RF 14/1.4 from DPR's sample gallery and opened it in DPP:

The 14/1.4 has a lens profile available. But PetaPixel used something else.

CameraLabs stated, "I also retested the lens focused in the corner and the result for this subject and distance looked no different from my first samples. So it’s looking like a nice flat field." Bryan/TDP is silent on the subject, but he reliably discusses field curvature for lenses that exhibit it.

You say they see smoke where there's smoke. I wonder if they'd smell smoke if their own pants were on fire.

scyrene · Feb 17, 2026

justaCanonuser said:
I don't understand that Canon, being the pioneer of DO supertele tech doesn't come up with an equivalent and even lighter competition.

Canon did in fact create supertele DO lenses for RF - the 600 and 800 f/11.

We can only speculate why they have thus far ignored the "mid-range" long lenses, and/or why Nikon created them. It could be that they will eventually. Or perhaps they see the market differently, especially being so much bigger than Nikon now, and will never make eg a 600 f/6.3. I wouldn't expect to find out any time soon, either way.

scyrene · Feb 17, 2026

mccasi said:
Half a year ago I moved on and bought the A7CR and the 14mm from Sony for this purpose … wide open it’s a dream.

Does the lobotomy come free when you buy a S*ny body or is it extra?

AJ · Feb 17, 2026

neuroanatomist said:
Petapixel is basing their conclusions on images with the RF 16/2.8 lens profile applied to them. If you want to trust their review, well...I've got some very nice pictures of the Brooklyn Bridge and some Kansas swampland that I can sell to you for a very good price.

Of course, the complete lack of any reliable testing of this not-yet-launched lens utterly fails to prevent some people from drawing detailed conclusions about its performance

I think Chris Niccolls and Jordan Drake did their testing with a production sample.
Their astro image at the Okotoks Big Rock clearly shows a blurred corner,
I'm not saying I fully trust their review - they spotted smoke and where there is smoke there may be fire.
Maybe their out-of-focus corner is due to decentering rather than field curvature? Either way it's cause for concern. I'm sure a more systematic review will come along that shed some light on this.
In any case, a 16/2.8 lens profile would result in hefty distortion and vignetting corrections but it would not affect focus.

20Dave · Feb 17, 2026

I think you will need to be careful comparing stars at each of the corners when trying to get a feel if the lens is properly aligned. Given how wide this lens is, one corner is likely much closer to the north (or south) pole, where the star drift is much less than for stars much further away from the pole. If the shutter is fast enough, then it's true that the drift can be practically eliminated for all intents and purposes, but any formula that tries to have shutter speed account for star drift needs to factor in the distance from the pole.

My caveat - I do hobby level astrophotography, but I use dedicated astro cameras with telescopes in the 800-1400mm range on motorized mounts, so I'm not well versed with wide-field astrophotography.

KirkD · Feb 17, 2026

I've been waiting for this lens ever since the RF lens system came out. I now have it on pre-order and am super-stoked to get it on my camera and out under the night sky for some nightscapes.

Malm · Feb 17, 2026

m4ndr4ke said:
....
While the RF 14mm VCM shows significant vignette at f/1.4, at f/2 it exhibits a little less than the EF 14mm f/2.8 II at f/2.8, so there's still an advantage with the new lens, as you're shooting one f-stop faster.

RF lenses have electronic focusing rings/focus by wire. However, you can completely disable manual focus while the switch is set to AF.

Yipp, I was also thinking of stopping the RF 14/1.4 down to f/2.0 to get a vignette of 3EV which is OK for my panoramas of the aurora. But there is another lens with low coma and vignette at f/2.0 (Sigma Art EF 14/1.8) and the new Canon RF is expensive. The 'old' Canon EF 14/2.8 II was always a poor lens for astrophotography (horrible coma), so I'm not using that lens for comparison.
So my question was: Are the improvements of the RF 14/1.4 for night photography worth this price. My answer is 'no' at the moment.

Concerning the focusing: I use the RF 85/1.2 for astrophotography and this 'focus by wire' is a little bit tricky. I only use the manual focus for night photography and fix the focus ring afterwards with a tape (and don't switch off the electricity any more).

neuroanatomist · Feb 17, 2026

Malm said:
3) Well, I can understand that the 'peripheral shading' is also depending on test setup, but a value of 4 EV is pretty high (I used the review from TDP as reference) and it is an important factor for night photography. I assume that the strong vignette is due to the size-limitations of the VCM lenses (and therefore it's also small and relatively light).

It's pretty high, but also becoming the norm for such lenses. Interesting that the Sony 14/1.8 that 'that guy' loves so much he awards it a 2.5-stop advantage over Canon's lens still has over 3 stops of corner vignetting wide open. And the Canon lens has less vignetting with both lenses at f/2. Oh well, as I said...conclude first, check data later works for some people.

Malm · Feb 17, 2026

Richard CR said:
I forgot about clarks work, thanks for the reminder.

however in this case, unless we want to assume different transmissions through various 14mm lenses - I didn't state anything about light collection difference between a 14mm f/1.4 and, for instance, a 24/1.8. which I agree would have been a collective hot mess trying to come up with that. For most of the people reading this, aperture values govern the collection of light for the same focal length - but yes, I do agree it's more nuanced. There's a reason why telescopes are sold primarily by the diameter of the aperture.

I left off stitching and also tracking because that's a never-ending rabbit hole.

Vignetting I don't usually mention that much in my conversations on lenses, because it's never just the lens with mirrorless cameras and lenses - it's a combination of the sensor generation level, and the lens itself that contributes to vignetting. Consider that light is falling on a sensor at a given angle of incidence in the corner of the sensor, and depending on the pixel and the microlens design, that may or may not collect less or more light as you move from the center. also depending on how the lens shifts elements around internally, even the focus distance can change the vignetting amounts - so it's, well, complicated, and there's never any one right answer for that.

Also, thanks for the heads up on the f/2.4 lenses.

Hi,

In general I agree.

1) Yipp, we tend to use the f-stop as a simplification for the light gathering. My point is that even a perfect 14/1.4 lens is already a compromise for night photography (although a pretty fast one in this case).

2) Stitching and tracking are very powerful tool, but that are just techniques with pros and cons. I only used this as an example to show the potential problem for night photography with such a strong vignette.

3) Well, I can understand that the 'peripheral shading' is also depending on test setup, but a value of 4 EV is pretty high (I used the review from TDP as reference) and it is an important factor for night photography. I assume that the strong vignette is due to the size-limitations of the VCM lenses (and therefore it's also small and relatively light).

justaCanonuser · Feb 17, 2026

Speaking about teles, Nikon has brought some impressively light primes based on diffraction optics, Nikon calls these lenses "PF" for Phase Fresnel. My wife has the wonderfully light and compact Z 600mm F/6.3 PF VR, it is very sharp, and then there is the Z800mm f/6.3 PF VR, which weights only about 2.5 kg with lens hood. I don't understand that Canon, being the pioneer of DO supertele tech doesn't come up with an equivalent and even lighter competition. Tele zooms are nice, but these primes from Nikon seem to be quite popular amongst wildlife photographers. It's the first time I am personally attracted by these offerings from Nikon, nearly 20 years after I changed from Nikon to Canon. Well, looking at all the technical problems we had and have with our Nikon gear, that keeps me with Canon besides Canon's very good ergonomy, Canon's quality and reliability is definitely much better than Nikon's.

neuroanatomist · Feb 17, 2026

AJ said:
Petapixel is reporting field curvature:
Is this true?

Petapixel is basing their conclusions on images with the RF 16/2.8 lens profile applied to them. If you want to trust their review, well...I've got some very nice pictures of the Brooklyn Bridge and some Kansas swampland that I can sell to you for a very good price.

Of course, the complete lack of any reliable testing of this not-yet-launched lens utterly fails to prevent some people from drawing detailed conclusions about its performance, like 'that guy' who claimed that, "The canon 14mm has to be stopped down to 2.8 to be even remotely where the Sony [14/1.8] is." I mean, personally I want to see the data before coming to a conclusion, but there are lots of 'that guy' out there that prefer to conclude first and not really look at data at all.

AJ · Feb 17, 2026

Petapixel is reporting field curvature:

Getting accurate focus is tricky [with the RF 14 1.4] because the field curvature of the lens means that the center being in focus does not apply to the corners.

Is this true?

Field curvature can be an astro lens killer. Back in my APSC days I bought a Tokina 14-20 f/2 for astro. The lens was very sharp, even in the corners wide open, and coma and astigmatism was well corrected. But to get sharp corners I had to focus on objects in the corners. If I focused the center then the corners became a blurry mess... unless I stopped way down ... which defeated the whole point of the lens. So it sat on my shelf for a few years, and then I took it to Keh who gave me a few pennies for it.

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