Malm said:

I use tape to fix the focus ring after focusing with the 10x live-view. That is mandatory when using a dew-heater. UWA lenses are usually not very sensitive to thermal adjustment, so I only focus once at the beginning. If you want to use a Bahtinov-mask for focus, you need a special one for UWA work with very close gaps. With a little bit of experience the live-view smethod should be good enough.

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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.

Zadak said:

Self-heating lenses when?

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Well, use an Uranium-alloy for the lens barrel and you will never have dew-problems again.

Canon Rumors said:

I'm still trying to sort out how the Sony mounts on RF

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That requires the Sony cripple wrench and some super glue

Self-heating lenses when?

David - Sydney said:

I think that my standard is a bit lower than yours. Nebula would mean Ha - correct? I haven't gone down that route and probably won't although the technical challenge. Getting viewers to appreciate adding Ha to a picture seems to be a step too far for them as they don't know what it is and definitely can't see it with the naked eye.
For colours, there seems to be controversy about what would be the "correct" white balance. Seems to be a personal preference with some too purple for me for instance.
PTGui is great but sometimes I can't get it to stitch properly - even when adding control points and need to do a lot of work in post to get it looking okay. Simple is good for me

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Hi!

In short: I nearly completely agree!

Nebula: I'm not doing Ha yet and I will not do it for 'landscape at night' as it is looking too artificial to me. The modern sensors are already more sensitive in Ha than the human eye and that is enough for my taste. Normal 'daylight' images are also done in natural colors, just a little bit tweaked and that's how I do it with night images: Color temperature is usually around 5000 K and than you have to tweak and stretch as you like. Ha for deep-sky is a different story as that is not a 'natural' image, but instead you try to show with any suitable method the structures of the night sky.
There is an absolutely overkill of these kitsch night images with a red Ha sky plus the typical brainless flashlight-guy.

PTGui: Mmmmh? I have hardy had ever problems with that software. I'm using a pano-head, so when auto-stitching fails I'm using 'align to grid' where I only have to guess the 'roll' and 'pitch' angles. But even with my 'three-camera-pano-rail' which will always have a parallax error, I hardly ever have such problems.

Alastair Norcross said:

Luckily, each of my fingers has two joints.

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My fingers even have three joints, but none of them move latitudinally as much as the new power switch requires

I added this in a later reply:

m4ndr4ke said:

I prefer the power switch on the left, but I know I could use it on the right, I would easily deal with that. However, it's not on the right, currently, it's at the top and aimed at the front. The thumb can't get there, the index finger needs to bend, it's just not a good design, in my opinion.

Same issue for the lock switch, specifically because it's aimed at the front. For instance, the RP has the lock switch in the same place, but aimed at the right, which is great, since the thumb can easily reach it. You can lock and unlock without having to adjust the right hand entirely.

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kirbic said:

I... An MF lock switch would have been awesome, but I've learned to be very careful and also to monitor focus closely during acquisition of my subs. I've found that I don't need a mask to achieve critical focus, as long as I use high magnification on the screen. I'm normally not shooting quite wide open anyhow so I have a leeetle bit of wiggle room.

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I use tape to fix the focus ring after focusing with the 10x live-view. That is mandatory when using a dew-heater. UWA lenses are usually not very sensitive to thermal adjustment, so I only focus once at the beginning. If you want to use a Bahtinov-mask for focus, you need a special one for UWA work with very close gaps. With a little bit of experience the live-view smethod should be good enough.

Hi!

1) The author is doing the classical mistake of saying that the aperture value is responsible for the light gathering which is wrong. It's the OPEN aperture and that's why a 24/1.4 is gathering 3x more light than a 14/1.4 lens with the same exposure time (and hence getting a much better s/n ratio). See the classical Clarkvision article for details. That's why a fast ultra-wide angle lens is a compromise (not-so-good light gathering, but also no panorama required) compared to a fast wide angle lens (good light gathering, but often requires stitching of several images). Some images like polar-lights are nearly only possible with ultra-wide angles due to the fast changing aurora.

2) The extreme vignette of 4 EV for the RF 14/1.4 is nowhere mentioned, but that is an important limitation of this lens for night photography. Add 1-2 EV under-exposure (e.g. to protect the bright parts of a strong aurora) and you will get noise issues in the corners when removing the vignette. That can be a problem for panorama images which are popular for night photography.

3) The so called 'coma' of this new lens seems to be acceptable at f/1.4 and I've seen a better coma example than the peta pixel images. The comment that the strong distortion-correction might rather increase the coma sounds logical.

4) The Samyang XP/ Rokinon SP 14/2.4 lens was mentioned once. It's a good 'astro' lens but needs a firmware upgrade for the newer Canon bodies to work (works fine without update on the old R and RP).

I appreciate the comments from the author about this new lens and I agree with most of his findings, but the importance of the open aperture (instead of the aperture) and the strong vignette should have been discussed in a proper review. It's definitely not the perfect 'astro-lens' (due to vignette, price and very strong distortion correction), but it's looking like a (well) suitable lens for night photography.
My opinion about this new 14/1.4 is also a little bit mixed and I will not buy it at the moment for night photography.

I'm relatively certain that if I don't get a dud I will love this lens. Here's hoping I get my copy in early March and can test it around New Moon. An MF lock switch would have been awesome, but I've learned to be very careful and also to monitor focus closely during acquisition of my subs. I've found that I don't need a mask to achieve critical focus, as long as I use high magnification on the screen. I'm normally not shooting quite wide open anyhow so I have a leeetle bit of wiggle room.

Canon Rumors said:

Being wrong so many times in such a short post. A+. I'm still trying to sort out how the Sony mounts on RF

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Give the guy a break, he was spot on regarding one point…he definitely is “that guy“.

m4ndr4ke said:

It's almost the only single thing that annoys me on the new cameras.
That, and the new M-Fn menu, with two levels and different controls.

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I also really like that. Much more convenient for me.

m4ndr4ke said:

Not only I prefer the power switch on the left, I absolutely hate where they decided to move it to, it's just so out of reach, I have to bend my finger to get there

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Luckily, each of my fingers has two joints.

mccasi said:

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

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False, and it's 2/3 stop slower.

mccasi said:

2/3 the weight, smaller and famously has no aberrations wide open on a 60MP sensor… the canon 14mm has to be stopped down to 2.8 to be even remotely where the Sony is…

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False.

mccasi said:

and that’s before you consider the a7cr has 1 stop better noise performance

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False

mccasi said:

- which gives it 2.5 stops advantage …

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False

mccasi said:

the comparison is so ridiculous

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The only thing that's true, but not for the reasons you are claiming.

mccasi said:

that CR has ignored it from the comparison

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Nice shots, shire guy.

​

mccasi said:

Sorry to be that guy, but the Sony 14 1.8 gm is half the price, 2/3 the weight, smaller and famously has no aberrations wide open on a 60MP sensor… the canon 14mm has to be stopped down to 2.8 to be even remotely where the Sony is… and that’s before you consider the a7cr has 1 stop better noise performance - which gives it 2.5 stops advantage … the comparison is so ridiculous that CR has ignored it from the comparison

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On which planet is the Sony A7CR 1 stop better? So you telling me that ISO 6400 on the Sony is as clean as ISO 3200 on Canon?

shire_guy said:

Australian Brush-turkey

View attachment 228005

White-faced Heron (with lunch)

View attachment 228006

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More like a snack! Nice and sharp to see it so clearly.

Ian K said:

If you want to focus correctly for astro work, you can’t do better than a bahtinov mask. Use the rear screen to zoom in to a bright star and centre it in the screen. Then place the bahtinov mask in front of the lens. Or simply hold it there, if like the RF 14mm there are no threads. Now manually focus until you have a sharp star. You now have perfect focus for Astro, remove the mask.

For example the Kase Night Focus Tool or Kase Bright Star circular filter. I’ve used the Bright star to great effect.

Batinov Masks

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100% absolutely .. tried and true and works on literally anything.

mccasi said:

Sorry to be that guy, but the Sony 14 1.8 gm is half the price, 2/3 the weight, smaller and famously has no aberrations wide open on a 60MP sensor… the canon 14mm has to be stopped down to 2.8 to be even remotely where the Sony is… and that’s before you consider the a7cr has 1 stop better noise performance - which gives it 2.5 stops advantage … the comparison is so ridiculous that CR has ignored it from the comparison

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that's cute but what does it have to do with the RF mount? it was literally in the title and I'm not sure you actually read the article. Comparisons were not even a core part of this article.

sorry to be that guy, but no, you re a little wrong on - everything?

Let's see coma.


while, "okay" .. it's certainly not "nothing".

secondly on what planet is 1750 50% of 2600?

third:



I am looking for that miraculous 1EV better high ISO.

and finally.

60MP means if you are concerned about point sharpness (which you mentioned) your light gathering aka exposure time would be shorter. around 8 seconds versus 10 seconds for 5 trailing pixels.

Australian Brush-turkey



White-faced Heron (with lunch)

A good overview.
The Sony/sigma options are substantially cheaper if you already are in that system.
Getting the RF20/1.4 + RF14/1.4 locally would be about the same cost as a A7iii (new) + 14/1.8 + 20/1.8. Or even a second hand A7iv. The Sony stuff gets on sale and available second hand. The RF14 and RF20 won't be discounted or available used (for a long time).

Canon threw everything into a great 14mm but if they asked me (and they didn't), a better astro lens would have been manual focus with dew heater and focus lock as you mentioned. the cost would have been a lot cheaper.

If you can afford or justify its use then it is a great choice but there are only ~10 new moons a year to use it - if the weather cooperates.
Coma isn't everything but it is annoying if substantial. All depends on stitching for corner sharpness.

The alternative is to get good at tracking and use a slower lens for a longer exposure. The Samyang 14/2.8 and lots of trackers would be a cheaper option. Of course, certain foregrounds don't lend themselves to tracking/longer exposures especially trees reaching up in the sky.

m4ndr4ke said:

I like the idea, I don't like the controls. Requiring two dials to operate such a simple design without at least trying to match the previous arrangement is diabolical to me

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I agree. The M-Fn actually requires two dials and you have to press the M-Fn button to switch to the next selection. I always forget that and confuses me over and over again. Atm, it is not intuitive to me. Hopefully, it'll change.

m4ndr4ke said:

It would be nice if it could be operated with the joystick, in four directions, like the menu.

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Yes, please!

m4ndr4ke said:

I prefer the power switch on the left, but I know I could use it on the right, I would easily deal with that. However, it's not on the right, currently, it's at the top and aimed at the front. The thumb can't get there, the index finger needs to bend, it's just not a good design, in my opinion.

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I agree 100%!

alFR said:

I guess your choices are:

• Ebay
• Local dealer who buys second-hand kit (in the UK there are loads e.g. Wex, LCE: assume there must be some in Belgium?)
• MPB etc.
• Other online marketplace e.g. Facebook

EBay / Facebook come with the attendant hassles of time-wasters and scammers. You’ve already rejected MPB so local dealer? Odd that the MPB price was so low though, there’s a like new one on their UK site for £5749 - that’s a lot of margin (unless yours is trashed ).

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Their mark up tends to be a about 40% in the UK (that of course allows for VAT, postage and warranty). WEX and MPB seem to offer the same price in my experience. I've sold over eBay with no problems and very satisfied customers, but I then found it easier to take a slightly lower price with less hassle from MPB. But eBay is now more competitive as they have lowered their fees.

mccasi said:

Sorry to be that guy, but the Sony 14 1.8 gm is half the price, 2/3 the weight, smaller and famously has no aberrations wide open on a 60MP sensor… the canon 14mm has to be stopped down to 2.8 to be even remotely where the Sony is… and that’s before you consider the a7cr has 1 stop better noise performance - which gives it 2.5 stops advantage … the comparison is so ridiculous that CR has ignored it from the comparison

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On paper that Sony lens does not impress me


But we have to see the real world tests/examples

Ian K said:

If you want to focus correctly for astro work, you can’t do better than a bahtinov mask. Use the rear screen to zoom in to a bright star and centre it in the screen. Then place the bahtinov mask in front of the lens. Or simply hold it there, if like the RF 14mm there are no threads. Now manually focus until you have a sharp star. You now have perfect focus for Astro, remove the mask.

For example the Kase Night Focus Tool or Kase Bright Star circular filter. I’ve used the Bright star to great effect.

Batinov Masks

Click to expand...

I looked into masks some time ago but the problem I have is that it makes the process more complicated rather than less. Focus on Stars has an option for 14mm that might work but some sort of adapter would be required.

If you want to focus correctly for astro work, you can’t do better than a bahtinov mask. Use the rear screen to zoom in to a bright star and centre it in the screen. Then place the bahtinov mask in front of the lens. Or simply hold it there, if like the RF 14mm there are no threads. Now manually focus until you have a sharp star. You now have perfect focus for Astro, remove the mask.

For example the Kase Night Focus Tool or Kase Bright Star circular filter. I’ve used the Bright star to great effect.

Batinov Masks

mccasi said:

Sorry to be that guy, but the Sony 14 1.8 gm is half the price, 2/3 the weight, smaller and famously has no aberrations wide open on a 60MP sensor… the canon 14mm has to be stopped down to 2.8 to be even remotely where the Sony is… and that’s before you consider the a7cr has 1 stop better noise performance - which gives it 2.5 stops advantage … the comparison is so ridiculous that CR has ignored it from the comparison

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Are you sure that the Sony A7CR is a stop better? and compared to what? I just compared it to the R5 and the R5 looked better to me in every scene at ISO 6400 and both cameras had about the same iso range.