Astrophotography - The Bug Has Bitten

Frodo said:
Sabaki said:
I'm more and more looking to one of either the Samyang 14mm or 24mm but TDP's review of the 14mm says it is soft until stopped down to f/2.8 and that's a bit of a caveat if fast is a reason to get those lenses

I use the old, fully manual Samyang 14mm f/2.8. It is plenty sharp at f/2.8 and has negligible coma even wide open. It has a weird moustache distortion but my Lightroom profile removes that. However, the profile crops the image slightly and corrects the vignetting so I get a little more noise in the corners.

In contrast my EF 35/2.8 IS has awful coma wide open and is unusable until f/2.8 and better at f/4. Indeed my 24-105/4 IS has less coma wide open.

This photo is taken with the Samyang 14/2.8 wide open on a 6D.

Has anyone else seen the kiwi bird in the Milky Way, just below the bright spot in the galactic centre?

I'm making notes! Perhaps I should see if I can get a test copy from my retailer before plumbing down for one

And it looks more like a dodo than a kiwi to me =))
 
Upvote 0
Don Haines said:
Sabaki said:
I will download the other software too and see what works and doesnt work for me.


There is another package for panoramas called AutoPano Giga... It is specifically designed for panoramas and can handle some pretty serious sized ones... It's not free, but they do have a downloadable version to try out... it is the same software as the paid version, except it puts watermarks on the images...

i'll download the free version over the weekend and give it a run. If good enough, the paid version will be a birthday gift to me from me :p
 
Upvote 0
KeithBreazeal said:
Sabaki said:
KeithBreazeal said:
I use Lightroom to process all my images. Getting your exposures correct is the key.
I use both the Rokinon 14mm f2.8 and the Sigma 14mm f1.8 Art. Both are good astro lenses. The Rokinon wins with the lack of coma at the edges whereas the Sigma has some at the corners at f1.8. The Sigma wins with less distortion and the ability to shoot either with a lower ISO or faster shutter speed.

Lightroom before/after

5D IV jpg Milky Way edit test 2337 © Keith Breazeal by Keith Breazeal, on Flickr

Hi Keith :)

I also am totally besotted with my geared head. What I find funny is that the majority of landscape users who use ballheads, don't seem to have any idea of just how awesome geared heads are!

Your image, I noticed you shot wider than I did, 14mm vs 16mm. Was this a single image?

The facilitator advised for panos shot at wider focal lengths, the stitched image will have an irregular shape, that's more exaggerated the wider the lens

Thank you for the feedback :) Much appreciated

This was a single image with a 14mm. Lightroom can be very powerful for night sky work. It's taken me a while to really get into the "little things" during the editing- which steps to do first, brushing techniques, etc. Every photo shoot is different, so each time I learn something new or a better approach. If you light paint, it gets even more complicated. Auto white balance is good until you light paint, so set the Kelvin manually. For panos, Manual Kelvin settings might be a good choice if the skyline has light pollution in one area.

Thank you Keith :) I will do research on your suggestions and build my own editing style for astro

I haven't been this excited about a new genre in a while
 
Upvote 0
stevelee said:
I've had good luck with the Adaptive Wide Angle on a lot of images.

These days I start from Bridge, select the pictures, and open them in Filmstrip mode. Then I select them all and go to the little pulldown menu just above the thumbnails and choose panorama. Before it finishes, it gives you a slider to control the resulting perspective. That often works well, and can save me what can be a lot of work in AWA. I've not tried this with sky photos per se, but they should work just as well.

If the exposures look weirdly different, when you first open them in the filmstrip, they can be chosen individually and worked on, I would presume. I've not needed to do that, as I recall.

One of the more challenging AWA projects of mine was a picture of the room in which Will Rogers was born. Shots were made from the doorway with my S120 zoomed out to 24mm equivalent in 2015. I could probably do a better job now, or at least if no better, at least with less struggle. It is the sort of thing that experience helps, both in the original shooting and in the eventual processing.

birthplacepan.jpg


About as close as I get to the sky panorama is something like this composite of Pittsburgh:

pan2.jpg

Hi Steve :)

Those panos look pretty seamless (and sweet!) if you ask me :)

I'm beginning to think I should start using LightRoom more, I'm more or less exclusively using Photoshop.

Thank you for the advise, I'll definitely take it
 
Upvote 0
privatebydesign said:
Sabaki said:
I also am totally besotted with my geared head. What I find funny is that the majority of landscape users who use ballheads, don't seem to have any idea of just how awesome geared heads are!

I have had several over the years but have settled on the Arca Swiss d4 I got used off eBay, it is a great head but if I went for a new one it would be the p0 Hybrid.
For landscape work I prefer a non geared rig like the RRS pano setup on top of a ball head. IMO it is faster to set up and to swing to new pano positions than a geared rig.
 
Upvote 0
BeenThere said:
privatebydesign said:
Sabaki said:
I also am totally besotted with my geared head. What I find funny is that the majority of landscape users who use ballheads, don't seem to have any idea of just how awesome geared heads are!

I have had several over the years but have settled on the Arca Swiss d4 I got used off eBay, it is a great head but if I went for a new one it would be the p0 Hybrid.
For landscape work I prefer a non geared rig like the RRS pano setup on top of a ball head. IMO it is faster to set up and to swing to new pano positions than a geared rig.

The RRs stuff are truly droolworthy but as they dont allow for reselling in my country (South Africa), I cannot bring myself to purchase any of their wares.

In terms of what the geared head does, I really enjoy it. As I find that shooting off of a tripod along with the movement of the geared head, allows me greater inspection of my scene and scrutiny of my composition
 
Upvote 0
Sabaki said:
Hi Steve :)

Those panos look pretty seamless (and sweet!) if you ask me :)

I'm beginning to think I should start using LightRoom more, I'm more or less exclusively using Photoshop.

Thank you for the advise, I'll definitely take it

Thanks. I took 9 pictures of the bedroom, they were stitched together both horizontally and vertically. Think of a 3 x 3 grid.

I've never done much with Lightroom. I am used to Photoshop and kept going back to it when I tried. I realize that for pros the Lightroom database approach can help a lot, but for me, it is just an annoyance to deal with.
 
Upvote 0
BeenThere said:
privatebydesign said:
Sabaki said:
I also am totally besotted with my geared head. What I find funny is that the majority of landscape users who use ballheads, don't seem to have any idea of just how awesome geared heads are!

I have had several over the years but have settled on the Arca Swiss d4 I got used off eBay, it is a great head but if I went for a new one it would be the p0 Hybrid.
For landscape work I prefer a non geared rig like the RRS pano setup on top of a ball head. IMO it is faster to set up and to swing to new pano positions than a geared rig.

You can't have looked at or used the d4, it has two panning sections one above the gearing and one below, this means you can pan a level camera effortlessly. It works perfectly for single row stitches if that is your thing, it doesn't work so efficiently as a dedicated multi row panning head if you are doing multi row stitches, which I don't. Heck if you use a nodal rail you can even set your single row stitches to be 100% parallax free, though I rarely find it worth the effort.
 
Upvote 0
Wow...I've not seen this thread in a LONG time.

The re-reading of geared heads has caught my eye.

I see PBD suggested a couple of geared heads....nice looking and $$.

Do any others have recommendations?

I've seen users on YOuTube (non-astro) using a geared head that looks like a large cube as the head....anyone familiar with that one?

Anyway, all suggestions greatly welcomed!!

cayenne
 
Upvote 0