Cheap 400mm advice

[Zv]

Thanks for all the info at least now I have a better understanding of what's required. Think I'll leave this endeavor for now, don't have any money to spare for gear for at least another 6 month. Damn residence tax came in this month, gonna be poor for a while.

:'(

 

[traingineer]

You could always try this website:

http://www.12dstring.me.uk/fov.htm

It's a pretty accurate FOV calculator and should give you an idea of how large the moon would like in the final image, with your setup. (or any setup)

 

[Canon1]

Thanks for all the info at least now I have a better understanding of what's required. Think I'll leave this endeavor for now, don't have any money to spare for gear for at least another 6 month. Damn residence tax came in this month, gonna be poor for a while.

:'(

How do you intend to share your images, or view them? Online? If so... there is nothing wrong with cropping. Don't worry about it and enjoy a nice clear night when you get one.

 

[AlanF]

Hey guys I was wondering which would be better for achieving ~ 400mm focal length with the M. I would like to take some occasional pics of the moon. I've done it before and found 400mm to be long enough with a bit of cropping.

You want a LOT more focal length than 400mm to image the moon. I used an 840mm lens (EF 600mm f/4 L II w/ 1.4x TC) to produce this image:

Look Jon, stop playing these amateur games and get real. This is what you need.

 

[jrista]

Hey guys I was wondering which would be better for achieving ~ 400mm focal length with the M. I would like to take some occasional pics of the moon. I've done it before and found 400mm to be long enough with a bit of cropping.

You want a LOT more focal length than 400mm to image the moon. I used an 840mm lens (EF 600mm f/4 L II w/ 1.4x TC) to produce this image:

Look Jon, stop playing these amateur games and get real. This is what you need.

Haha! Now THAT...is a MOON LENS! And apparently, one hell of a giant EOS as well...

 

[AlanF]

Hey guys I was wondering which would be better for achieving ~ 400mm focal length with the M. I would like to take some occasional pics of the moon. I've done it before and found 400mm to be long enough with a bit of cropping.

You want a LOT more focal length than 400mm to image the moon. I used an 840mm lens (EF 600mm f/4 L II w/ 1.4x TC) to produce this image:

Look Jon, stop playing these amateur games and get real. This is what you need.

Haha! Now THAT...is a MOON LENS! And apparently, one hell of a giant EOS as well...

Jon
You explained once that to get really good moon shots you need to pp. So I upped the vibrance, microcontrast and saturation to 100% in DxO PRIME, and then gave 1.9p at 100% in PS to a the SX50 and 300mm+2xTC on 5DIII. It brought out the detail on the latter in particular.

 

[Lee Jay]

Filling the frame with the moon takes around 4000mm equivalent in the horizontal direction or about 2600mm in the vertical direction.

 

[Zv]

How about one of these stuck on an EOS M? That should give me 1280mm.

http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B00KXMHBXY/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=36YFE91EPADLO&coliid=I3UGJ5SGRPAHD9&psc=1

 

[Zv]

Thanks for all the info at least now I have a better understanding of what's required. Think I'll leave this endeavor for now, don't have any money to spare for gear for at least another 6 month. Damn residence tax came in this month, gonna be poor for a while.

:'(

How do you intend to share your images, or view them? Online? If so... there is nothing wrong with cropping. Don't worry about it and enjoy a nice clear night when you get one.

I wouldn't share them if they're heavily cropped. If I did get a half decent one it would prob end up on flickr or 500px.

 

[Lee Jay]

There's nothing wrong with cropping. This was taken with a 100-400L and 2x TC on a T2i. Still needed heavy cropping.

 

[surapon]

Hey guys I was wondering which would be better for achieving ~ 400mm focal length with the M. I would like to take some occasional pics of the moon. I've done it before and found 400mm to be long enough with a bit of cropping.

Option 1 - use my existing 70-200 f/4L IS and buy the Kenko 1.4x plus the EF adapter. Should be less than $200. Or Canon 1.4x II (used) for a little more.

Option 2 - buy the EF-S 55-250 STM plus EF adatptor. Total cost around $400.

Just wondering which option would yield the best results. L lens plus extender vs EF-S? Anyone have experience with either of these combos?

I like option 1 as it means I can also use the 1.4x with my 135L and it's FF compatible (plus cheaper).

Dear Zy.
May be this cheapo $ 250 US Dollars mirror Lens might do the job for you, With EF to EF-M adapter

http://www.adorama.com/KNKML400C.html

Enjoy
Surapon

 

[Lee Jay]

Instead of a cheap mirror lens, you could go manual focus only and get much larger optics for a similar price.

1250mm f/13.9:

http://www.telescope.com/mobileProduct/Telescopes/Cassegrain-Telescopes/Orion-Apex-90mm-Maksutov-Cassegrain-Telescope/pc/1/c/14/9820.uts?sortByColumnName=SortByPriceAscending

1300mm f/12.7:

http://www.telescope.com/mobileProduct/Telescopes/Cassegrain-Telescopes/Orion-Apex-102mm-Maksutov-Cassegrain-Telescope/pc/1/c/14/9823.uts?sortByColumnName=SortByPriceAscending

1540mm f/12.1:

http://www.telescope.com/mobileProduct/Telescopes/Cassegrain-Telescopes/Orion-Apex-127mm-Maksutov-Cassegrain-Telescope/pc/1/c/14/9825.uts?sortByColumnName=SortByPriceAscending

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

You really need a longer lens than 400mm. Adding TC's is not the best way, but it gets reasonable shots.

You do not need a expensive lens, I had a old Tokina 400mm that took reasonably sharp images.
A really stable tripod is pretty critical, even the best lens takes crappy images when it is vibrating. Use a weight on the under hook, sandbag the legs, do not raise the center column, and hold your breath. Also use a time delay to let the camera settle down after the mirror raises, or, use live view. Bracket your exposures too.

 

[HaroldC3]

I had good luck with a Canon FD 400mm f4.5 and Vivitar 2x TC. These were taken with a Sony Nex 6 though.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/photosbyharold/14353680291/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/photosbyharold/14157111724/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/photosbyharold/13948320339/

I actually am selling it now to fund purchasing an EF-M 11-22mm.

 

[jrista]

How about one of these stuck on an EOS M? That should give me 1280mm.

http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B00KXMHBXY/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=36YFE91EPADLO&coliid=I3UGJ5SGRPAHD9&psc=1

It ultimately depends on what your goals are. Long focal length is certainly important, and I think around 800mm is a good place to start for shooting the moon with APS-C.

There is another factor, however. Fundamentally, resolving power is linked to the physical size of the aperture. This usually isn't as apparent in normal photography as it is in astrophotography, but when you start resolving the very fine detail that exists in objects in space, this fact begins to become very important.

Assuming you had an 800mm f/4 lens, 800mm f/5.6 lens, and 800mm f/8 lens. Most people's inclination would be to think, they are the same focal length, so they should be the same so long as I expose for longer with the f/5.6 and f/8 lenses. In terms of brightness of the object, that will be true...however the f/5.6 and f/8 lenses won't be resolving as fine a level of detail as the f/4 lens, and the f/8 won't resolve as fine a level as the f/5.6.

It isn't simply a matter of magnifying detail....it's maintaining your resolving power as you magnify it more. With the EF 600mm f/4 L II and a 1.4x TC, I have an f/5.6 lens. The reason my moon photos are so sharp and detailed is due to the fact that my combo maintains a high resolving power, thanks to a large aperture (remember, the entire surface area of the lens is gathering light for every single mathematical point on your subject...the more light gathered for each point, the more complete and refined those points will be when focused on your sensor).

If you just go with a 1250mm f/13.9 lens, the moon will be very large, but you won't actually be resolving more detail than say an 800mm f/8 lens. The 1540mm f/12.1 lens is actually going to be a better option than the 1250mm f/13.9 lens...it has a much larger physical aperture: 127mm vs. 89mm...a 127mm aperture is actually very nice...close to the 600mm f/4, and it would be my top recommendation from the list of telescopes offered by Lee Jay. A 1600mm f/12 optic is going to be a powerhouse for resolving moon detail....not to mention you could do some amazing planetary imaging with that and a barlow lens as well (at 4800mm with a 3x barlow, a simple web cam or something like the QHY5L-II color planetary camera, some video imaging software (I think the QHY5L-II comes with some software) and a tool like RegiStax, you could create AMAZING planetary images, as well as some awesome close-ups of the moon itself.)

 

[Lee Jay]

Just because a lens is faster for a given focal length doesn't mean it has more resolving power. It does mean it has more potential resolving power due to larger aperture but aberrations do matter, and small fast mirror lenses are often much poorer optically than larger slower telescopes.

 

[jrista]

Just because a lens is faster for a given focal length doesn't mean it has more resolving power. It does mean it has more potential resolving power due to larger aperture but aberrations do matter, and small fast mirror lenses are often much poorer optically than larger slower telescopes.

It's not necessarily that it's faster, really. Resolving power is related to the total surface area of the objective (i.e. primary mirror in a relector), which in turn ultimately determines the aperture (physical aperture, not relative aperture), which is ultimately responsible for gathering light. It's a simple test that can be done with stars. Point any two lenses at the same place in the night sky. Ultimately, regardless of which one is actually "faster", the one with the largest physical aperture will resolve more and smaller stars. F-ratio is simply that, a ratio...all it really does is describe in common terms how large the physical aperture of a lens will be for a given focal length. I wasn't trying to say that a "faster" 800mm lens is going to resolve more in my example with 800mm lenses...I was saying that the larger physical aperture is going to be gathering more information per point on any given subject, and thus it will have a higher resolving power.

This is almost exclusively true with telescopes, which are almost always diffraction limited. It is true that cheaper optics in a lens have the potential to introduce aberrations. However in the case of astrophotography, all that really means is instead of resolving a single crisp, bright point of light for a star, you resolve a bright point of light that has some kind of halo around it. Optical aberrations don't necessarily reduce resolution, they just muck with the quality of the image.

 

[Lee Jay]

Okay...I'll say it again. Just because a lens has more aperture doesn't mean it has more resolving power because aberrations do matter.A large but poor device may resolve less than a smaller, better one. Obviously, if quality is comparable, aperture rules. That's why I sold my 127mm MCT for a 280mm aplantic SCT.