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Shooting Milky Way shots with the 50mp CMOS backs

GrahamWelland

Subscriber & Workshop Member
About to embark on a trip to the darkest parts of Oregon / Washington next week and I expect to be shooting just my IQ150 with various lenses. Given that quite a few folks here have shot milky way shots with this combo (albeit mostly the 645Z) I was wondering about best exposures?

My default approach would be to shoot 1/15s or less at f/4 (my max tech cam lens aperture) and ISO 3200 or 6400 with a 32HR or 35mm LS. I might also use my FPS and Canon 17TSE as either wide open or f/4. Obviously ISO 3200 is prefered but I was wondering how other folks had fared?

Any suggestions and experiences welcome!

Thanks in advance.
 

Paul2660

Well-known member
Hi Graham a few thoughts.

The M way is the place for a fast lens F1.4 to F2.8 even with higher ISO. Not sure if either the Rodie or 35LS will allow enough light in howeverbtheybwpuldbwotk fine for star trails and stacking. The Canon would be my first choice but for sure try the others.

Time of exposure 15 sec max or you will start to see excess trailing.

You might also look up Adam Woodwoth as he has published a ton on technique for the M Way.

I will be interested to see your results with the 150 at 3200 or 6400 as I am not sure how much noise will be there. I would allow the dark frame on some shots and then without on others. Adam uses a nice method of stacking several frames which seems to reduce noise.

A Coleman lantern or similar is great to light foreground elements much less harsh than normal flashlight painting.

Edit: here is a link to Adam's site:

Milky Way Creative Edits Video — Adam Woodworth Photography

Paul C
 
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GrahamWelland

Subscriber & Workshop Member
Paul got this one right and beat me to it: on the accounts of aperture and exposure duration.
Yes ive shot many with my regular dslrs at 3200/6400 ISO and f/2.8 at 20s or so. Ditto star trails with the IQ and P+ backs but not really tried star fields with the MF hence the question. I may just bring along the A7RII (wishing i handnt sold the A7s now!) for these shots with the canon glass or even my 16-35 zeiss again.

Trying to to limit the load in the 4 wheel camera bag believe it or not .. Ken/Don - yes, really! :)
 
M

mjr

Guest
Graham

I shoot loads at night, the cmos sensor in the Leica S was absolutely brilliant at night stuff, I'd expect the Phase to be just as good. One thing I noticed with lots of cameras is it's worth running a series of exposures at different ISO's because I have always found that shooting at ISO800 and pushing in post much cleaner than shooting higher ISO's. I'm generally capturing aurora but found with the S and a 24mm that I couldn't shoot longer than 8 to 10 seconds without getting slight star movement, I guess it's personal as to how much is acceptable. Shoot at night before you go, just to see how long you can go and how high ISO you can accept for noise. The S is the best camera I have used for aurora but I appreciate it's different for stars alone. I shot a load of milky way shots a few years back in Mozambique with an RX1, surprising how well it did.

Let us know how you get on, good luck!

Mat
 

miska

Member
My preference for MW shots is to use longer exposures (say 30s). Yes, you will get streaking, but, in exchange, you will see much better the structures of our Galaxy. f/4 is not really fast enough, but maybe it will do.
I find that streaking (if not excessive) is an acceptable price to pay to get more photons from the MW.

And if there still a bit of room in the car, a small sky tracker (there are several, like the Vixen Polarie, iOptron SkyTracker, etc) would be great. It allows to expose for 1-2 minutes or more (or do stacks of 30s exposures of the sky) without streaking. Of course, due to the rotation, the foreground becomes blurred, but that can easily be dealt with in PS (just take one exposure without rotation and blend it with the sky).


Have fun !
 

modator

Member
Hi Graham,
I wait to see the result !
It's always interesting to see this kind of images, I never tried with my H5D-50c and I'm curious to see.
Reading on astro photographer forum many are making multiple exposure at 3200, then align and mean them on photoshop or dedicated software, other are using an astro polar mount with motor to follow the stars enabling longer exposures etc. etc.
There are many ways, I think the 50 CMOS alone can lead to good result... we will see..

Enjoy ! Domenico.
 
Hi Graham,

The best setup for the 50MP CMOS back would be Samyang / Rokinon 24mm f1.4 / T1.5 Canon mount via Alpa 12 FPS. (You could also try the Sigma 20mm f1.4 Canon mount but I haven't tested the image circle on the 50MP back.)

Suggested parameter would be wide open (f1.4), 15 seconds, ISO 1600 for single exposure without equatorial mount.

If you bother do stacking with PixInsight then I would recommend wide open (f1.4), 8 seconds, ISO 3200 for at least 16 frames.

If you shoot with equatorial mount then stay at ISO 400 and do long exposure with it!

Good luck
 

GrahamWelland

Subscriber & Workshop Member
Hmm, the Rockinon is a good idea assuming that it covers the image circle of IQ150.

I have this lens already in Nikon mount for this exact purpose and use it with my Sony today. I hadn't thought to mount it to use on the FPS. Since it's manual, a Nikon -> EOS adapter should allow me to mount it I guess.
 

Paul2660

Well-known member
Actually you might find that the Rokinon/Samyang/Bower 14mm F2.8 does better, as wide open there is virtually no coma.

The Rokinon 24mm 1.4 shows coma from around 1.4 to at least 2.2. It IMO is only just a bit better than the Sigma 24mm 1.4 on coma, which was a disappointment for me. For me Milky Way and coma just don't mix, sure you can go to a center crop,and on the IQ150, for sure you will have a lot of resolution.

The 14mm on the other hand never disappoints.

Paul C
 

Ed Hurst

Well-known member
I have had pretty good results shooting the 645Z with f4 @ ISO6400. The sky areas are usually acceptable and clean up pretty well; dark foreground regions much less so, and need blending with files shot at lower ISOs to bring those out properly. I wish there were a faster wide angle available to enable 3200 or even 1600, as that would be a lot better, but nothing exists other than the 35mm f3.5 (which isn't really wide enough and it's not much faster) - a 21mm f2.4 would be nice!

Of course the optimum would be to shoot a wide field with a longer f2.8 lens and do loads of stitching, but just too much like hard work, even for an obsessive like me.
 

GrahamWelland

Subscriber & Workshop Member
Actually you might find that the Rokinon/Samyang/Bower 14mm F2.8 does better, as wide open there is virtually no coma.
....

The 14mm on the other hand never disappoints.

Paul C
Luckily I also have this one too! :)

I'll pick up a Nikon F to EOS converter and test it out. I see no reason, other than perhaps image circle, why this shouldn't work. (heck nice round images might be artistically interesting!)


Graham
 
Actually you might find that the Rokinon/Samyang/Bower 14mm F2.8 does better, as wide open there is virtually no coma.

The Rokinon 24mm 1.4 shows coma from around 1.4 to at least 2.2. It IMO is only just a bit better than the Sigma 24mm 1.4 on coma, which was a disappointment for me. For me Milky Way and coma just don't mix, sure you can go to a center crop,and on the IQ150, for sure you will have a lot of resolution.

The 14mm on the other hand never disappoints.

Paul C
Not sure whether the Rokinon / Samyang 14mm f2.8 covers the image circle of the IQ150 fine, however there is one thing I'm pretty sure about: there is a 2-stop difference of aperture between f1.4 and f2.8. Even if you take into consideration the longer exposure time of the 14mm, the 24mm f1.4 is still going to offer better image quality. Light transmission is the bottleneck of milky way photography, not resolution nor coma.

Here is a table for astrophotography rating of lenses before the Sigma 20mm f1.4 became available:

astrophoto_rating.jpg
 

torger

Active member
Some of these wides vignette heavily, maybe one needs to take that into account when picking out the best lens?
 

Paul2660

Well-known member
Not sure whether the Rokinon / Samyang 14mm f2.8 covers the image circle of the IQ150 fine, however there is one thing I'm pretty sure about: there is a 2-stop difference of aperture between f1.4 and f2.8. Even if you take into consideration the longer exposure time of the 14mm, the 24mm f1.4 is still going to offer better image quality. Light transmission is the bottleneck of milky way photography, not resolution nor coma.

Here is a table for astrophotography rating of lenses before the Sigma 20mm f1.4 became available:

View attachment 118705
As one who has done this type of photography for years I fully understand the need for light transmission for the milky way. However there is nothing WORSE than a series of shots ruined by excessive coma as the stars will all have wings. If you feel this is not a huge issue then I would totally disagree. I currently don't know of any 1.4 lens from 14mm to 24 that does not produce excessive coma. And with either the Rokinon 24mm 1.4 or the highly esteemed Nikon 24mm 1.4 the coma from F 1.4 to 2.0 is so bad that you will end up cropping down to a APC C sized frame and that still won't get rid of all of it. By the time you adjust the aperture to where the coma is minimum, you have lost any advantage for light transmission. The 14mm 2.8 Samyang, is still considered by photographers who work at night as one of the best lenses on the market due to it's total lack of coma, and these same photographers understand the compromise they are making over light transmission for low coma.

Coma is the single most destructive problem there is after noise.

You can't imagine the time it takes to attempt to manually correct for this and the Rokinon 24 is not a good player wide open not even close. As I stated it only becomes useable after F2.2.

I'm my geo the wider the better so the 24 really won't work anyway. If you are shooting monument valley the 24 focal would work fine. For me just shooting the sky is not what I am after but instead I attempt to combine some landscape elements and 24 mm does not give enough sky after cropping out the coma.

Adam Woodworth has pioneered a lot of great techniques and his work is often shot with an F 2.8 lens wide open.

Paul C
 
As one who has done this type of photography for years I fully understand the need for light transmission for the milky way. However there is nothing WORSE than a series of shots ruined by excessive coma as the stars will all have wings. If you feel this is not a huge issue then I would totally disagree. I currently don't know of any 1.4 lens from 14mm to 24 that does not produce excessive coma. And with either the Rokinon 24mm 1.4 or the highly esteemed Nikon 24mm 1.4 the coma from F 1.4 to 2.0 is so bad that you will end up cropping down to a APC C sized frame and that still won't get rid of all of it. By the time you adjust the aperture to where the coma is minimum, you have lost any advantage for light transmission. The 14mm 2.8 Samyang, is still considered by photographers who work at night as one of the best lenses on the market due to it's total lack of coma, and these same photographers understand the compromise they are making over light transmission for low coma.

Coma is the single most destructive problem there is after noise.

You can't imagine the time it takes to attempt to manually correct for this and the Rokinon 24 is not a good player wide open not even close. As I stated it only becomes useable after F2.2.

I'm my geo the wider the better so the 24 really won't work anyway. If you are shooting monument valley the 24 focal would work fine. For me just shooting the sky is not what I am after but instead I attempt to combine some landscape elements and 24 mm does not give enough sky after cropping out the coma.

Adam Woodworth has pioneered a lot of great techniques and his work is often shot with an F 2.8 lens wide open.

Paul C
Option One: 24mm f1.4 8s ISO3200 with some coma
Option Two: 14mm f2.8 15s ISO6400

I would certainly prefer Option One. Coma adds special mood towards the stars, while high ISO noise destroys the purpose of high number of pixels.
 

GrahamWelland

Subscriber & Workshop Member
Thanks for all of the advice. In the end I used my XF/IQ150 and a Phase One 28D @ f/5. The iOptron StarTracker held the weight ok:

XF IQ150 1600 ISO 3m 30s @ f/5
 

GrahamWelland

Subscriber & Workshop Member
Btw, I have to say that the Sony CMOS sensor in the IQx50 absolutely rocks!! The sad thing is that now I KNOW that I need an IQ3 100. Not in 2016 but maybe 2017 ... :eek:
 
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