The moon can be a pretty good indication of several attributes of a lens. So with that here's a thread that attempts to demonstrate how various lenses perform at the task of photographing the moon. Any lens can play. All you need is a 100% crop of the moon from the lens and a picture of the lens itself - or links thereof.
Here's a few to start it off and I'll throw the first gauntlet with an image from a $50 telescope:
Camera: GH1, Mizar 68mm f=1000 (1961), f/15, 1/40s, ISO 200,
100% crop is here.
And I don't yet have a picture of my copy of this scope just yet but here it is photographed by another:
Sigma AF 400mm f/5.6 Apochromatic (APO) non-macro, non-HSM
This lens is just terrible at anything less than f/11. I mean REALLY terrible too! Flaring, low contrast, and lack of detail! At f/11 to f/22 it's pretty good though - not too bad! It can be modified allow f/32 which also isn't as bad as I would expect. Still decent.
I like this lens it seems pretty sharp on the GH1. It's a little on the long side for the m43 crop factor but I suppose that's a good thing for shooting the moon.
I like this lens. It's a dust-pump, sure but it's pretty crisp in daylight throughout its zoom and aperture range - at least on the GH1. It doesn't seem to do that good of a job on the Moon... but not terrible.
Every review I've read on this lens all bag on it. Most people say it's not sharp at all and not up to the task of taking nice photos at any length. I dunno if it's just on the GH1 or not but I dig it. It's got a very interesting bokeh and it's very sharp throughout it's range - it's not ziess or nikkor sharp, but it's plenty sharp enough! Here's some other images from it if anyone is interested: Sparow_1010217.jpg Pigeon_1010201.jpg Sparow_1010221.jpg Fountain_1010512.jpg Fountain_1010489.jpg
It would be interesting to see the moon shots posted in color --- that also tells a lot about lens aberrations. I'll try and see if I can post anything tonight, but it's been kind of hazy around here recently.
The sneaky thing to do is just convert it to B&W, then convert back and tone to color temperature of you choosing. Goodbye CA, but still can look like "natural" color for the most part.
mpmendenhall wrote:
It would be interesting to see the moon shots posted in color --- that also tells a lot about lens aberrations. I'll try and see if I can post anything tonight, but it's been kind of hazy around here recently.
I posted mine in color. No reduction or anything. Wee need to see color in order to see CA and stuff. The AWB on the GH1 either selects neutrals like that or a brownish gray.
