Just got back from 15 days on the road, and just getting through the images. Having just gotten the 5Ds I was interested in finding out how the camera would perform for astrophotography. The two images below were taken near Telluride, CO about two minutes apart, and were processed to the best of my ability to make them both look how I wanted (and similarly). At the bottom is a 1:1 view of a selected part of the image showing both foreground and stars. For those of you who say that the 5Ds looks much worse, the proof is in the pudding, that is, large prints. Just sent one off to WHCC, and I'm pretty sure it will print well.
As you can see the moon had just risen a few minutes before, so haven't yet gotten any true dark-sky images to evaluate deep-sky objects. I shot a few images of Andromeda, but there was so much light from the moon that it wasn't relevant. I did note during post-processing that the fainter areas of the Milky Way were easier to bring out in the 5Ds image, but it could have been due in part to having been shot two minutes earlier, with the half-moon rapidly rising.
One thing is for sure, it's mighty hard to focus the 5Ds at 16mm in order to ensure pinpoint stars. Gonna have to get that down...
Anyone else out there capture any astrophotography images with a 5Ds/r? How did it go compared to previous Canon bodies?
And, it occurred to me that I didn't optimize the NR/sharpening for the 5Ds file (used the 1Dx settings, which obviously didn't work so well), so here is one with no Noise Reduction or masking applied:
Here is one I did Saturday night near Heber Utah, lots of light pollution from Provo. I had some red color streaks which may have been related to either clouds or light pollution.
I used city lights for focus and it looks spot on to me.
Pretty noisy for me however.
Here is a 100% crop with no changes to anything. The color noise cleans up pretty good, but luminance takes a pretty high setting.
Here is a 100% crop with no changes to anything. The color noise cleans up pretty good, but luminance takes a pretty high setting.
I really don't think scrubbing away all the luminance noise from the blank sky will be necessary, but I guess I'll find out when I get the 30" print back.
The 5DS does not look much worse than the 1D X with no noise reduction and equal output size. The 1D X also had a longer exposure and lower ISO setting. If anything, i prefer the higher resolution and finer noise grain from the 5DS. I think it will print well, also without NR.
I took this Saturday night with the 5DSR. The sky was ISO 6400 for 20s at f/2.8 with the Samyang 24/1.4. The ground was about 2 minutes at ISO 1800.
I'm really happy with how the 5DSR handled the sky. I did get a LOT more luminance noise than I expected in the ground exposure though. It was a warm night (~70°). I got even more noise when I tried another shot at 3 minutes right after this one. I didn't use LENR but plan to in the future with this one.
dgdg wrote:
You need a tracker then to lower your ISO!
David
That is correct, a tracker would produce great sky images, but then you still have the foreground. I hate light painting and am not a fan of blending two different images. In the past, I have been doing full moon shots where I can get land exposed at less than ISO800 and sill have stars, but this will not produce a miky way.
I am not sure what lit up the grass in my shot, but there were vehicles driving around, Probably some headlights.
ben egbert wrote:
Even at web size all of these including mine have color artifacts. Blotchy patches of red.
Seems that all Canon CMOS sensors have suffered from a very characteristic color noise, though not sure if that is what you are seeing here. For astro, I've been ramping up the Smoothness setting in LR to 80 to 100 to no detrimental effect, and it seems to mitigate most of it.
Looking at any of these images at 100% with Color Noise Reduction turned off is scary, makes you wonder how the software makes any sense of it all...
All interesting. Sunny, ain't it great when you "catch a falling star." Sometimes the best just happens - but then you need to be there doing it for it to happen.
I'm impressed/surprised/confused at how good the 1Dx looks compared to the "supercharged" 5Dsr. Is anyone else seeing this? AF, sensor, focus challenge, processing? Veeeery interesting!
OntheRez wrote:
I'm impressed/surprised/confused at how good the 1Dx looks compared to the "supercharged" 5Dsr. Is anyone else seeing this? AF, sensor, focus challenge, processing? Veeeery interesting!
Robert
The 1Dx does look good, especially compared to the 5d MkIII, although corners can quickly get 'hot' compared to the 5Ds when pushed hard. I don't think it would compare for large prints, but for anything at 24" or under, probably not a tremendous difference. Pushing the files hard, the 1Dx starts to show some minor pattern noise in skies (maybe 30% of what the 5D MkII/III showed); the 5Ds does not show any pattern noise whatsoever (at least until you start pushing a high-ISO file more than 4 stops). I'm thrilled with the general image quality of the 5Ds compared to the 5D MkIII, which was my workhorse for years.
Regarding the corners, I'm finding that LR6's default lens profiles apply *way* to much vignetting correction, making some corners turn into a purple mess. For the images that I've corrected, I've had to tone down the Vignetting setting to around 20 to 50 from the default of 100.
EDIT: We do need to keep in mind that looking at 100% crops, the 5Ds will 'look' worse in terms of sharpness. When I look back to 1D MkIII files, I'm always impressed at how sharp and clean the files look at 100%.
Jeff wrote:
The 1Dx does look good, especially compared to the 5d MkIII, although corners can quickly get 'hot' compared to the 5Ds when pushed hard. I don't think it would compare for large prints, but for anything at 24" or under, probably not a tremendous difference. Pushing the files hard, the 1Dx starts to show some minor pattern noise in skies (maybe 30% of what the 5D MkII/III showed); the 5Ds does not show any pattern noise whatsoever (at least until you start pushing a high-ISO file more than 4 stops). I'm thrilled with the general image quality of the 5Ds compared to the 5D MkIII, which was my workhorse for years.
Regarding the corners, I'm finding that LR6's default lens profiles apply *way* to much vignetting correction, making some corners turn into a purple mess. For the images that I've corrected, I've had to tone down the Vignetting setting to around 20 to 50 from the default of 100.
EDIT: We do need to keep in mind that looking at 100% crops, the 5Ds will 'look' worse in terms of sharpness. When I look back to 1D MkIII files, I'm always impressed at how sharp and clean the files look at 100%. ...Show more →
I noticed that too in ACR and I also see that the 11-24 ACR lens correction is a bit off on fringing correction. I almost always need to tune it up.
