First interaction on here as a member after using the forum for many years (what a place you have here, thanks for everything) and thought I'd kick things off with the new Canon RF24mm F1.4 and how it performs for astrophotography.
I've had the lens a few weeks now but we only got clear skies here in the UK last night, so I headed to a local church and got shooting... first impressions are EPIC!!!
YES there is heavy distortion and vignetting, but the LR profiles seem to handle it pretty well (I did a little bit of fine tuning with the sliders) and the star performance/sharpness form corner to corner looks fantastic, no weird shaped stars or heavy coma.
Up until this point, I was happy using my 15-35mm F2.8 but always found 15mm too wide and not fast enough, and have alway lust after the Sony 24mm G (sorry to bring that up) so I'm going to be putting the new RF24 to the test again tonight, followed by a trip to Norway in a few weeks to hopefully try it with some aurora. Will feedback on here if anyone is interested!
Will upload my first picture of Sirius, Orion and Jupiter below taken at 10s, F1.4, ISO3200
If anyone else has got the lens and is going to be using it mainly for astro, please do share away as I couldn't find any reviews or astro use cases on the lead up to the lenses launch (which was a bit disappointing tbh)
The oval shape of Jupiter, Sirius and Aldebaran, perhaps even Betelgeuze too though it is closer to the center is odd to my eyes when the rest of the stars are just round dots.
My images of that part of the sky do not turn out that way. The image is very nice! Fun to see Orion that high too and Lepus that clearly.
This part of the sky is beautiful this winter, now with the brownish Mars joining in Gemini to the East and Uranus can be found too. Not in this image. Just slightly to the right low of the Pleiades, a blue dot.
I shared some thoughts on another thread, but I have more that I can post here.I have had very limited breaks in the cloud cover since I received the lens but initial testing has been very positive. I am attaching an image taken wide open at f/1.4 along with a 100% corner comparison at f/1.4, f/2, and f/2.8. I kept all other settings the same so I increased the exposure in lightroom to (almost) match brightness so that is the cause for the higher noise in the f/2.8 image.
Canon EOS R5RF24mm F1.4 L VCM lens24mmf/1.45s1000 ISO0.0 EV
All of these tests seem encouraging and would bode well for Canon finally providing a decent options for Astrophotographers. I have seen a few other comparisons to the Sony 24 and the Sigma 24 f1.4 and all showed the Canon performing as well or better. If I see a few other examples I will finally replace my EF mount Sigma Art 24mm f1.4.
Now for Canon to go big and offer a 14 mm f1.8 or 2.0 to replace my Sigma Art 14mm f1.8. I would permanently retire my EF kit with those replacements.
Kind of cool that you can see the red of the older star Betegeuse and the blue of the younger stars Rigel and the belt in the original image of Orion by Jack.
