Is £1400 the new price for the Leica? ffordes.co.uk have a couple of used copies for £799. Still expensive I know but if you lose interest then a resale would net you most of that back again.
Rob Riley wrote:
great images David and what a beautiful gallery
some notes on this
moonlight is 1/500th the value of sunlight
stars move, well ok, the planet rotates at 15 degrees an hour, so elongated lines from star trails are pretty quick to form
In fact you see star trails even in 30 sec exposures!
The Zeiss 35mm ZF f2 looks rather good, but there seems to be a distinct lack of information or test shots other than on Photozone, nothing at f4 unfortunately. £450 is still a lot to pay, but it could be done at a stretch.
I think 15secs is the optimum before start traisl start to occur. They are certainly there at 30secs but the length is minute so the appearance still looks star like.
Beautiful images.
This is certainly a technique I will try with my 24/1.4 when I finally go full frame. I've already tried this kind of thing on a crop camera, but I just prefer wide angle landscapes with more foreground interest, and the noise above ISO 400 is pretty bad on my 300D, so I'm expecting to get more pleaseing results with a larger sensor.
You wont be disappointed with a 5D if you can afford one. The noise control is really excellent on them, of course it could always be better, but ISO 640 or even 800 put through software yields some super results.
Glad you like them! I would love to own the 24/1.4 as I have heard this would do a superb job.
I just retested my 35mm f1.4 Nikkor and its only the extreme edges that suffer at f4, its a cracking lens really, super shapr in the centre at f2 so it certainly wont be sold. I may well just keep percevering with it and try different ways of using aperture, cable releases and cropping to side step all the issues I have so far mentioned.
THE best (and most costly) Leica 28/2.8 Ver II (though spendy)
CZ 28/2.8
ZF 35/2 (bit of CA issue though)
CZ 35/2.8
Leica 35/2 (great bokeh)
Nikon 14-24 G with adapter (homemade mod to an existing Nikon adapter or www.16-9.net)
If shooting on a crop - THE bets ultra-wide is 14-24G followed by Leica 19/2.8 Ver II. No mirror clearance issues on cropped
5D has great sensor, bit LOTS of mirror clearance issues. If you cna live with a crop Canon, you cna bolt damn near anything on the front, no issues and no mods required.
JohnJ wrote:
If you'r problem is simply the star trials created by longer exposures then why not simply PS them to a single point. You can stop your lens down a little to get a better image. I've done 6 minute moon lit shots where the star trails are still manageable (in terms of being able to PS them if you wanted to).
JJ
How would one use PS to change star trails to single points?
tom in mpls wrote:
How would one use PS to change star trails to single points?
The clone tool. It's quite easy to clone over relatively short star trails, especially with a wide angle lens which would render the trails shorter than a telephoto. I wouldn't try it with a 3 hour exposure though!
Just a thought David - since you already doing some stitching for th focus bracketing, why not take panoramic photos at f/4 or f/5.6 and then stitch them together so that you only use the central portion of the frame that you know to be good at these apertures? This may (or may not - no idea) give better results than only stitching a focus-bracketed shot at f/5.6.
I got an email back from Zeiss today. I sent some sample shots of my Nikkor 35mm f1.4 and between myself, Zeiss and another lens fanatic, we conclude the Nikkor is just not up for the job. Zeiss reckon that the latest version of the 35mm f2 is going to yield the same corner definition wide open as the Nikkor at f8, so I am very interested to say the least.
Thats a really good idea Stu, my other idea was to take one shot for the sky at f4 and then another for the rest at f11 ISO 100 for 3 minutes or whatever the exposure time is and combine them. The pano idea would work well where there is little foreground though.
Thats a really good idea Stu, my other idea was to take one shot for the sky at f4 and then another for the rest at f11 ISO 100 for 3 minutes or whatever the exposure time is and combine them. The pano idea would work well where there is little foreground though.
I've used this technique once or twice when I wanted to get good corner definition but wanted to use the best aperture for the lens, combining 5.6 and 16 I think. It's not too much work to blend them together.
Are 2 focus bracketed exposures usually enough or do you make also 3 or more exposures?
How do you blend the focus bracketed exposures? Manually in PS or is there any automatic software for this?
Up to now I was more interested in startrails like this one or that one but your images make me curious ;-)
I've been chasing photons at night for longer than I care to admit, so I know exactly what you mean. I specialise in night landscapes - www.nightfolio.co.uk
In my view night landscapes require specialist glass. I loved my old Pentax and Olympus 28mm f2.8 lenses for their quality build and sharpness but they were so s-l-o-w. If you need to stop stars as points of light you need f1.4, f2 is just too slow in my opinion. A f1.4 wide stopped down to f4 should give you superb quality.
I personally use and admire the expensive and out of production Nikkor 28mm f1.4 which is a cracking lens. More affordable and still produced is the Canon 24mm f1.4 which is very nearly as good as the old Nikkor. The Canon is slightly wider which might help you if you want to "stop stars" as points, not trails.
A word of warning, fast wides are what you need imho, but they are very difficult to design and cost alot of money. Even the best such lenses appear a "lttle dreamy" wide open and will vignette at f1.4, that is optically inevitable, I like the effect (for example http://www.nightfolio.co.uk/subpages/as003.html ) but not everyone will, but by f4 my Canon is as sharp in practice as any other wide I've used.
In short my advice would be to get the Nikkor or Canon 24L (the Canon 35L f1.4 is a wonderful lens by all accounts, but I've not used one). I've tried the fast 20mm and 28mm Sigmas, but was personally unhappy with their full aperture performance.
I've already tried this kind of thing on a crop camera, but I just prefer wide angle landscapes with more foreground interest, and the noise above ISO 400 is pretty bad on my 300D, so I'm expecting to get more pleaseing results with a larger sensor.