Here's my first ever attempt at a Milky Way panorama. This is the merging of four shots taken just off of Highway 89 in Southern Utah and about 30 miles from Page ,AZ.
Attachment 13406
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Here's my first ever attempt at a Milky Way panorama. This is the merging of four shots taken just off of Highway 89 in Southern Utah and about 30 miles from Page ,AZ.
Attachment 13406
Kudos, Steve.
Very nice as always! Stitching always seems to fail whenever I try. I need some of those awesome Zeiss Otus lenses that are crisp edge to edge I guess. ;)
Thanks. This was just my regular Rokinon 14mm lens and I stitched them together in Lightroom. First time I ever tried this.
I think I may need to use a tracker at some point with my Sigma 24 Art. It doesn't really clear up in the corners (vignetting, sag astig, and some chromatic aberrations around the brighter stars etc.) till I get up in the f/3.5-4.0 range. Even with the lens corrections applied in either LR or PS, I just can't seem to get a clean stitch. Yours looks great!
Have you tried tweaking your Art with the USB dock to minimize the soft corners? I have tried some Sigmas before, but I have had to send several back until I got a sharp one. I have considered the Art series because of the dock, but I love my Ls too much. I have never had any issues with my Ls.
Almost all Wides and Super-Wides suffer from some edged CA, vignetting and barrel distortion wide open. My 17-40L does, but as my go-to landscape lens, I always stop down to f/10 to f/18. I seldom see any CA at those apertures. However, I do not shoot with it at night. Instead, I use a 28mm f/1.8 @ f/2.5 and ISO320 without issues.
Most lenses are sharpest 1 full stop above wide open, so I figure, f/2.8 should suffice. Strange that you need to stop down even more.
For the Art line, my understanding is the dock is used on their zooms to micro adjust any forward/back focus issues on auto. But I don't think it has any effect on the optics of the lens itself. Of course, you're completely correct in that these fast, wide lenses like my 24 mm f/1.4 (even primes) will suffer from gremlins in the corners wide open. The Zeiss Otus 55 seems to be about as close to the Holy Grail of optics in that regard as I've seen. Although it better be. It costs four times more than my first car! :) At any rate, I often shoot my milky way exposures at anything from f/2.0 - 4.0, just depending on conditions, light pollution, and the length of exposure I'm trying for. But as with most lenses, stopping down certainly helps my Sigma in all aspects of it's optics. It's not terrible wide open at f/1.4 in daylight / low light. But with stars, the flaws do stand out. With that said, the central optics are tack sharp - no complaints there at all. Much better than my friends Rokinon 24 in that regard. We'll often go out shooting together, and compare our similarly framed shots afterwards. Her's are very nice edge to edge, but there is a general softness to the entire frame. Mine look incredible in the centers, but the edges...less so. Unless I crop a bit. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by lensmanmd