Camera & lens for astrophotography?

[dreed]

I'm wondering what the suggestions are for a good camera/lens pair(s) for doing landscape photography where there's a desire to include the milk way?

I've seen talk on the web that perhaps the Sony A7S is the camera to beat due to both low noise and large pixels making ISO as high as 6400 completely fine.

But what lens do you pair with it? Native or 3rd party plus adapter?

Is it necessary to have sharp imagery corner to corner? f/1.4? Or will f/2.8 do?

[Paul2660]

You can get a lot of good ideas here:

https://luminous-landscape.com/nikon-d810a-review-landscape-astrophotography/

A7s to me is a bit too low in overall resolution.  The upcoming A7RII, might well be a great camera now that you can purchase non-sony intervalometers for the A7 lineup.

The lens used is very dependent on where you are shooting, i.e. I need the 14mm range much more often in my locations, but if I was out west, with much more wide open areas, I would look at the 35mm 1.4 Sigma which is pretty much Coma free even at F1.8, which is by far the exception to the rule.

Paul

[Alan Smallbone]

Well you will get a lot of different responses, it will really depend on what you are going to do with the files. If you have a newer camera it may already do a decent job. Since you are dealing with low light, and essentially short exposures then noise is an issue. I have used Canon gear for a long time, but right now I will use my Fuji XT-1 and 14mm or the 12mm Samyang for astro landscapes. A lot will come down to how you process your images. Adam Woodworth, who has a thread going on here and some articles has a great tutorial on processing the images. Basically a lot of it just like any photography, get the best lens and camera that will give you the files sizes you need with low noise. Sorry for a vague answer but really a lot of different cameras will work, the Pentax 645Z Michael here as used for a lot of success.  I have shot cameras with modified filters and they do get a lot more red from the nebulas, and specialty cameras like the 810A will do a great job with this but at the expense of more work for daylight color balance etc. so for the little extra red is the extra work for balance a good thing? It will depend on your ratio of night to day work. The Fuji by the way has a mild response in the Ha red areas, better than most stock cameras.
The less coma the lens has and the flatter the field the better the image quality will be, large format and wide angle lenses that is a tough recipe for a flat coma field with a lens that is fast and shot wide open. That is when a cropped sensor camera can help. So basically you want a fast lens that is close to perfect wide open with pin point resolution in the corners, a feat that few lenses can accomplish so you have to possible compromise, lenses like that tend to be very expensive. The Fuji is the exception to the rule, but then the Fuji is not a 36mp full frame camera.

Alan

[Paul2660]

To me the coma issue is really more an issue with short exposures like the Milkyway, as here you need as fast a lens as possible at least from my experience.  However after reading Adam's article, it's clear to me that his technique for the Milkyway is better than mine and I am looking forward to working with it.  I have yet to find any 24mm 1.4 from anyone that has a coma free or low coma distortion when wide open or close and trust me coma on stars is major show stopper.  No real way to take it out as you are dealing with butterfly wings on thousands of stars.

To me the Nikon D810A, is impressive more for the low noise.  Being cleaner than the D810 is impressive.  If you used it on a telescope then I really feel the D810A would be at it's best.  As for colors of the Milkyway, to me that is a wide open target with most cameras as long as you can get away from local light pollution.  You may not capture as red a nebula, but unless you are just shooting that nebula (with a telescope), it's not going to be that big a part of the file.  With the various software tools out there, the colors of the Milkyway can be handled, at least to my satisfaction.

I forgot to mention in my first post, to me the use of a full frame sensor really helps, if you are going to work in a landscape style image, as you just have a lot more to work with. 

I tend to prefer night photography working with the moon, (can't shoot the milkyway) but you can still get an amazing image.  Still needs stacking to really get the best results.  You can read more here:

http://photosofarkansas.com/2014/09/23/092314-using-stacking-for-better-night-photography-results/

Paul Caldwell

[NancyP]

My platform is the Canon 6D, intervalometer, and Sigma Art 35mm f/1.4, Zeiss Distagon ZE 21mm f/2.8, and Samyang (Bower, Rokinon, and other house brands) 14mm f/2.8 *, plus a third-party wired intervalometer, good tripod/head, and still clear dark night. The last is in short supply in Spring / Summer 2015. Skies did clear for the Moon plus Venus set on Saturday, but then clouded up. That was more fun at 560mm, anyway - crescent Venus.

Nikon 810, Pentax 645Z, Sony A7 series may be better for MP#. 6D has good enough high-ISO performance at a low price.

Tamron 15-30mm f/2.8 is getting good reviews in the astro community.

*  I understand that Samyang lenses are not consistent on QC. Mine was fine, though. These lenses are popular with astrophotographers because they generally have low coma and they are cheaper and good - no autofocus - don't need it for astro.

[Paul2660]

My platform is the Canon 6D, intervalometer, and Sigma Art 35mm f/1.4, Zeiss Distagon ZE 21mm f/2.8, and Samyang (Bower, Rokinon, and other house brands) 14mm f/2.8 *, plus a third-party wired intervalometer, good tripod/head, and still clear dark night. The last is in short supply in Spring / Summer 2015. Skies did clear for the Moon plus Venus set on Saturday, but then clouded up. That was more fun at 560mm, anyway - crescent Venus.

Nikon 810, Pentax 645Z, Sony A7 series may be better for MP#. 6D has good enough high-ISO performance at a low price.

Tamron 15-30mm f/2.8 is getting good reviews in the astro community.

*  I understand that Samyang lenses are not consistent on QC. Mine was fine, though. These lenses are popular with astrophotographers because they generally have low coma and they are cheaper and good - no autofocus - don't need it for astro.

The 6D is a sleeper for night work.  The noise is more like grain and even then it's much lower than the 5D MKII.  I only hated the button layout on the 6D, but loved the output. 

Paul

[wigasper]

The 6D is a sleeper for night work.  The noise is more like grain and even then it's much lower than the 5D MKII.  I only hated the button layout on the 6D, but loved the output. 

Paul

High ISO luminance noise on the 6D is often quite pleasing to the eye. Sometimes reminds me of fine film grain

[NancyP]

Yes, the 6D noise seems to be patternless (film-ish), and so hand-held night street scenes can be just fine. Really, the 6D is a decent relatively low-priced entry level full frame camera that does the basics.

[robdickinson]

I use a 6d, 14/2.8 , 24mm/3.5  and 50 1.4 art.

I mostly shoot stitched panoramics of 20-80 frames, usually with the 50.

I also shoot with an a7r.

I find the colours and amp glow of the sony/nikon 36mp sensor pretty nasty (ISO 6400) they take a lot more PP and dont achieve as good a result.

I've looked at A7s files, sony cheat by applying noise reduction to their raws. A 6D file downsampled to 12mp compared very favourably (again iso 6400). The a7s supposedly pulls ahead at higher ISO. Not sure how much of that is NR.

[Paulo Bizarro]

My current kit for this type of shot is the Sony A7 and the Nikon AFS 20 f1.8 G lens (with Novoflex adapter). I recently tested it for strartrails, and just over the weekend I finished working on a MW pano (8 vertical shots).

I am very happy with the results, this lens is really good.

[Rainer SLP]

Hi dreed,

I use as the images below.

Just kidding 

[NancyP]

Other handy accessories:
1. phone app Sky Safari. It gives a sky map that can be run in red mode so it doesn't wreck your night vision. The sky map can be set to whatever date and time you want, and has a real-time option with compass, in which you can point the phone toward the sky sector of interest and get the appropriate map. Great for beginners learning constellations. It does not address low-orbiting objects. There are other phone apps, and of course many free computer programs offering the same functionality.
2. headlamp with red bulb. Helps with set-up. Zillions on the market, I like Black Diamond Spot, a medium-priced hiker's headlamp.

[Paul2660]

Totally agree on the red mode flashlight.  I tend to forget I have it on red and always end up spotting around my scene at least once with the red, sometimes gives a neat look to things.  When stacking, very easy to get rid of. 

I will have to try the app you mentioned as I am using star walk, and it's a bit bright.

Paul