Last year I took the plunge and picked up a Canon 6Dii and Sigma 20mm f1.4. Now that the milkyway is coming back into view, here is my first serious attempt with the new kit. I did a series of shots at different ISO/exposure/aperture settings to see what worked best with this setup, so I'm including some commentary for others that might be interested.
My goal with this kit was to keep things simple, I'm planning to do a bit of backpacking, so trying to economise on size and weight, which means no tracking mounts/gizmos (though I might explore the polarie if I can handle the extra 650g). I also wanted to keep the budget within reason, the 5DIV is amazing, but more $ and more weight/size. You might ask why I didn't go mirrorless, alas I'm already invested in the canon ecosystem. Hopefully they'll bring out a competitive FF mirrorless when I can afford one
OK, first off, this lens is a beast which will guzzle down photons BUT it does have some pretty unappealing coma at low f.. nevermind, I can shoot at f1.8 where it's much less of a problem AND still be letting in 2.4x the light than more common f2.8 lenses (wide open)
Now for exposure, I tried 20s - on the conservative side of the '500 rule', but there was just too much movement in the stars. Maybe I'm pixel peeping too much (26MP gives you a bunch of detail) or maybe my standards are too high coming from DSO's imaging.. so I settled on 10 seconds.
Finally, ISO. The 6Dii got a real rough ride in the review cycle, I tried to ignore it and bought the camera the fit my budget and requirements. Sure it is missing some features and DR for a 2017 camera, but this thing performs up there with the best at ISO 3200-6400. And the usefulness of the flippy screen cannot be understated, that's a feature I will use everytime I take this out at night. The large aperture negated the need to shadow push, so I was comfortable using the images shot at ISO6400 (though there is some low frequency colour noise that crept into the image).
One final thing, compositing and stacking widefield shots is really not my cup of tea. I just find the processing a bit tiresome (this is my break from DSOs) and hard to make it look natural. With that in mind, this final image is simply a two shot panorama, each at f1.8/10s/ISO6400, processed in lightroom (making use of the selection brush to process the sky and foreground seperately).
In summary, I'm quite happy with this setup and look forward to seeing what I can get out of it.
Thanks for looking
