I thought I'd up the sharpness/contrast/saturation/colour tone to the max in the camera, and also throw on a new lens for fun.
Canon 6D, Samyang 14mm f2.8.
Check out the "moustache" distortion in one of the pictures.
I've considered getting that lens for my A7s, have you tried it for nightscapes?
If so how did you find it? were the stars reasonably sharp near the edges?
I have only had a chance to snap a couple of night pics in my back yard, in the moderately light polluted suburb of Burwood East, Melbourne. I took these on the 19th Feb, 10:45pm, f2.8, 8 secs, ISO 1600.
I have not yet tried lens correction data.
I am fairly impressed with the sharpness (considering its a $400 lens) and you certainly need to accept and work with the distortion. The lens does not talk to the camera in terms of adding metadata for the f stop to your picture, and when shooting something closer than a few meters you need to use live view and magnify the image 10x to get sharp focus. Also when ISO was set to auto the camera never changed it from 100.
For good results during the day I set the camera on aperture priority (so camera chooses shutter speed) and manually set the ISO somewhere under 1000 and use something around f8. The build quality is no where near a Japanese lens, but it feels adequate.
Pics (no processing): full image, 100% crops (centre, top-left, bottom-right).
Thanks for the info Tim!
I have read that there's a fair bit of field curvature and it looks like in your image you've focused on a star towards the edge of frame which has made the centre slightly soft.
Looks good though
Hugh, yes, I focused on one of the pointer stars initially, then re-framed the shot, then flipped the camera on its side, without refocusing, hence the middle looking softer than the edges, which is not what you would expect
I was mainly experimenting with exposure and ISO and not paying much attention to focus, so its not a good photo to demonstrate edge sharpness and it did surprise me when I saw the 100% crops.
It shouldn't be too long before I try it out on a properly dark sky
No worries Hugh I didn't get that impression at all
I am thankful actually, because I hadn't thought about how important re-focusing is, especially on a lens that is this wide with this much curvature.
Last edited by zenith; 06-03-2015 at 03:38 PM.
Reason: Grammar!
I have this lens too and love it. I haven't noticed any edge softness (24mp full frame), even with pixel peeping. You certainly want a full frame camera to get the most out of it. It's good for night shots wide open, but it's also surprisingly fun for close up work. Not macro, of course, but it focusses close enough to give a really interesting perspective.
and it did surprise me when I saw the 100% crops.
just reminded me that I'd read about the field curvature 
