300mm First Light

[leon]

Hi All,

Some of you are probably aware that i picked up a Conon 300 F2.8 Lens last week from a fellow in Melbourne.
Well, I had to give it a test run last night, and took some images of Omega Centauri.
Wow, what a lens, it is so sharp.
This is probably not a good as some, but i hope to improve.
The tracking on the EQ5 is a little out
Image consists of 6 frames at 48 seconds, combined in Image Plus, no flats, the image is not cropped.

Cheers Leon

[matt]

Very nice, Leon.

Look at all those sharp stars

[h0ughy (David)]

wow your going to have some fn with that lens. Take an image of the comets!!!

[leon]

Might just do that Houghy, but I have to find it first.

Leon

[Ric]

Very nice Leon, well done.

Cheers

[RB (Andrew)]

Excellent Leon !
I just love that lens.

More please.

[iceman (Mike)]

Excellent Leon, looks like a ripper. Good purchase and good image!

[Dennis]

Sorry Leon - looks far too sterile and clean to me - where are those nice blue haloes from chromatic aberration, I miss 'em....

Cheers

Dennis

[Garyh]

A nice image Leon!!
nice round stars even right into the corners...looks like you have a top copy of this lense...you will have lots of fun in the coming months/years with it.
Cheers

[avandonk]

A very good start Leon. You will find the lens is as good wide open at f/2.8 as it is at f/8! The only difference is that very bright stars show a slight amount of secondary astigmatism (seagulls) at the corners of a full frame sensor at f/2.8. You will not regret buying it as it performs as well as its cost suggests.
I find that the wide perfect fields the Canon 300mm F2.8L gives, complement the images that are produced by much longer focal length telescopes.

Looking foward to more images. You will find focussing accurately is the only hard bit because at this focal length the depth of focus is miniscule.

Bert

[Lert]

Great shot Leon, you really like that 'L' glass !!

My 70-200 f/4L has really exceeded my expectations and hope to do more work with it soon.

Cheers

[leon]

Thank You for all the comments, that just makes me more eager to spend my night life in the dark

leon

[tornado33]

Yes, I can say from experience these lenses are incredible, this is a full res. crop taken through Berts lens (same as yours). I was using 2 filters as well, A Baader UHCS and an Idas uv/ir screwed together and installed in rear of lens. They cause some slight flaring of bright stars, but the dimmer stars are sharp to the edges. Note an ESO galaxy on lower left.
2x10 mins masked with a 1 minute shot, modded 350D camera
Scott

[jase (Jason)]

Great stuff Leon. Looking forward to seeing some of your FSQ images too.

[leon]

Thanks Jase, but i still have to get the G11 up and running and Claude hasn't sent the wide t-mount plus coupling rings yet.
But it wont be long .... I hope.

Leon