Issues using a6000 for Milky Way

I encountered a few issues while photographing the Milky Way with the a6000 and the Zeiss 12mm f2.8:

- Activating the remote control runs down the battery very fast. WiFi, auto review, display brightness, and every other setting that might drain the battery was turned off. I had to use the 2 second delay instead of the remote to conserve power.

- To save battery power, I tried turning the camera off between shots. Even though the camera was on manual focus, the focus point changed after turning the camera back on. Nothing else was changed - not tripod position or settings. Only the power switch was touched.

- There was a serious banding pattern when I lightened the sky too much in post processing.

Despite these problems, here are a few of the results:




















You can see a little of the banding in the upper left of the photo.

The banding in that last one is wild. The usual questions - RAW or JPEG? Lens correction profiles?
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cliffdweller said:

I encountered a few issues while photographing the Milky Way with the a6000 and the Zeiss 12mm f2.8:

- Activating the remote control runs down the battery very fast. WiFi, auto review, display brightness, and every other setting that might drain the battery was turned off. I had to use the 2 second delay instead of the remote to conserve power.

- To save battery power, I tried turning the camera off between shots. Even though the camera was on manual focus, the focus point changed after turning the camera back on. Nothing else was changed - not tripod position or settings. Only the power switch was touched.

- There was a serious banding pattern when I lightened the sky too much in post processing.

Despite these problems, here are a few of the results:

You can see a little of the banding in the upper left of the photo.

Click to expand...

Nice shots. Are the circular lines in the sky in the last pic examples of what you noticed when lightening the sky?

Nice pictures. Get a wired remote!

-Ross

Yes, the circular lines are the banding.

I have a wired remote, but it is troublesome with the L bracket I was using.

These were all shot in raw and processed with the lens profile in LR/Adobe Camaera Raw.

cliffdweller said:

Yes, the circular lines are the banding.

Click to expand...

640px is a thumbnail. It not nearly large enough to see what's going on. Can you upload the full resolution photo and/or the RAW?

I am embedding the photos from Picasa, and this is as large as I can go. The raw image is on another computer that is not accessible at this time.

cliffdweller said:

I am embedding the photos from Picasa, and this is as large as I can go. The raw image is on another computer that is not accessible at this time.

Click to expand...

Still a bit small. Did you add any vignetting? That slider is a very bad culprit for end-result posterizing along with exporting to jpeg.

Do you see it in the RAW at full size?

I did not add any vignetting, and I did see it in raw when I upped the exposure. It is concentric circles that bend out to become horizontal lines at the sides of the circle.

The two-second delay is what I use for single shots with UWA lenses. I use the ten-second delay for telephoto shots.

I'm not sure why you turn off the camera between shots unless you are taking 30 minutes to get ready for the next shot. I get several hours and hundreds of photos on a single battery charge. Buy some extra batteries, you can get authentic Sony batteries for $30 on Amazon.

Note: If you ever do any time lapse stuff, I suggest getting the PlayMemories Time Lapse app. It has a huge learning curve due to the terrible documentation, but it is very powerful and flexible. I have used it to take nearly 1000 photos on a single battery charge, and I still have nearly 50% charge left. It is very energy efficient as it blacks out the LCD monitor during open shutter time.

It would help if you would post images from you computer and include the EXIF info. I suspect a lens issue with the banding. I use different lenses and some are more prone to banding than others. Also, how was the light pollution? The greater the light pollution level, the greater the chance for banding. Even in fairly dark sky regions it is going to be brighter near the horizon and darker near the zenith. Light pollution can make the difference more pronounced.

Is your lens a MF only lens, or can it be AF via the a6000? I use mostly Rokinon UWA MF only lenses and I never have an issue with the focus changing because of the camera being turned off and back on. I achieve focus, then normally tape the focus ring in place to prevent accidentally bumping into it and messing it up. I also have never noticed MF changing due to off/on of camera when using the E mount native lenses. If you bump the focus ring though, you will have issues, and maybe you are bumping it without realizing you are.

--
An astrophotography hobbyist and amateur radio instructor and examiner. Sony a7, Sony a6000, and Canon Powershot G1 X. https://www.flickr.com/photos/jackswinden/

I was only switching the camera off to save battery power before I turned off the remote control and started using the 2 second delay. It seemed like a better option than fumbling in the dark to change the battery. I was with a group of seven other people, and we were trying to stay in sync with light painting and shooting.

The Zeiss Touit 12 f2.8 does autofocus with the a6000. I would acquire focus and switch to manual focus. When the camera was turned back on it was still in MF mode, but the focus had changed. The only thing touched was the on/off switch. I confirmed the focus change later in the hotel room with test photos before and after turning the camera off while in MF. Therefore, taping the lens would not have made a difference.

The photos with the most banding were in locations with the most light pollution.

Okay, so it is one of the focus by wire lenses. I hate those for night sky shooting, but they can work. If your target's focus area is far enough away to use infinity, then just set the focus to infinity, verify it is actually in focus, then don't touch it. I'm not sure why your lens is changing when the a6000 is turned off and back on. I never use AF for night sky. I use exclusively MF, so that might be why my lenses don't change focus on me, even the focus by wire Sony lenses. Are you using MF or DMF. I haven't a clue what the DMF will do when the camera is turned off and back on. MF is better in most night sky situations.

I think my DSLR would also reset the focus when turning off and on, if I recall correctly, so I'm not surprised that this one does as well. At night, I have a hard time finding "infinity". :-|

cliffdweller said:

I was only switching the camera off to save battery power before I turned off the remote control and started using the 2 second delay. It seemed like a better option than fumbling in the dark to change the battery. I was with a group of seven other people, and we were trying to stay in sync with light painting and shooting.

The Zeiss Touit 12 f2.8 does autofocus with the a6000. I would acquire focus and switch to manual focus. When the camera was turned back on it was still in MF mode, but the focus had changed. The only thing touched was the on/off switch. I confirmed the focus change later in the hotel room with test photos before and after turning the camera off while in MF. Therefore, taping the lens would not have made a difference.

The photos with the most banding were in locations with the most light pollution.

Click to expand...

Try this: set focus mode to MF using the Fn menu. Switch to AF using the toggle to acquire focus, then switch back to MF. When you power off/on you should come back to MF without changing the focus point because MF is your "set" mode (not toggled).
Does that make sense? Try it.

-Ross

Ross Warner said:

cliffdweller said:

I was only switching the camera off to save battery power before I turned off the remote control and started using the 2 second delay. It seemed like a better option than fumbling in the dark to change the battery. I was with a group of seven other people, and we were trying to stay in sync with light painting and shooting.

The Zeiss Touit 12 f2.8 does autofocus with the a6000. I would acquire focus and switch to manual focus. When the camera was turned back on it was still in MF mode, but the focus had changed. The only thing touched was the on/off switch. I confirmed the focus change later in the hotel room with test photos before and after turning the camera off while in MF. Therefore, taping the lens would not have made a difference.

The photos with the most banding were in locations with the most light pollution.

Click to expand...

Try this: set focus mode to MF using the Fn menu. Switch to AF using the toggle to acquire focus, then switch back to MF. When you power off/on you should come back to MF without changing the focus point because MF is your "set" mode (not toggled).
Does that make sense? Try it.

-Ross

Click to expand...

Here's a tip from the A6000 book, carried over from the A7 book. Let me know if this isn't true:

TIP 2: Unlike with most of Sony’s previous cameras, if you set your camera to Manual Focus via the Fn menu, focus on something and then turn the camera off, when you turn the camera back on again the lens’ focus motor won't change. (Again, this is an important improvement over previous cameras.)

Did you ever get the bottom of the last image?

The others look great. This is often posterization from jpeg, but this is odd and seems different.

Ross Warner said:

Here's a tip from the A6000 book, carried over from the A7 book. Let me know if this isn't true:

TIP 2: Unlike with most of Sony’s previous cameras, if you set your camera to Manual Focus via the Fn menu, focus on something and then turn the camera off, when you turn the camera back on again the lens’ focus motor won't change. (Again, this is an important improvement over previous cameras.)

Click to expand...

I tested that and found it to be true when photographing fireworks last month. BUT, it should be noted that there is another way to get into manual focus; by using the MF/AF toggle function that you can assign to a button. In that case, I believe power cycling will put you back into AF, and all bets are off.

$3 infrared transmitter worked great when I was taking night sky pictures.



the banding looks like some sort of conversion in post, I've seen it going down in colorspace.