Using Fuji lenses for astrophotography

TOMMMMMM said:

getochkn said:

TOMMMMMM said:

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Nice photo! But that doesn't really answer the question...

I think the reasoning is that a longer focal length at a similar f stop as a wide angle will have a larger area open to receiving light.

F-stop = focal length/aperture diameter. As the focal length increases, the aperture diameter must also increase to keep the f-stop the same. Since the area for aperture diameter is calculated as (pi*diameter_aperture^2)/4, you can see that a focal length twice as long lets in 4 times the amount of light (aperture area is 4 times larger).

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This is true, but I feel the need to add an important correction here:
The bigger physical aperture gathers more light per light source in the frame (for example a single star). A 35mm f/2 still gathers just as much total light as a 200mm f/2, though, because the wider field of view takes in light from many more sources, compensating the smaller aperture diameter.

TOMMMMMM said:

{snipped}

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Montanawildlives said:

I know that third-party lenses like the Samyang 12mm f/2 are very popular for astrophotography on Fuji cameras, but I'm wondering what Fuji branded lenses (I'll allow Zeiss as well) people are using for astrophotography. Seems like they all have some limitations (e.g., 10-24 is only f/4, 16mm f/1.4 has substantial CA until stopped down, etc.), but I'm wondering anyway.

Someone in the astro forum was saying that the 27mm f2.8 was actually better in some way than a wider lens with a wider aperture (e.g., the Samyang 12mm f2) for some reason I really didn't understand...that the REAL thing to look at is diameter in relation to the aperture, so the 27mm, even though it is only 2.8, would allow more light (or more light per something or other). Didn't understand a bit of it.

Thanks.

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Been away & missed this. Lots of good info but have some things to add that will be helpful. So am reviving this thread.

As one of you noted, you can stay light or go really hard on astrophotography. Like Ryan, I'm the later.

I moved from m43 to APSC because of my interest in astro. Long exposure 2-4 min. noise in starlit landscapes kills m43. But Fuji presents several frustrations of its own. Except for the Samyang 12mm f2, every X mount lens shorter than 50mm has poor edge IQ at the 2 widest apertures. For 50mm & longer, there is some stunningly good glass. But we can't do all our astro w/ a 12 & a 50 or 90 without stitching lots of images w/ one of the long FL lenses. So the big wide glass has to be stopped down & if you want deep detail in the star field (star color & separation in the stellar dust lanes) you'll need a tracker.

Because I give instruction to my local photo club on this, I went to a great location & shot these w/ 4 different lenses to answer the same questions you have asked here. Jerry, this is Mt. Washington from Big Lake in the Santiam Pass, OR. If you go there before the campground opens in June, its a very dark place.

Anyway, shot w/ an XT2, tracker & XF 16, 23 f/1.4, 56 & 90. The images are a composite of 2-4 min. foreground shot & stacks of tracked sky images. PP in LR> Starry Sky Stacker & PSCC w/ astro tools actions. For the record, the enhanced color comes from tone not saturation adjustments.

You can see the benefits of collecting more light by tracking & using a longer lens but stitching a pano. The image from the 56 is a 2x1 pano - note the greater detail visible in the nebula. All shot at iso800 the point where 2nd stage amplification kicks & read noise is min.


16mm 3x60sec, f2.2 (still a little coma) 180 sec total time


23mm f1.4 6x30 sec for 180 sec total, f/2 (coma still)


56mm 1x2 pano 6x50 sec,, 300 sec total f1.8 (still coma)


90mm 5x40 sec, 200 sec. total, f2.2 (no coma)

On the question of longer FL gathering more light but requiring shorter exposures to avoid trailing. Deeper detail in a star field CAN be imaged w/ a longer lens but that will only be meaningful in a larger display. I suggest that you need to more than double the FL, track & print large for that to be meaningful. As you can see, I had to use a 56mm to gain significantly deeper detail than we can see w/ the 16mm. Even @ 16mm, some good color around Antares in Rho is visible.

Trackers are easy to use & can be adequately aligned w/ compass & inclinometer up to about 100mm & 1 min. exposures. Polarscope is required beyond that.

Jerry, your question about proper exposure has not been answered. Here's my standard starting point for test images to check the histogram. For the sky, 30 sec, f1.4 iso 1600. For starlit landscape, 2 min. f1.4, 1600. For dark subjects, fir trees or granite, the landscape gets 4 min f1.4. I use iso 1600 only for generating a histogram where I want the peek 1/4 to 1/3 from the left. I shoot tracked at iso800 to preserve as much star color as I can. For untracked short exposures, I often use iso3200 because star color can still be recovered when short exposures are used. Shooting the landscape during twilight allows shorter exposures, smaller aperture, lower iso & gives better IQ & less noise. But then you have to color match to the sky. I always shoot daylight WB & make any color adjustments in post.

This is the good news.

In this post, I rain some on the Fuji parade because X-trans cameras perform NR on RAW for exposures >5sec. that is pretty destructive to star fields. Switching to an unfiltered X-T100 is like buying a much better lens - all the lenses get sharper.

I made this following composite image from the 2018 Perseids. There is a base image - a 3x3 pano tracked shot w/ the XF23mm f1.4 - with 40+ meteors added.


3x3 pano tracked @ 23mm f1.4, iso 1600, 30 sec unstacked w/ composite of meteors from XT2 & XT10

When I made this pano, I was very disappointed in how muddy the star field was. There were only a few different star brightnesses w/ most faint & fuzzy. This pushed me to search for the cause of the problem.

Long story short, Fuji applies NR filtering to the X-trans APSC cameras (& last month an owner of the GFX 50S showed filtering is applied to it as well!). My analysis of X-trans cams with the help of others and the GFX report can be found in the DPR astro forum. It appears every camera maker who uses Sony sensors applies filtering to some/all models. Fortunately, there is some good news, the X-T100 is unfiltered.

This image of the Cygnus region w/ the XF56 @ f4, tracked shows the effect of filtering - fuzzy, partially erased stars, misshaped stars, green stars, overall loss of star color.


RAW development in Rawtherapee for all 3 cameras. Generic profile used for all

As you can see the XT100 has much better star IQ, XT2 mangles star the most & XT3 looses color. My earlier post shows excellent starry landscapes can be made w/ an XT2. In fact the RAW NR has an advantage in substantially reducing noise in the long exposure landscape. No NR software works as well as the in camera filtering.

Choose your poison.

01Ryan10 said:

8. For near perceived ISO noiseless images on the ground exposures, take them at blue hour when you can still shoot at ISOs 800 or lower. Merge with your sky imaging taken from the same spot later in the evening. Or...take your sky images, (Feb through May), then stick around for sunrise blue hour.

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Hi Ryan, have a couple questions about your foreground capture workflow. Sharing your great experience would be really helpful. In the past I've shot my foregrounds in starlight. Been thinking of switching to getting the foreground in twilight as you do for the same IQ reasons.

1. In bright twilight, may be unable to find Polaris to align the tracker that will be used later in the night. What do you do about this? (I might even shot the foreground w/ a XT2 w/ its RAW NR & switch to the unfiltered XT100 for the stars - use the best of both cameras.)

2. What do you do to match the color/WB of the twilight/star light images? I've been thinking of shooting my Xrite Color Checker in both for use matching in post.

And have a couple equipment questions. Shooting MW panos w/ trackers (tracker aligned North & camera sweeping the south) means the camera load will shift from one side of the drive to the other. Backlash in the tracker drive can cause tracking to stop for a period until the slack in the gears is out. Has this been a problem for you? Do you use the counterweight kit to deal w/ this? I've had this happen once & didn't catch it in the field so got home w/ no images for part of my pano.

You mentioned selling a 21mm lens. Was this the Samyang/Rok 21mm f1.4? What did you think of that one? For me the biggest problem w/ the XF23 f1.4 is astigmatism that doesn't substantially improve until f4. Sure wish there was a lens w/ good astro edge IQ by f2 in the 23-35mm range. What 50mm are you using?

Thanks in advance!

A ton of very useful and helpful information here. Thanks so much for taking the time to document all this. Good weather forecast for the next couple of days, but since none of this is ever easy, it's also accompanied by a full moon [sigh]. So... might be a while before I can apply this, but it's definitely going to be archived and will follow your advice as soon as clear skies with no moonlight show up around here.

Again, many thanks!

Jerry-astro said:

A ton of very useful and helpful information here. Thanks so much for taking the time to document all this.

Again, many thanks!

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Glad to help, thanks for reading.

BTW, every look at Alan Dyer.? I got to him when he posted recommended post processing for the total eclipse but didn't find his approach as effective as I was hoping.

In any case he does ALL his astro w/ near full moon light. Made me realize how slavish we can be about dark sky - and we are certainly blessed w/ lots of it here in the PNW. Still, moon light - good clouds - interesting foreground can yield very interesting images. One of my all time fav aurora shots has near full moon in it w/ reflections off the ocean w/ well lit mountains.

Cheers,

tradesmith45 said:

Glad to help, thanks for reading.

BTW, every look at Alan Dyer.? I got to him when he posted recommended post processing for the total eclipse but didn't find his approach as effective as I was hoping.

In any case he does ALL his astro w/ near full moon light. Made me realize how slavish we can be about dark sky - and we are certainly blessed w/ lots of it here in the PNW. Still, moon light - good clouds - interesting foreground can yield very interesting images. One of my all time fav aurora shots has near full moon in it w/ reflections off the ocean w/ well lit mountains.

Cheers,

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That’s a very good point and well taken. Some of this is simply due to “having a new toy and really wanting to play with it” as in the astro tracker I recent acquired. Beyond that, you’re quite right, not every opportunity requires darkest possible skies.

One of these days before too long, I’m going to plan a return trip to Alaska to visit with my daughter, who lives up there. I’ll time it for Spring or Fall for best opportunities to catch an aurora. My last visit was spectacular from that standpoint and combining it with some great landscape scenery can make for a truly epic shot.

tradesmith45 said:

01Ryan10 said:

8. For near perceived ISO noiseless images on the ground exposures, take them at blue hour when you can still shoot at ISOs 800 or lower. Merge with your sky imaging taken from the same spot later in the evening. Or...take your sky images, (Feb through May), then stick around for sunrise blue hour.

Click to expand...

Hi Ryan, have a couple questions about your foreground capture workflow. Sharing your great experience would be really helpful. In the past I've shot my foregrounds in starlight. Been thinking of switching to getting the foreground in twilight as you do for the same IQ reasons.

1. In bright twilight, may be unable to find Polaris to align the tracker that will be used later in the night. What do you do about this? (I might even shot the foreground w/ a XT2 w/ its RAW NR & switch to the unfiltered XT100 for the stars - use the best of both cameras.)

2. What do you do to match the color/WB of the twilight/star light images? I've been thinking of shooting my Xrite Color Checker in both for use matching in post.

And have a couple equipment questions. Shooting MW panos w/ trackers (tracker aligned North & camera sweeping the south) means the camera load will shift from one side of the drive to the other. Backlash in the tracker drive can cause tracking to stop for a period until the slack in the gears is out. Has this been a problem for you? Do you use the counterweight kit to deal w/ this? I've had this happen once & didn't catch it in the field so got home w/ no images for part of my pano.

You mentioned selling a 21mm lens. Was this the Samyang/Rok 21mm f1.4? What did you think of that one? For me the biggest problem w/ the XF23 f1.4 is astigmatism that doesn't substantially improve until f4. Sure wish there was a lens w/ good astro edge IQ by f2 in the 23-35mm range. What 50mm are you using?

Thanks in advance!

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hmmm...i'll try the best to answer the questions...

1. I never had an issue finding polaris. Actually, I find it quite the opposite in regards to finding Polaris during blue hour or twilight. I find it easier to locate the star at those times. The Big Dipper and Polaris both begin to show at the blue hour. Since they are the only major stars showing in that region of the sky at those times, it's easy to locate. Because I do most of my nightscape imaging from Southern California bortle class 1 and 2 desert skies, Polaris becomes a little harder to find during normal night hours. There are many other stars that shine nearly as bright as Polaris in the desert night skies.

2. I "eyeball" the color balance when blending exposures. I generally decrease the saturation slider on the Terra Nova exposures about 20-40 points to simulate deep night. I'll also reduce contrast, lift the blacks and shadows a little to simulate a flatter lit scene. If there are some flowers in the scene, I may bring back the saturation a little selectively on those objects.

3. I have done a couple of MW panos on a tracker. Getting multiple exposures of the sky is tough because of the way the MW will "bend" throughout a 30+ minute span. And...as you use a longer focal length to stitch the pano, it makes it that much tougher. With my Rokinon 12mm, I can get 4 camera positions with 3 exposures per position totaling 24 minutes of exposure time, (2 mins per exposure). When stitched, they create a natural looking arch. Several times I only used the 4 different tracked camera positions without stacking, and the pano came out great. This works well if you don't have a lot of airplane or satellite trails. With Starlink, it could get tougher to get away with single exposures per camera angle. I don't use a counterweight. Between my X-T2, 16mm F/1.4, and 12mm Rokinon, I have not had an issue. I now have an 8-16mm, and that is a different beast. It is heavy. I have not had the time to do some backyard test of bright stars at F/8 on the tracker just to see if I have issues with 2-4 minute exposures. I'll probably try that this week.

4. The Rokinon 21mm F/1.4 was fantastic for me. I usually shot it at F/2 with near perfect corners. It also did not have any of the Rokinon/Samyang decenter issue. Optically, it was a great lens, but I got tired of the MW perspective, ( MW too large in the image for my taste). Even my 16mm is borderline too large in my images, but I'll give it another go this year. 12mm looks great, and I'm really interested in what I'll get from 8mm on my 8-16. Probably two shot panos of the full arch at 8mm. LOL.

Thanks much Ryan for the response!

01Ryan10 said:

tradesmith45 said:

01Ryan10 said:

8. For near perceived ISO noiseless images on the ground exposures, take them at blue hour when you can still shoot at ISOs 800 or lower. Merge with your sky imaging taken from the same spot later in the evening. Or...take your sky images, (Feb through May), then stick around for sunrise blue hour.

Click to expand...

Hi Ryan, have a couple questions about your foreground capture workflow. Sharing your great experience would be really helpful. In the past I've shot my foregrounds in starlight. Been thinking of switching to getting the foreground in twilight as you do for the same IQ reasons.

1. In bright twilight, may be unable to find Polaris to align the tracker that will be used later in the night. What do you do about this? (I might even shot the foreground w/ a XT2 w/ its RAW NR & switch to the unfiltered XT100 for the stars - use the best of both cameras.)

2. What do you do to match the color/WB of the twilight/star light images? I've been thinking of shooting my Xrite Color Checker in both for use matching in post.

And have a couple equipment questions. Shooting MW panos w/ trackers (tracker aligned North & camera sweeping the south) means the camera load will shift from one side of the drive to the other. Backlash in the tracker drive can cause tracking to stop for a period until the slack in the gears is out. Has this been a problem for you? Do you use the counterweight kit to deal w/ this? I've had this happen once & didn't catch it in the field so got home w/ no images for part of my pano.

You mentioned selling a 21mm lens. Was this the Samyang/Rok 21mm f1.4? What did you think of that one? For me the biggest problem w/ the XF23 f1.4 is astigmatism that doesn't substantially improve until f4. Sure wish there was a lens w/ good astro edge IQ by f2 in the 23-35mm range. What 50mm are you using?

Thanks in advance!

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hmmm...i'll try the best to answer the questions...

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This tells me you use pretty deep twilight for imaging the landscape - that's what I was wondering.

01Ryan10 said:

1. I never had an issue finding polaris. Actually, I find it quite the opposite in regards to finding Polaris during blue hour or twilight. I find it easier to locate the star at those times. The Big Dipper and Polaris both begin to show at the blue hour. Since they are the only major stars showing in that region of the sky at those times, it's easy to locate. Because I do most of my nightscape imaging from Southern California bortle class 1 and 2 desert skies, Polaris becomes a little harder to find during normal night hours. There are many other stars that shine nearly as bright as Polaris in the desert night skies.

Click to expand...

And this tells me something else I needed - you can eyeball the color match. Both these make life easier.

01Ryan10 said:

2. I "eyeball" the color balance when blending exposures. I generally decrease the saturation slider on the Terra Nova exposures about 20-40 points to simulate deep night. I'll also reduce contrast, lift the blacks and shadows a little to simulate a flatter lit scene. If there are some flowers in the scene, I may bring back the saturation a little selectively on those objects.

Click to expand...

I was wondering if the long total exposure you are using is causing stitching problems due to setting/rising stars. Sounds like it doesn't GTK! I use shorter exposures & stack more of them.

Is the camera in landscape or portrait orientation?

01Ryan10 said:

3. I have done a couple of MW panos on a tracker. Getting multiple exposures of the sky is tough because of the way the MW will "bend" throughout a 30+ minute span. And...as you use a longer focal length to stitch the pano, it makes it that much tougher. With my Rokinon 12mm, I can get 4 camera positions with 3 exposures per position totaling 24 minutes of exposure time, (2 mins per exposure). When stitched, they create a natural looking arch. Several times I only used the 4 different tracked camera positions without stacking, and the pano came out great. This works well if you don't have a lot of airplane or satellite trails. With Starlink, it could get tougher to get away with single exposures per camera angle. I don't use a counterweight. Between my X-T2, 16mm F/1.4, and 12mm Rokinon, I have not had an issue. I now have an 8-16mm, and that is a different beast. It is heavy. I have not had the time to do some backyard test of bright stars at F/8 on the tracker just to see if I have issues with 2-4 minute exposures. I'll probably try that this week.

4. The Rokinon 21mm F/1.4 was fantastic for me.

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That's really good to know. The Lenstip review looks pretty bad for both the 21 f1.4 & 35 f1.2. The XF23 f1.4 still shows lots of coma & astigmatism at f2. Have you used that one? Can you send me an image from the 21 @ f2 so I can compare?

01Ryan10 said:

I usually shot it at F/2 with near perfect corners. It also did not have any of the Rokinon/Samyang decenter issue. Optically, it was a great lens, but I got tired of the MW perspective, ( MW too large in the image for my taste). Even my 16mm is borderline too large in my images, but I'll give it another go this year. 12mm looks great, and I'm really interested in what I'll get from 8mm on my 8-16. Probably two shot panos of the full arch at 8mm. LOL.

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Will be interested in seeing results from the 8-16.

Really appreciate you taking the time for this!

I shoot my panos of the sky in landscape because I'm only shooting the sky. I shoot the ground portion of the pano separately and in portrait. If I was shooting the sky and ground in a single row pano, I'd shoot it in portrait.

I have not ever used the 23mm F/1.4.

Here is a link to a single Rokinon 21mm F/1.4 RAF file shot on my X-T2. The EXIF states F/1 at 50mm, but that's Rokinon for you. It is F/2 at 21mm.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1vxLnw4s_jNOjRM4DB92FnoyO_7gGF763

That exposure was taken within a 1 mile hike of the following location...

https://goo.gl/maps/KbepmzCyuHaBruof8

Why bother Fuji? It is APS-C and surely could struggle more than your Nikon Z7 and D500 for better result.

If you are determined to use Fuji equipments for astrophotography then you might probably get a new XT3 with XF16/1.4 and finish a better job.

synyan said:

Why bother Fuji? It is APS-C and surely could struggle more than your Nikon Z7 and D500 for better result.

If you are determined to use Fuji equipments for astrophotography then you might probably get a new XT3 with XF16/1.4 and finish a better job.

Click to expand...

There have been countless examples of excellent astrophotography, taken with Fujifilm cameras from the X-T1 on, posted in this forum over the years. FF certainly has an inherent advantage and depending on a photographer's specific needs might end up being the right decision. But you don't need a FF camera or even the very latest and greatest Fuji gear to get excellent results. FF offers about a one stop advantage. Whether that is important enough to go that route for astrophotography is very much a matter of individual requirements.

Bottom line: you don't need FF or to buy the latest generation Fujifilm camera to get excellent results. That "better job" you're talking about may or may not make much of a difference depending on any one photographer's individual requirements. I've been shooting astro for years and have never felt compelled to move to FF. Others, with more stringent requirements might make a different decision. But bottom line, FF is absolutely NOT necessary to get excellent results when shooting astro.

BTW, if you really think FF is the way to go and money is no object, why not go GFX and MF? Undoubtedly even better results might be possible.

--
Jerry
Fujifilm X Forum Co-Mod

Yep! I sold my Nikon D610 FF because my X-T2 has the same noise performance. So why use big and heavy gear.

I think it's more important to train yourself in using the gear you have to get better results than to speculate if a FF sensor is better than a APS-C sensor. Your camera is only a tool, you create the images.

On-topic

I use a Samyang 12mm f2 for single w.a. astro shots:


Or the 7artisans 7.5mm fish-eye:


Or a the Fuji 16-55mm f2.8 on a tracker, I use various mm then:



And for the new astro season I'm also going to try the Meike 35mm f1.7

Thanks much Ryan, this is really helpful!

01Ryan10 said:

I shoot my panos of the sky in landscape because I'm only shooting the sky. I shoot the ground portion of the pano separately and in portrait. If I was shooting the sky and ground in a single row pano, I'd shoot it in portrait.

I have not ever used the 23mm F/1.4.

Here is a link to a single Rokinon 21mm F/1.4 RAF file shot on my X-T2. The EXIF states F/1 at 50mm, but that's Rokinon for you. It is F/2 at 21mm.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1vxLnw4s_jNOjRM4DB92FnoyO_7gGF763

That exposure was taken within a 1 mile hike of the following location...

https://goo.gl/maps/KbepmzCyuHaBruof8

Click to expand...

Here's a comparison some my find helpful.

As we know, longer FL lenses can capture more photons from stars. Doing panos w/ them can capture more detail in the sky. APSC focal lengths of 23 & 35mm can be very versatile choices for this approach. Unfortunately as reviews show all Fuji 23 & 35mm choices have coma & low resolution in the edges wide open & stopped down one EV. This negates the advantage of having f/1.2 or 1.4 lenses. Creating panos w/ 50% overlap can eliminate the need to use the edges of the frame but can require more captures than a more typical 30% overlap for a pano. Information provided by reviews can not tell us if 30% or 50% is needed for a particular lens. Should we use f2 or f2.8?

Here's a composite of 1/3rd of a frame from these 2 lenses stopped down to f/2.0. I've made every effort to match these images but that's truly impossible. Here's what I see on my monitor & you may be able to see in this full size JPG.

• Both lenses show slight decentering (one corner is worse) & still visible moderate coma in the edges - the Fuji has more coma & requires 50% overlap even at f/2.0.
• Both lenses show about the same amount of astigmatism (arrowhead shaped stars across the frame).
• The Samyang is a bit sharper in the central portion @ f/2 & coma does not extend as far into the frame. Looks like 30% overlap would be sufficient. FWIW, this pretty much replicates the Lenstip review of this lens. Another choose your poison choice for Fuji. In the FF world, there are several sharp across the frame 35mm f1.4 choices. The market pressure to keep APSc lenses small means we will not likely see something similar.

Thanks for all the detail in information. Very educational.

Out of curiosity, have you ever tried the 16-55 wide-open? Coma doesn't seem too bad, at least at the wide end, according to Lenstip. Of course vignetting would be worse, but I've been thinking of trying it.

Yeah I'm using the 16-55 too, great lens low coma and astigmatism. The vignetting isn't that bad. But haven't got the time to make a pano with it so maybe it could be an issue when I don't overlap 50%

georgehudetz said:

Thanks for all the detail in information. Very educational.

Out of curiosity, have you ever tried the 16-55 wide-open? Coma doesn't seem too bad, at least at the wide end, according to Lenstip. Of course vignetting would be worse, but I've been thinking of trying it.

Click to expand...

There's no question the XF16-55 & perhaps the new XF8-16 are usable for starry landscapes. There are many examples of great night images w/ for example the huge Nikon 14-24mm f2.8 - another zoom w/ surprisingly good edges. Like that lens the XF16-55 has little coma & overall has ok edge IQ wide open. Its is also the case that many of the primes for Fuji have even better edge resolution if stopped down to f2.8. For reasons I do not understand, there are many normal to wide & even UWA f2.8 zooms w/o much coma wide open but the Fuji's f2.8 & f2 primes under 50mm still show coma @ f2.8??? Very frustrating. Of course the disadvantage of an f2.8 zoom is size/weight. That's why I don't own any.

An "advantage"? of the f2.8 zooms is you are forced to adapt your capture work flow to the smaller aperture - capture the dark landscape w/ supplemental lighting (twilight or moon) & use a tracker if you want significant detail in the star field.

I look forward to seeing Ryan's work w/ the new XF8-16.

tradesmith45 said:

georgehudetz said:

Thanks for all the detail in information. Very educational.

Out of curiosity, have you ever tried the 16-55 wide-open? Coma doesn't seem too bad, at least at the wide end, according to Lenstip. Of course vignetting would be worse, but I've been thinking of trying it.

Click to expand...

There's no question the XF16-55 & perhaps the new XF8-16 are usable for starry landscapes. There are many examples of great night images w/ for example the huge Nikon 14-24mm f2.8 - another zoom w/ surprisingly good edges. Like that lens the XF16-55 has little coma & overall has ok edge IQ wide open. Its is also the case that many of the primes for Fuji have even better edge resolution if stopped down to f2.8. For reasons I do not understand, there are many normal to wide & even UWA f2.8 zooms w/o much coma wide open but the Fuji's f2.8 & f2 primes under 50mm still show coma @ f2.8??? Very frustrating. Of course the disadvantage of an f2.8 zoom is size/weight. That's why I don't own any.

An "advantage"? of the f2.8 zooms is you are forced to adapt your capture work flow to the smaller aperture - capture the dark landscape w/ supplemental lighting (twilight or moon) & use a tracker if you want significant detail in the star field.

I look forward to seeing Ryan's work w/ the new XF8-16.

Click to expand...

Here's a shot from the 8-16 @ 9.2mm, wide open. Not the greatest astro shot that ever was, but it's single frame, untracked, processed in Capture one. Upper left seems to have a little more comma than the upper right.

I agree, it will be interesting to see what Ryan can do with it.





--
My Flikr stream: http://flic.kr/ps/Ay8ka

Jerry-astro said:

synyan said:

Why bother Fuji? It is APS-C and surely could struggle more than your Nikon Z7 and D500 for better result.

If you are determined to use Fuji equipments for astrophotography then you might probably get a new XT3 with XF16/1.4 and finish a better job.

Click to expand...

There have been countless examples of excellent astrophotography, taken with Fujifilm cameras from the X-T1 on, posted in this forum over the years. FF certainly has an inherent advantage and depending on a photographer's specific needs might end up being the right decision. But you don't need a FF camera or even the very latest and greatest Fuji gear to get excellent results. FF offers about a one stop advantage. Whether that is important enough to go that route for astrophotography is very much a matter of individual requirements.

Bottom line: you don't need FF or to buy the latest generation Fujifilm camera to get excellent results. That "better job" you're talking about may or may not make much of a difference depending on any one photographer's individual requirements. I've been shooting astro for years and have never felt compelled to move to FF. Others, with more stringent requirements might make a different decision. But bottom line, FF is absolutely NOT necessary to get excellent results when shooting astro.

BTW, if you really think FF is the way to go and money is no object, why not go GFX and MF? Undoubtedly even better results might be possible.

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I totally agree with you that Fuji CAN deliver good results on astrophotography. I do have (and had) many Fuji cameras and lens (start from X-E1 era) , but my answer was a reply to Montanawildlives who happens to have FF like Nikon Z7 that has state-of-the-art CMOS provided by Sony and delivers more pixels surely better than an old X-T1's (even X-T3).

RE GFX and MF: I guess a bit dearer camera is within the range since Z7 is not an inexpensive toy. I was even not suggesting X-T4 which will be released very soon in Q1... lol

Thanks to the help of another forum member, here's another X-mount lens comparison. As mentioned in a previous post, I'm on a search for a 20is or 35mm lens for astro. But all the f1.2/1.4 X-mount lens currently available in that range have both coma in the edges and high astigmatism (17-18%) in the larger apertures. Astigmatism turns round stars into arrowhead shapes across much of the image. Astigmatism is an ingredient of what we call coma so having the later means the lens has the former.

Again, I've tired to match these images but there are so many differences - different sky conditions, different trackers, focus accuracy etc........ As we know there's plenty of copy variation of lenses as well.

On my monitor, at f1.6, the Samyang has less coma & there is a large center area w/ good round stars. In the XF23, the arrowhead stars extend almost to the center of the frame. Both lenses have a corner that's a bit worse than others so some decentering. This composite is constructed with 1/3rd, 2000 pix off the ends of the images w/ edges areas in the middle for easy comparison.

Doubt we can be confident in this but in both this comparison & the previous one w/ the Samyang 21mm, the Samyang images had smaller stars that the XF23.



Anyone out there have an image of stars using the XF35 f2 that was tracked? That lens looks considerably better than the f1.4 XF35 @ f2.