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Sigma 150-600mm Contemporary + 1.4x extender vs Canon RF800mm F11

Started 3 months ago | Questions thread
Larry Rexley Senior Member • Posts: 1,239
Re: Sigma 150-600mm Contemporary + 1.4x extender vs Canon RF800mm F11

BobKnDP wrote:

Just curious: planetary photography?

At its closest, Jupiter is supposed to have an angular diameter of 46.9 arc seconds. With an 800mm lens, that would give an image diameter of 182 microns.

The R10 has a pixel pitch of 3.72 microns. That's less than 50 pixels across the image. It also ignores the reduced resolution associated with the Bayer mosaic color mask.

There are ways of getting a higher resolution by combining multiple images, but I'd think that a telescope would be a better way to go, even if its aperture is no larger than the nominal 73mm entrance pupil of the RF 800.

Fully agree. You can do some basic planetary photography with a 400-800mm tele lens, mostly planetary and Moon conjunctions and for trying it out. But you get relatively little detail for the reasons you outline.

If you get really serious, a telescope of around 5 inch or 125mm aperture is a good minimum. Also you get vastly better results shooting pixel res video, either in cam or using BackyardEOS to capture to a PC. Then you use free special PC software to select and stack the clearest frames and to sharpen the result.  Good youtube videos give more details.

Here are some of my results with a Canon M6ii and Meade ETX-125:

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/66707947

I just bought the Siggy 150-600C to use for deep sky astro of nebulae and galaxies on a star tracker.  The lens is a sweet spot for those.

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