Great video John. You've really made it clear when and where to use each focal length lens, as well as the pluses and minuses of each focal range. I know this will help a lot of people.
John you have easily got some of the best Milky Way photography tutorials out there on RUclips. I love how generous you are in explaining your workflow unlike other RUclipsrs who seem to only tell us a fraction of theirs. Learned a ton from your videos. My favourite astrophotography channel to date, I keep coming back to your channel. A blessing from god. Thank you and keep up with your good work!
Thanks mate. Haha 70 Is excessive and when people do them and move back to a wide angle lens for a 10-20 image pano they don't see much of a difference
Great info on focal length. On my Canon setup, I've found a huge quality difference shooting between RF16mm and RF35mm whereas the RF35 image quality is far superior, but much harder to frame depending on core location. I tend to use shorter focal length lenses tp keep it simple. Thanks for another great video! Stay safe. Mahalo and Aloha.
I use wide lenses for full arc, and longer focal lengths for smaller panos.. We get mw for a maximum of 2 hours in southern UK, so my exposures tend to be about 45 secs to one minute, depending on what I want to get done vs time available. Thanks for your input
Great Video. I just purchased the Sigma 40mm for my Canon. You said it was big, but it is BIG and HEAVY! I'm looking forward to giving a try this weekend.
Definite food for thought John, I don't have the problem choosing lenses at the moment as I only have one, a 20mm 1.8! A good breakdown though of what a night under the stars with each focal length entails. Thanks for linking the planning video I'm due a re-watch of that one as when in the field last time out I forgot some of the pointers in that video, i.e. your starting and ending reference stars at both ends of the arch!
Another great video talking about an important topic. I love my sigma 28mm lens and one of the reasons I got it for panos is because 50mm takes such a long time to do panos with and sometimes the weather here can be quite temperamental. I'll often start off too by taking a couple of untracked single shots at 28mm or even 14mm just in case the weather turns bad and clouds ruin my tracked Pano. At least then if that happens the night isn't a total waste and I've got at least one shot to show for my efforts. One thing I'm still struggling with in terms of panos is stitching errors. I get these weird lines at the joins where the stars on either side of the joins are slightly different sizes or going in different directions. I'm not sure whether this will be fixed by stopping the lens down more or shooting shorter exposures or a bit of both. Or possibly having more consistent 50% overlap in portrait orientation. In the meantime I'm able to kind of fix the problem using the clone stamp tool but it's not easy to get it as good as I'd like.
Thank you so much for your thoughts and infos on this important topic John. Especially the time component made me think for a long time that I'd never decide for a tracker. Now I finally changed my mind and got one and can't wait to try it for the first time. Nevertheless I'll start with a relatively simple setup so that I hopefully won't end up too frustrated after the first night ... :)
Thanks! Very timely comment about longer focal length giving you a bigger image of the Milky Way. Richard is hosting Zoom meetings and in the one I was just on he mentioned that very phenomenon. I'll check out his video, though. Now that good weather has finally come to my locale, I want to experiment with panos.
Thanks John, Another good video full of the information for tracked panorama enthusiasts. Looking to next dark sky period to give the tracker another outing. 😁😁
Great video man👍 you know the idea of compromising and working within your limitations is the age old struggle of every aspect of Astrophotography. My biggest compromising factor is always time. I no longer want to spend the whole night on just one comp😂. With enough time you can do anything as long as you have a tracker. Then there is the correlation of as you spend time in the field creating an image you’re time behind the computer will also go up. Again great video👏🏻
Another informative video John, I must admit I seem to be always locked into a 20m Lens for everything. I have only used my 35mm and 50mm a handful of times now I have a tracker it's time I bring the core closer :) Thank you for sharing the pros and cons between wide angle and shorter angle, something to think on next time I'm out.
Hi John, interesting video. In my opinion, 14mm is best if you only have a few mins to take a panorama ( or a single shot), having driven 4 hours to the site, and having to drive 4 hours home=8 hours driving altogether! 20mm or 24mm F1.4 Samyang lens (maybe stop to F2.0 or F2.8) if you have 30 to 60mins. For smaller detailed views (we are entering telescope astrophotography), 35 to 50mm could be used, but I don't think you can do 4 rows of horizontal panoramas for 720 degree panorama! at 50mm. But could someone work on 2 rows, and someone else work on the other 2 rows at the same time with same equipment to halve the time?
Everyone will have a focal length that is optimal for them, very interesting concept with 2 cameras, I've never tried it but can't see why it wouldn't work.
![Eminem - Fuel (feat. JID) [Official Lyric Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/t5H_CewqpKA/mqdefault.jpg)
Great video John. You've really made it clear when and where to use each focal length lens, as well as the pluses and minuses of each focal range. I know this will help a lot of people.
Thanks Richard, 👍 hopefully this in conjunction with your focal length video will help out
John you have easily got some of the best Milky Way photography tutorials out there on RUclips. I love how generous you are in explaining your workflow unlike other RUclipsrs who seem to only tell us a fraction of theirs. Learned a ton from your videos. My favourite astrophotography channel to date, I keep coming back to your channel. A blessing from god. Thank you and keep up with your good work!
I really appreciate that Marco thanks. I'm glad I've been able to help.
Awesome vid. Seasoned reasoning coupled with useful knowledge. Thanks John.
I have a 10-shot limit for panos. Did a double take when I heard 70. :)
Thanks mate. Haha 70 Is excessive and when people do them and move back to a wide angle lens for a 10-20 image pano they don't see much of a difference
Great info on focal length. On my Canon setup, I've found a huge quality difference shooting between RF16mm and RF35mm whereas the RF35 image quality is far superior, but much harder to frame depending on core location. I tend to use shorter focal length lenses tp keep it simple. Thanks for another great video! Stay safe. Mahalo and Aloha.
Cheers mate, yeah the wide focal lengths definitely keep it simple,and that's why they are so popular. I do love a challenge tho
I use wide lenses for full arc, and longer focal lengths for smaller panos.. We get mw for a maximum of 2 hours in southern UK, so my exposures tend to be about 45 secs to one minute, depending on what I want to get done vs time available. Thanks for your input
I often forget how spoilt we are with our skies, but sounds like your making the most of yours.
I like how you literally have a monopoly on panorama astrophotography.
Cheers mate 👍
Great Video. I just purchased the Sigma 40mm for my Canon. You said it was big, but it is BIG and HEAVY! I'm looking forward to giving a try this weekend.
Haha yes it certainly is a tank of a lens. Good luck on the weekend
Great informative video
Definite food for thought John, I don't have the problem choosing lenses at the moment as I only have one, a 20mm 1.8! A good breakdown though of what a night under the stars with each focal length entails. Thanks for linking the planning video I'm due a re-watch of that one as when in the field last time out I forgot some of the pointers in that video, i.e. your starting and ending reference stars at both ends of the arch!
And what a good lens that is!
Amazing information, I really love this channel !!!
Thanks mate 👍
Hey John! A new subscriber here! Thanks for the great info. Do you still shoot with the Sigma 40mm?
Another great video talking about an important topic. I love my sigma 28mm lens and one of the reasons I got it for panos is because 50mm takes such a long time to do panos with and sometimes the weather here can be quite temperamental. I'll often start off too by taking a couple of untracked single shots at 28mm or even 14mm just in case the weather turns bad and clouds ruin my tracked Pano. At least then if that happens the night isn't a total waste and I've got at least one shot to show for my efforts.
One thing I'm still struggling with in terms of panos is stitching errors. I get these weird lines at the joins where the stars on either side of the joins are slightly different sizes or going in different directions. I'm not sure whether this will be fixed by stopping the lens down more or shooting shorter exposures or a bit of both. Or possibly having more consistent 50% overlap in portrait orientation. In the meantime I'm able to kind of fix the problem using the clone stamp tool but it's not easy to get it as good as I'd like.
That's a great idea. I'm sure plenty of people could learn something from that approach. 👍
Thank you so much for your thoughts and infos on this important topic John. Especially the time component made me think for a long time that I'd never decide for a tracker. Now I finally changed my mind and got one and can't wait to try it for the first time. Nevertheless I'll start with a relatively simple setup so that I hopefully won't end up too frustrated after the first night ... :)
That's the go mille, start simple and work up from there.
Thanks! Very timely comment about longer focal length giving you a bigger image of the Milky Way. Richard is hosting Zoom meetings and in the one I was just on he mentioned that very phenomenon. I'll check out his video, though. Now that good weather has finally come to my locale, I want to experiment with panos.
Awesome mate, that worked out well.
Another Awesome video with some really helpful information! Hoping to get a chance this coming weekend to try out my New 40mm lens
Good luck mate, hope the sky stays clear
Thanks John, Another good video full of the information for tracked panorama enthusiasts. Looking to next dark sky period to give the tracker another outing. 😁😁
That's it mate!! Look forward to seeing what you come up with
Great video man👍 you know the idea of compromising and working within your limitations is the age old struggle of every aspect of Astrophotography. My biggest compromising factor is always time. I no longer want to spend the whole night on just one comp😂. With enough time you can do anything as long as you have a tracker. Then there is the correlation of as you spend time in the field creating an image you’re time behind the computer will also go up. Again great video👏🏻
So true, that's why it's so important for everyone to figure out what works for them.
Great break down John! Your videos are very knowledgeable 🙌
Cheers man 👌
Another informative video John, I must admit I seem to be always locked into a 20m Lens for everything. I have only used my 35mm and 50mm a handful of times now I have a tracker it's time I bring the core closer :) Thank you for sharing the pros and cons between wide angle and shorter angle, something to think on next time I'm out.
That's a very normal progression, I did the same thing. Look forward to seeing what you come up with using longer focal lengths 👍
Thanks for a great video. I'm in the position to make a choice of what lens to get for tracked panorama 🙂 this helps me out in my process 🙏
Glad it helped out mate 👍
As always, great information in a very helpful video. Thanks!
Thanks mate 👍
Thank you for information big bro
Your welcome mate 👍
Thanks, great information
Your most welcome mate 👍
Hi John, interesting video. In my opinion, 14mm is best if you only have a few mins to take a panorama ( or a single shot), having driven 4 hours to the site, and having to drive 4 hours home=8 hours driving altogether! 20mm or 24mm F1.4 Samyang lens (maybe stop to F2.0 or F2.8) if you have 30 to 60mins. For smaller detailed views (we are entering telescope astrophotography), 35 to 50mm could be used, but I don't think you can do 4 rows of horizontal panoramas for 720 degree panorama! at 50mm. But could someone work on 2 rows, and someone else work on the other 2 rows at the same time with same equipment to halve the time?
Everyone will have a focal length that is optimal for them, very interesting concept with 2 cameras, I've never tried it but can't see why it wouldn't work.
P. S, I prefer field time to post processing time, lol
Alot of people would agree 👍