In search of the Holy Grail...

[Diane_Miller]

The UR corner of one of the raw files at 100%: (GAWK!!!)

After the Pixinsight treatment below (and after tonal adjustments to darken the sky):

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Description

That’s not the title of the image. It’s a description of the tilting at windmills I’ve been doing for quite a while, for a way to improve the ugly stars that our wide-angle lenses render away from the center. This is the Rokinon SP 14mm f/2.4, supposedly one of the better lenses for Milky Way work and not one of the super-cheapies – it’s heavy and seems well-built. It’s a fairly recent acquisition and I don’t have a lot of chances to shoot the MW so had only tested it on the sky dome and was reasonably satisfied. At least it’s easy to focus – the story is just crank it all the way to the distance stop. I had done that the previous day on this trip (a workshop in Bodie) and those shots were as expected, but the shots from this night were uniformly bad. Even though I thought I had it well padded in the camera bag, I suspect too many trips on the 3 mile very washboarded gravel road shook an element loose. I haven’t even tested it since but need to. I think it may be a paperweight now. (At least it’s heavy enough to work well.) But it’s an excellent example of what I’ve discovered, outlined below.

Specific Feedback

All comments welcome!

Technical Details

One of the raw files:

I shot a burst of 8 frames and processed them in PixInsight to calibrate and register to give a master file. That was processed with a very magic tool called BlurXTerminator, which does a subtle improvement on the already-excellent stars from a decent telescope. I had no idea what it would do for these horrible stars and was completely blown away. The file then had to be stretched to give a reasonable histogram and was saved as a TIFF. It went into PS to combine the FG, which also wasn’t very sharp, but it will do for now.

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[Diane_Miller]

And here’s a 100% of the Dark Horse region – I can’t get remotely close to this with any of the NR algorithms I’ve tried.

And one of the small set of raw files I used:

[Youssef_Ismail]

Diane,

Nice work. I was seriously considering the Rokinon 14mm as well. did you get the autofocus version or the manual focus version? The first version or the second version? Do you really think it was damaged due to vibrations in travel? Still the coma is not as bad as my Nikon 24mm f2.

[Jim_Erhardt]

I really like the final result, thanks for sharing the post-shutter process!

Question - what did you use to illuminate the old truck and cabin? My guess is the headlights of your vehicle?

Thanks!

[Diane_Miller]

Thanks, @Youssef_Ismail and @Jim_Erhardt!

Jim, illumination was from two low level LED lights on very tall light stands. It was a workshop with special night access and two very experienced guys worked very hard setting up lighting for four different setups on two nights. This is a state historic park and the parking lot is almost half a mile away so there was a lot of lugging equipment.

Youssef, I had been working on these shoots in order of preference but looking at the dates more carefully I see I had the story confused. (Pretty much my default state.) This session wasn’t the bad one – this was one of three targets set up the first night, and the ones with slightly worse stars were the last two of three sessions second night, after five trips up or down the road. (It’s almost as bad as the one to the Patriarch grove, but shorter.) Here’s the worst one, and it goes slightly soft toward the right edge. I haven’t tried PI on it yet, but will.

I was using AF for the close FGs but was careful to crank the focus to the stop each time to shoot the stars, and put a piece of gaffer’s tape on it to be sure. But maybe I disturbed it microscopically getting the tape on. I’ll test it again if we ever have a clear dark night. (Monsoon season just started. Hope you’re OK down there with your mountains scraping off all the rain coming in off the ocean.)

It is this one: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1308034-REG/rokinon_sp14m_c_special_performance_14mm_f_2_4.html

It is an improvement over your 24! My Canon EF L 24-70 II (the high-end model) is about as bad as yours.

[Jim_Erhardt]

@Diane_Miller

Jim, illumination was from two low level LED lights on very tall light stands.

Thanks Diane!