The Photography thread!

Not a fisheye, but I have the 14mm 2.8 samyang that I use for my Canon FF. Super sharp and easy to use. Was dirt cheap back in the days, but it hasn't been on a camera body for at least 7 years.

I played around with the Sigma art 35mm. Great lens and sharper then my old Canon 35L.
I have a manual Samyang 85 mm 1.4 I bought for $300. Brand new. It's rather good, some of the photos I posted here were taken with it.
Sigma 35mm is a meme in Russian photo community, like a universal answer to good and not overpriced lens.
 
I would say really with Sigma the main thing you loosing is perhaps that autofocus performance isnt as good as "own brand" stuff but honestly if your shooting protraits or something like that really it doesn't need to be that amazing. The other recent buy I had a few months ago was a Tokina 50mm 1.4 Opera, managed to buy that for £270 used and have certainly been impressed with the performance, probably the sharpest lens I own.

Honestly though I have to say I don't generally go chasing "absolute perfection", the reality is I'v never had someone say to me "I would have bought this photo but the extreme corners were slightly soft" and I sell pretty large prints, up to 40 inchs wide and nothing smaller than 18/16 inches. I think the big advantage of the Sigma and the Tokina lenses really is that they look good at F/1.4, not perfect but good enough to make landscape prints from that depend on detail. Historically you'd have been having to stop down to at least F/2 or more likely F/2.8 to really get that kind of sharpness from semi affordable lenses.
 
Reviving this again with some recent stuff....

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Hey gear hunters, I'm looking for a telephoto lens for a Sony Mark A7R3. This would be for hobby shots, it's not a money maker like a portrait lens would be. Looking for something with a price tag around $500 if that's possible without being too cheap a piece of glass to be worth it. Camera itself has image stabalization, so a lens without (even if camera stablizers aren't as good) might be an area to cost cut

I've had luck with Tamron and Sigma 3rd party lenses, having trouble finding if they make a budget telephoto lens for a Sony E mount

Edit: Did just stumble on this guy
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B...MXZCZ&linkId=14d64134453f61738020f410b1ea098d
 
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Hey gear hunters, I'm looking for a telephoto lens for a Sony Mark A7R3. This would be for hobby shots, it's not a money maker like a portrait lens would be. Looking for something with a price tag around $500 if that's possible without being too cheap a piece of glass to be worth it. Preferably something with image stabilization as well, but not sure if that's a pipe dream at this price point or not.

I've had luck with Tamron and Sigma 3rd party lenses, having trouble finding if they make a budget telephoto lens for a Sony E mount

Edit: Did just stumble on this guy
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B...MXZCZ&linkId=14d64134453f61738020f410b1ea098d

What size lens are looking for? 85, 100, 135, 200mm? Do you already have any adapters?
 
Hey gear hunters, I'm looking for a telephoto lens for a Sony Mark A7R3. This would be for hobby shots, it's not a money maker like a portrait lens would be. Looking for something with a price tag around $500 if that's possible without being too cheap a piece of glass to be worth it. Camera itself has image stabalization, so a lens without (even if camera stablizers aren't as good) might be an area to cost cut

I've had luck with Tamron and Sigma 3rd party lenses, having trouble finding if they make a budget telephoto lens for a Sony E mount

Edit: Did just stumble on this guy
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B...MXZCZ&linkId=14d64134453f61738020f410b1ea098d
ibis is worthless with a telephoto

get the 100-400 sigma if on a budget.

tamron is rumored to make a 50-400, gonna be an awesome lens I'm sure, but will cost over 1K I think.
 
So much fantastic stuff here. Kuddos everyone. I’ve really been wanting to pursue another creative outlet and photography is something I’ve always found interesting but never really dabbled in.

Thoughts on a Nikon Z50? Based on what I’ve read I think I’d like to go mirror less.
 
So much fantastic stuff here. Kuddos everyone. I’ve really been wanting to pursue another creative outlet and photography is something I’ve always found interesting but never really dabbled in.

Thoughts on a Nikon Z50? Based on what I’ve read I think I’d like to go mirror less.

Can't really do much wrong with most modern gear these days. Z50 is nice.
 
So much fantastic stuff here. Kuddos everyone. I’ve really been wanting to pursue another creative outlet and photography is something I’ve always found interesting but never really dabbled in.

Thoughts on a Nikon Z50? Based on what I’ve read I think I’d like to go mirror less.
you'll be paying an early adopters penalty in lenses should you upgrade, otherwise, it looks nice.

hardly any dedicated lenses for nikon Z aps-c, and full frame costs a lot.
 
I've been getting back into astrophotography, bit by bit. In fact my avatar is a picture I took myself of the Orion Nebula. This is prime focus through my telescope (1000mm F/5) featuring the apparent sizes of the moon, Jupiter (bottom right), and Saturn (top right). I edited the picture to position the planets near the moon, but the image scale is true. In terms of seeing (stillness/clarity of the atmosphere) this was a terrible night.

View attachment 644297

Awesome! One day I'll get a telescope and do astrophotogaphy.

Someone just bumped this thread and I went back to the first few pages for fun. It's funny, but I don't remember writing that here... looks like I was right though:

https://forums.sherdog.com/threads/...phy-thread-op-updated.4169422/#post-164001203
 
Link to this guy to compare? This? https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1568623-REG/sigma_100_400mm_f_5_6_3_dg_dn.html

$900 is a bit beyond what I'd be looking to spend, unless spending $500 on the Tamron would be a waste of money and instead find a way to justify 80% more for this Sigma?
yeah, I guess it is a bit more when comparing budget options, consider the used market, both will cost significantly less as photography is generally falling off a cliff.

it depends what you'll be using it for, wildlife, it's kind of short, but it'll suffice. most of the tamrons are quite good optically, but without stabilization, you'll have to deal with higher shutter speeds and ISO, being that it's f5.6 already on the long end, could be an annoyance. the 70-300 sony is heavier by quite a bit, optically only ok, more usable in practice. Sigma is probably not as good with focus, as I've owned a lot of them, still have some dg dn's and contemporary, but they otherwise work fine. The gear rabbit hole can get costly, somehow, I have 15-20K in gear <Lmaoo>, do have an extensive background in photo and video, so its normal.
 
Shot these tonight from light-polluted skies, in addition to the moon being at nearly first quarter: M27 and M57, the Dumbell and Ring nebulas. Once again, I neglected to shoot in RAW.... argh!! One of these days (nights) I'll get it together. If I was at a dark-sky site with no moon, the contrast would be MUCH improved. Seeing was also poor.

Equipment:
Camera - Canon T2i
Lens - Orion 8" F/5 Newtonian (1.83" Celestron secondary) with PC cooling fan. Moderate flocking attempt to blacken the tube and maximize contrast.
Filter - Astronomik CLS
Mount - Celestron AS-GT; unguided with a somewhat accurate polar alignment.

Dumbell Nebula: 2 x 30 seconds at ISO 1600, added together using Paint.NET, and adjusting curves, levels, WB. You can see little speckles of red and blue; these are hot pixels. This is post processed to get the black point down and bring out the detail without overdoing it. The Astronomik filter works by suppressing wavelengths common in mercury and sodium vapor street lights, but its presence screws up the white balance. The images are very heavy in the cyan, and deep red. I had neglected to make a custom WB.
View attachment 655961

Ring Nebula: 1x30 seconds at ISO 1600. Similar processing techniques as the above. Although smaller and dimmer, this object actually has a higher surface brightness than the above. Hot pixels are a bit more obvious in this one. These are mitigated by taking darks, but I wasn't up to doing it just yet.
View attachment 655963

Those are amazing, aside from the old camera on a tripod for astro I'm very interested in the type you're doing.

I’ve taken stuff with old school shutter locks on film all the way up to involometer shots with my cameras on a tripod.


I’ve looked into real astro stuff a ton over and over again from time to time but never pulled the trigger on a telescope and an adapter.

One of these days.

I want to do it too, but there is way too much light pollution around me.

Yeah that’s another big problem.

@astrozician... didn't mean to quote you about the same thing. I was quoting you for context. I'm really pointing out something to @90 50.

@90 50 it turns out you can do astrophotography in high light pollution settings. Have you seen my threads? I started doing it about 1.5 years ago.
 
Was at a BBQ a couple of weeks ago and some guy had a silver cool looking camera. I asked him if it was a Fufi (I was sitting way down the table from where he was seeing and couldn't see it up close.) He said it was a restored vintage Leica. He spent like 6 months restoring it. It was badass. Dude had his own darkroom too. Don't see that nowadays.
 
@astrozician... didn't mean to quote you about the same thing. I was quoting you for context.

No worries. Looks like you've been doing quite well. I'm really digging that Lagoon and Trifid Nebula.

I wanted to ask you how you're taking pictures in light polluted skies. I know it's doable but I never seem to get results that I'm happy with.
 
So much fantastic stuff here. Kuddos everyone. I’ve really been wanting to pursue another creative outlet and photography is something I’ve always found interesting but never really dabbled in.

Thoughts on a Nikon Z50? Based on what I’ve read I think I’d like to go mirror less.
Z50 is a good moderate budget camera. also new Z lenses are good and if you later upgrade to a better camera body they will be relevant.
 
Was at a BBQ a couple of weeks ago and some guy had a silver cool looking camera. I asked him if it was a Fufi (I was sitting way down the table from where he was seeing and couldn't see it up close.) He said it was a restored vintage Leica. He spent like 6 months restoring it. It was badass. Dude had his own darkroom too. Don't see that nowadays.
in soviet Russia bathrooms in apartments were used as darkrooms <45>
 
No worries. Looks like you've been doing quite well. I'm really digging that Lagoon and Trifid Nebula.

I wanted to ask you how you're taking pictures in light polluted skies. I know it's doable but I never seem to get results that I'm happy with.

With a lot of effort. ;)

What software do you use now?
 
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