Originally posted by csa I have one, from a fellow member here in Mint condition! Mine is the Macro version.
Is there a non "macro" version of this? Mine is the close focus one with the 1:3 magnification which is fun to play with especially with the kid's lego creations.
Originally posted by csa However, I've not tried it for astrophotography, as I've not wandered into that part of photography.
After having the lens for a little more than a week and playing it seems like a pretty good performer. Unfortunately the smoke and haze hasn't been cooperative for really seeing what one can do with it. Thus far it seems to have controlled chromatic aberrations really well and is sharp wide open and gets really good at f/4.5.
I played a bit over the weekend shooting the moon with it at about 11:30PM but the haze is awful. Had to add in 6.5 stops of extra exposure for the moon to be fairly well exposed. So instead of shooting using the Looney 11 rule (ISO 100, 1/100s, F/11) I used ISO 800, F/4.5 1/50s. Ended up with a very orange moon that almost looks like an eclipsed moon but it is only a 1/2 moon. Did a bunch of stacking to drive down the noise and bring out more detail and got what looks to be a nice shot of it. There were no stars visible that night in my backyard. I really want to see what this lens can do for proper astro but there is just too much humidity, and smoke at present.