To go or not to go in the name of astronomy?

Well I did go in the end! I arrived at 6pm-ish I think to find that I was the only madman on the site with the intention of putting up a tent! There were several campervans however so I wasnt the only customer.

Ivinghoe is a beautiful setting though with views of peak hills and open farm fields. As I stood in the empty open campsite field (the campervans were on the edge on electric hookups). I stood out there in my multilayer clothing in the 40mph-ish winds determined to not cower away back to train station home. I will do this I said to myself as forecast is a clear night from midnight, I just need to ride out these attacking winds before then and get my tent setup in during the quieter periods...if any!

And miraculously, I setup my newly purchased tent, for the first time in my life. And then proceeded to setup my heq5 equatorial tripod, which for the first time, I brought without a telescope as I just planned to do wide angle imaging. Night time came and the heavens opened up and wow, I could see the milky way! Of course there is still a lot of light pollution from London and Aylesbury that taints the skies but this is definitely a campsite worth coming to in future for spur of the moment relatively dark sky access near London and where I dont have to worry about rooms being booked out and is very economical in the long run if I do this frequently. Their toilets and shower facilities are well maintained, in fact far better than my dinky local Brixton leisure centre! Local pub is a 10-15 minute walk away with a chinese or Indian restaurant/takeaway also nearby.

Unfortunately, I left my damn red dot finderscope on the telescope at home....damn! I found it impossible to star align without it. Secondly Its the first time I am mounting my dslr directly on the equatorial but I failed to realise the need to have a ball head so that I can swivel the camera to a desired angle for framing my shots. All lessons learnt. So I decided to forget about long exposure imaging and resort to the 30second maximum shoots in a fixed position. It was still windy, so at least I am using my weighty HEQ5 equatorial for stability.

So I left it imaging on a region of the milky way and sat to watch the skies with me much needed flask of coffee.

Although, I enjoyed looing at the plaides and milky way, not one single meteor did I see 🙁 Did I get the day wrong? The Flamsteed calendar showed Orionid meteor shower for three days, its what I went by.

I checked all my images too. No meteors in sight 🙁

Around 4am, I packed up the scope and slept a few hours in the tent in my sleeping bag and I actually slept! Didnt feel cold despite the very cold temperatures. Marvelous how this tent and sleeping bag can be compressed compactly into my rucksack.

SO I can hack this tenting balava after all, why did I fear it. So I failed to capture meteors but I gained camping experience and discovered a good location for stargazing accessible for me as a non driver, just outside London.

The campsite I went to was called Town Farm Campsite, Ivinghoe.

I will test two other campsites I found, Home Farm Campsite near Saunderton. There is another called Cairns near Stonegate which looked ideal but they shut for winter on 30th October.

I will post of views I had from the campsite shortly.

Hey Tej

You certainly get an 'A' for effort.

Campsite looks nice. Was there much light on the site itself?

No there wasnt much light on the campsite itself largely because I was the only one in the field.  But there are campervans on the other side of the field that would have their inside lights on behind mostly closed curtains.  There may be the odd couple of lights from the campsite owners home.  However, all of them were off by the time the clouds cleared at midnight.

I guess the real trial would be going back when more populated.  My images do have orange tint on them, though.  I'll try upload an unprocessed raw image for your assessment of its light pollution effect.

I think the skies are a little better than Cudham in comparison...although I didnt really see Cudham skies at its best on that evening during the perseids shower.

Oh one more thing, Rupert.  I cant seem to use my normal Canon lenses with the CLS filter still in, is there a way around this?

Will be interesting to see your images. I am still searching for a suitable venue for the potential Flamsteed camp I have been trying to get going and also potentially an Astrograph event. As this site is open all year it offers an option that sites which close don't. Our preferred site near Romney offered us the whole site with no lights but would only stay open an extra week at the end of the season.

Re your your clip filter. The clip system normally works with all Canon lenses apart from EF-S, Unfortunately that's all the lenses designed for APS sensors. I warn all my customers about this. Your dealer should have said something.

As AF lenses are a pain to focus manually anyway because they are designed to focus past infinity so the infinity mark on the lens actually is not. On an MF lens it is, I normally suggest that Canon APS owning customers think about using a Nikon manual focus lens on their Canon camera with a mount adapter. There are a lot of very good Nikon AIS MF lenses available used at silly prices. Its possible to use Nikon lenses because the mount to sensor distance is greater than with Canon allowing the adapter. They will only work in manual mode. See

http://astrograph.net/epages/www_astrograph_net.sf/en_GB/?ObjectPath=/Shops/www_astrograph_net/Products/AGKOBNTC

Unfortunately Canons own manual FD lenses are no use because Canon changed the mount system and made them incompatible with the EOS system. The only other lenses that will work with your camera are therefore the EF range which are AF and designed for full frame,

Sorry for delay, Rupert

This is one 30sec frame, shot at 1600 ISO f3.5. RAW converted to jpeg.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/16806463@N04/15622885652/

Thanks, I'll consider a nikon adapter solution combined with maybe the Samyang 24mm f1.4 or 14mm f2.8 lenses. I was going to buy one of them anyway but for Canon fit, so will ponder getting the Nikon fit instead. They can also be used on Full frame when I eventually upgrade to that...at a much later time.

What are you looking for as criteria in a Flamsteed stargazing campsite? Near London compromising for near darkest skies? Or just anywhere in UK that will offer the darkest skies as possible?

Tej,what a great story! You definitely deserve some kind of medal! "The Flamsteed Medal for Valour in the face of terrible weather and ridiculous odds"!

Your photo appears to be locked/private. Looking forward to seeing it, though!

Right, I'm going to a camera shop this afternoon to test out a Samyang 14mm f2.8 lens canon EOS fit and see if it can fit with my EOS clip filter on. If it does, I will buy that lens and abandon my canon 18-55.

Tej,what a great story! You definitely deserve some kind of medal! “The Flamsteed Medal for Valour in the face of terrible weather and ridiculous odds”!

Your photo appears to be locked/private. Looking forward to seeing it, though!

Ah, I'll fix the photo's this evening but dont raise expectations because they are quite poor as I made mistakes with my equipment setup (no ball head, no finder and ISO set too low) but it in the end it was all about the tenting experience which I do feel a sense of achievement to sleep in a tent for the first time although on reflection, to do so in gale force winds feels rather surreal now, I must have been insanely hungry for astronomy on that day!

Hi Tej

The Samyang lens is made for full frame sensors so is equivalent to Canons EF mount (not EF-S which is for APS sensors). it will therefore work with the clip filter. Bare in mind though that is it then NOT a 14mm lens but instead equivalent to a 22mm.

Samyang is a cheap and cheerful brand but for £300 I would look at the used market. Although the lens offers F2.8, you will not be able to use that at night on long exposures trust me. It will need F5.6, F4 at best otherwise you will get blooming.

I would look here http://www.mpbphotographic.co.uk/used-equipment/used-lenses/used-canon-fit-lenses/

or even ebay. All you need to allow the use of the clip filter is either 'EF' or non Canon brands which are designed for full frame sensors, The best value, non Canon wide angle lenses are Sigma, Tokina and Tamron. All would be £5-700 new but sub £300 is normal used. You also have the option of Nikon manual focus lenses with the mount adapter.

As I was on the site I had a look around and saw this as an example

http://www.mpbphotographic.co.uk/used-equipment/used-lenses/used-canon-fit-lenses/tamron-sp-11-18mm-f45-56-di-ii-canon-ef-fit-1

This lens is actually designed for APS sensors so the 11-18mm is actually what you get. However this lens uses the EF mount, not EF-S so would also fit with the clip in place.

Thanks for the info, Rupert.

I can up my budget more to about £400 max

How about this one, Sigma 20mm f1.8. As its an EF fit, the 20mm should be actual 20mm?

http://www.mpbphotographic.co.uk/used-equipment/used-lenses/used-canon-fit-lenses/sigma-20mm-f18-ex-dg-rf-canon-ef-fit-1

As its an EF fit, the 20mm should be actual 20mm?

It would only be 20mm on a full-frame camera. On your camera, it's the equivalent of a 32mm lens.

Tej

Its best to try and confirm if the lens is made for an APS sensor or a full frame. For Canon lenses EF-S Mount means for APS and EF is for Full frame.

For Sigma, they use DC for APS and DG for full frame. For Tamron err, not sure and for Tokina its DX for APS and FX for full frame

However, these companies do not necessarily use the EF-S mount for APS. It depends on them, hence the Tamron lens I mentioned is EF but also APS. For you, thats the important bit, coz otherwise you cannot use the clip filter.

You can use a full frame lens on an APS but not the other way round. As a full frame lens produces an image circle thats bigger than the APS chip, you are cropping the image with the sensor. Canons APS sensor is a little bit smaller than everyone elses so to convert the focal length of a full frame lens to a Canon APS, you multiply the focal length by 1.6x. So a 20mm is 32mm

The Nikon lenses are all full frame and can be used with the clip filter. They work because Nikons mount to sensor distance is longer so they will work on a system that has a short distance like Canon, but not the other way round.

In my experience an 18mm APS lens could do with being a bit wider for some astro subjects

I am after a Sigma 10-20mm. Long standing reputation for quality and under £300 used.

Thanks Mike and Rupert.

I have been looking at more lenses, reviews and articles and came across this extremely comprehensive lens spreadsheet guide, grading lenses on night time astrophotography performance. Main tab shows the performance grading by length/F-stop. Other tabs show signal to noise ratio comparisons and gradings for specific brand lens qualities for full frame and crop.

http://goo.gl/wfP2rP

This accompanies a really good article on choosing lenses for astrophotgraphy.

http://petapixel.com/2014/01/29/picking-great-lens-milky-way-photography/

What do you guys think of the article, agree/disagree?

The Rokinson lenses is highly rated in reviews everywhere which is actually the same brand as Samyang over here.

If I was to go by this article and spreadsheet and availability in stores, I might like to buy this lens.

http://www.cameraworld.co.uk/samyang-16mm-f2-ed-as-umc-cs.html

but again need to test if it can fit with my CLS filter. I hope so, because reviews and the below Flickr photos using the lens with a crop sensor dslr look great. In fact I might just get the lens even if the CLS doesnt fit but I hope it does. Then one day, if I work and hard and deserve it, I'll gift myself a full frame dslr!

https://www.flickr.com/search/?q=samyang%2016mm

Hi Tej

I read the review etc and its always nice to see some information being posted about the demands of Astrophotography compared to terrestrial.

This review does tend to try and make everything a simple case of working out the numbers (if not an advert for Samyang). Its not that simple. Tracking for instance affects ALL images, but if you treat an image as shot, i.e. don't start cropping / enlarging, then you can get away with some trailing because its no visible.

I'm not actually sure I agree with this 500 or 300 division. The image scale is what's important. If you have a small sensor then this has cropped the image compared to full frame so you have to allow for that with changing the field of view if you want a certain composition. You then see what works. A theoretical max exposure time is all very well but you still have to expose correctly. You cannot just turn up the ISO to make it work nor can you just open up the lens aperture without side effects.

Camera lenses are not made to resolve point sources of light. Therefore stars tend to show up optical faults. The review suggests Samyang optics have low Coma at wide apertures. If that's true then I am surprised because wide open is where most faults on camera lenses are. However coma is but one fault. Barrel distortion (which Samyang etc suffer from in spades), Spherical aberration (not coming to sharp focus) and chromatic aberration (false colour) are others and a cheap lens will suffer from these because they are typical of cheaper glass and less exhaustive design. The other factor with 'cheap' is consistency'.

I am not against cheaper lenses. I know that in lab testing many Canon lenses have been shown to be quite poor compared to third party brands like Sigma. However there is a point at which the cost and the performance do not equate.

Bottom line with ALL camera lenses is that they perform best between F5.6-F8. Some might be more usable than others wide open but the night sky can be a demanding place.

Of course nothing I have said stops you experimenting with settings otherwise considered bad practice. With a particular lens or subject they may work, or just as important, you may be perfectly happy with the end result.

My advice is to try not to make this choice about numbers. I would go with a lens that has a reputation as that is a bigger recommendation than any single review and do not assume you can just open it up to its full aperture.