I didn't know really what to expect at first, the day looked reasonably nice for autumn and evening sky looked quite cloudless ...so made a quick dash to Sele Havn to see if I can catch some stars maybe even Milkyway!
This actually 3 shots (Iso 3200, f3.5 and 15 secs) each a single exposure image. The 2 shots on top were stitched using Microsoft ICE, and the bottom image was PS'ed in later. Top 2 shots focussed on the foreground rocks.
This is actually a composite of two images nicely separated by the bank of clouds moving in from the North Sea.
The bottom image is the same as the shot above, the top portion image was focussed at infinity to get sharp stars. At 15 secs there were start trails though not noticeable until magnified 200%.
As I was leaving the clouds from across the North Sea completely took over the sky.
Takumar 28mm f3.5 with lenscap and lenshood, the leather cases weren't actually part of the sale.
The output was quite good if I may say so myself. Other then the difficulty of composing on the viewfinder in the dark due to the dark screen as a result of maximum aperture of 3.5, so long as you have other source of light on the horizon, the task of composing is manageable.
At f3.5 there isn't any distortion of the stars observed. The were some vignetting at the extreme corner but it's nothing that cannot be fixed is post through "vignetting" or "light fall-off" corrections.
I think this lens ha spotential to complement my bag of tricks for night sky shooting. Coupled with the Star Adventurer tracker it could prove very usable on the coming months.
If only we can deal with cloudy nights on the west coast ...
