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Testing a Trio of Canon RF Zoom Lenses for Astrophotography 


In a detailed review, I test a “holy trinity” of premium Canon RF zoom lenses, with astrophotography the primary purpose.

In years past, zoom lenses were judged inferior to fixed-focal length “prime” lenses for the demands of astrophotography. Stars are the severest test of a lens, revealing optical aberrations that would go unnoticed in normal images, or even in photos of test charts. Many older zooms just didn’t cut it for discerning astrophotographers, myself included. 

The new generation of premium zooms for mirrorless cameras, from Canon, Nikon and Sony, are dispelling the old wisdom that primes are better than zooms. The new zooms’ optical performance is proving to be as good, if not better than the older generation of prime lenses for DSLR cameras, models often designed decades ago. 

The shorter lens-to-sensor “flange distance” offered by mirrorless cameras, along with new types of glass, provide lens designers more freedom to correct aberrations, particularly in wide-angle lenses. 

While usually slower than top-of-the-line primes, the advantage of zoom lenses is their versatility for framing and composing subjects, great for nightscapes and constellation shots. It’s nice to have the flexibility of a zoom without sacrificing the optical quality and speed so important for astrophotography. Can we have it all? The new zooms come close to delivering.

The “holy trinity” of Canon zooms tested were purchased in 2021 and 2022. From L to R they are: RF15-35mm, RF28-70mm, and RF70-200mm

A good thing, because with Canon we have little choice! For top-quality glass in wide-angle focal lengths at least, zooms are the only choice for their mirrorless R cameras. As of this writing in late 2022, Canon has yet to release any premium primes for their RF mount shorter than 50mm. Rumours are a 12mm, 24mm, 28mm, and 35mm are coming! But when? 

The three zooms I tested are all “L” lenses, designating them as premium-performance models. I have not tested any of Canon’s “economy” line of RF lenses, such as their 24mm and 35mm Macro STM primes. Tests I’ve seen suggest they don’t offer the sharpness I desire for most astrophotography. 

Contributing to the lack of choice, top-quality third-party lenses from the likes of Sigma (such as their new 20mm and 24mm Art lenses made for mirrorless cameras) have yet to appear in Canon RF mount versions. Will they ever? In moves that evoked much disdain, Samyang and Viltrox were both ordered by Canon to cease production of their RF auto-focus lenses. 

For their mirrorless R cameras, Canon has not authorized any third-party lens makers, forcing you to buy costly Canon L glass, or settle for their lower-grade STM lenses, or opt for reverse-engineered manual-focus lenses from makers such as TTArtisan and Laowa/Venus Optics. While they are good, they are not up to the optical standards of Canon’s L-series glass.

I know, as I own several RF-mount TTArtisan wide-angle lenses and the Laowa 15mm f/2 lens. You can find my tests of those lenses at AstroGearToday.com. Look under Reviews: Astrophotography Gear. 

RF lenses will fit only on Canon R-series mirrorless cameras. This shows the RF15-35mm on the Canon R5 used for the lens testing. 

The trio of RF lenses tested here work on all Canon EOS R-series cameras, including their R7 and R10 cropped-frame cameras. However, they will not work on any Canon DSLRs. 

Two of the lenses, the RF15-35mm F/2.8 and RF70-200mm F/4, are designs updated from older Canon DSLR lenses with similar specs. The RF28-70mm F/2 does not have an equivalent focal length range and speed in Canon’s DSLR lens line-up. Indeed, nobody else makes a lens this fast covering the “normal” zoom range. 

Together, the three lenses cover focal lengths from 15mm to 200mm, with some overlap. A trio of zooms like this — a wide-angle, normal, and telephoto — is often called a “holy trinity” set, a popular combination all camera manufacturers offer to cover the majority of applications. 

However, my interest was strictly for astrophotography, with stars the test subjects.  

NOTE: CLICK or TAP on a test image to download a full-resolution image for closer inspection. The images, while low-compression JPGs, are large and numerous, and so will take time to fully load and display. Patience! 

All images are © 2022 by Alan Dyer/AmazingSky.com. Use without permission is prohibited.

METHODOLOGY

I tested the trio of lenses on same-night exposures of a starry but moonlit sky, using the 45-megapixel Canon R5 camera mounted on a motorized star tracker to follow the rotating sky. With one exception noted, any distortion of stars from perfect pinpoints is due to lens aberrations, not star trailing. The brighter moonlit sky helped reveal non-uniform illumination from lens vignetting. 

I shot each lens wide-open at its maximum aperture, as well as one stop down from maximum, to see how aberrations and vignetting improved. 

I did not test auto-focus performance, nor image stabilization (only the RF28-70mm lacks internal IS), nor other lens traits unimportant for astro work such as bokeh or close focus image quality.

I also compared the RF15-35mm on same-night dark-sky tests against a trio of prime lenses long in my stable: the Rokinon 14mm SP, and Canon’s older L-series 24mm and 35mm primes, all made for DSLRs.

The lenses each come with lens hoods that use a click-on mechanism much easier to twist on and off than with the older design used on Canon EF lenses.

TL;DR SUMMARY

  • Each of the Canon “holy trinity” of zoom performs superbly, though not without some residual lens aberrations such as corner astigmatism and, in the RF28-70mm, slight chromatic aberration at f/2. 
  • However, what flaws they show are well below the level of many older prime lenses made for DSLR cameras. 
  • The RF lenses’ major optical flaw is vignetting, which can be quite severe at some focal lengths, such as in the RF70-200mm at 200mm. But this flaw can be corrected in processing. 
  • These are lenses that can replace fixed-focal length primes, though at considerable cost, in part justifiable in that they negate the need for a suite of many prime lenses.
  • The performance of these and other new lenses made for mirrorless cameras from all brands is one good reason to switch from DSLR to mirrorless cameras. 

Lens Specs and Applications 

Canon RF15-35mm F/2.8 L IS USM

The RF15-35mm is a fine nightscape lens. It extends slightly when zooming with the lens physically longest at its shortest 15mm focal length. 

The Canon RF15-35mm F/2.8 L is made primarily for urban photography and landscapes by day. My main application is using it to take landscapes by night, and auroras, where its relatively fast f/2.8 speed helps keeps exposure times short and ISO speeds reasonably low. However, the RF15-35mm can certainly be used for tracked wide-angle Milky Way and constellation portraits. 

The lens weighs a moderate 885 grams (31 ounces or 1.9 pounds) with lens hood and end caps, and accepts 82mm filters, larger than the 72mm or 77mm filter threads of most astrophoto-friendly lenses. Square 100mm filters will work well on the lens, even at the 15mm focal length. There are choices, such as from KASE, for light pollution reduction and star diffusion filters in this size and format. I have reviews of these filters at AstroGearToday.com, both here for light pollution filters and here for starglow filters. 

Canon offers a lower-cost alternative in this range, their RF14-35mm. But it is f/4, a little slow for nightscape, aurora, and Milky Way photography. I have not tested one. 

Canon RF28-70mm F/2 L USM

The RF28-70mm works great for tracked starfields and constellations. It extends when zooming, with it longest at its 70mm focal length. 

The big Canon RF28-70mm F/2 is aimed at wedding and portrait photographers, though the lens is suitable for landscape work. While I do use it for nightscapes, my primary use is for tracked Milky Way and constellation images, where its range of fields of view nicely frames most constellations, from big to small. 

I justified its high cost by deciding it replaces (more or less!) prime lenses in the common 24mm, 35mm, 50mm, and 85mm focal lengths. Its f/2 speed does bring it into fast prime lens territory. It’s handy to have just one lens to cover the range.

Canon offers a lower-cost alternative here, too, their RF24-70mm. But it is f/2.8. While this is certainly excellent speed, I like having the option of shooting at f/2. An example is when using narrowband nebula filters such as red hydrogen-alpha filters, where shooting at f/2 keeps exposures shorter and/or ISOs lower when using such dense filters. I use this lens with an Astronomik 12-nanometre H-α clip-in filter. An example is in one of the galleries below. 

While a clip-in filter shifts the infinity focus point inward (to as close as the 2-metre mark with the RF28-70mm at 28mm, and to 6 metres at 70mm), I did not find that shift adversely affected the lens’s optical performance. That’s not true of all lenses.

Make no mistake, the RF28-70mm is one hefty lens, weighing 1530 grams (54 ounces or 3.4 pounds). Its front-heavy mass demands a solid tripod head. Its large front lens accepts big 95mm filters, a rare size with few options available. I found one broadband light pollution filter in this size, from URTH. Otherwise, you need to use in-body clip-in filters. Astronomik makes a selection for Canon EOS R cameras.

Canon RF70-200mm F/4 L IS USM

The RF70-200mm works well for closeups of landscape scenes such as moonrises. It extends the most of all the lenses when zooming to its longest focal length. 

The Canon RF70-200mm F/4 is another portrait or landscape lens. I use it primarily for bright twilight planet conjunctions and moonrise scenes, where its slower f/4 speed is not a detriment. However, as my tests show, it can be used for tracked deep-sky images, where it is still faster than most short focal length telescopes. 

The RF70-200mm lens weighs 810 grams (28 ounces, or 1.75 pounds) with lens hood and caps, so is light for a 70-to-200mm zoom. It is also compact. At just 140mm long when set to 70mm, it is actually the shortest lens of the trio. However, the barrel extends to 195mm long when zoomed out to 200mm focal length. 

Canon offers the more costly and, at 1200 grams, heavier RF70-200mm F/2.8 lens which might be a better choice for deep-sky imaging where the extra stop of speed can be useful. But in this case, I chose the slower, more affordable – though still not cheap – f/4 version. It accepts common 77mm filters, as does the f/2.8 version. 

Centre Sharpness

Canon RF15-35mm F/2.8 L IS USM

This compares 400% blow-ups of the frame centres at the two extreme focal lengths and at two apertures: wide open at f/2.8 and stopped down to f/4. 

Like the other two zoom lenses tested, the RF15-35mm is very sharp on axis. Even wide open, there’s no evidence of softness and star bloat from spherical aberration, the bane of cheaper lenses. 

Coloured haloes from longitudinal chromatic aberration are absent, except at 28mm and 35mm (shown here) when wide open at f/2.8, where bright stars show a little bit of blue haloing. At f/4, this minor level of aberration disappears.

Canon RF28-70mm F/2 L USM

This compares 400% blow-ups of the frame centres at the two extreme focal lengths and at two apertures: wide open at f/2 and stopped down to f/2.8.

The big RF28-70mm is also very sharp on-axis but is prone to more chromatic aberration at f/2, showing slight magenta haloes on bright stars at the shorter focal lengths and pale cyan haloes at 70mm in my test shots. Such false colour haloes can be very sensitive to precise focus, though with refractive optics the point of least colour is often not the point of sharpest focus. 

At f/2, stars are a little softer at 70mm than at 28mm. Stopping down to f/2.8 eliminates this slight softness and most of the longitudinal chromatic aberration. 

Canon RF70-200mm F/4 L IS USM

This compares 400% blow-ups of the frame centres at the two extreme focal lengths and at two apertures: wide open at f/4 and stopped down to f/5.6.

Unlike prime telephotos I’ve used, the RF70-200mm shows negligible chromatic aberration on-axis at all focal lengths, even at f/4. Stars are a little softer at the longest focal length at f/4, perhaps from slight spherical aberration, though my 200mm test shots are also affected by a little mistracking, trailing the stars slightly. 

Stopping down to f/5.6 sharpens stars just that much more at 200mm. 

Corner Aberrations

The corners are where we typically separate great lenses from the merely good. And it is where zoom lenses have traditionally performed badly. For example, my original Canon EF16-35mm f/2.8 lens was so bad off-axis I found it mostly unusable for astro work. Not so the new RF15-35mm, which is the RF replacement for Canon’s older EF16-35mm.

To be clear – in these test shots you might think the level of aberrations are surprising for premium lenses. But keep in mind, to show them at all I am having to pixel-peep by enlarging all the test images by 400 percent, cropping down to just the extreme corners. 

Check the examples in the Compared to DSLR Lenses section and in the Finished Images Galleries for another look at lens performance in broader context. 

Canon RF15-35mm F/2.8 L IS USM

This compares 400% blow-ups of the extreme corners at five focal lengths with the RF15-35mm wide open at f/2.8

Surprisingly, this RF’s best performance off-axis is actually at its shortest focal length. At 15mm it exhibits only some slight tangential astigmatism, elongating stars away from the frame centre. At 24mm aberrations appear slightly worse than at the other focal lengths, showing some flaring from sagittal astigmatism and perhaps coma as well, aberrations seen to a lesser degree at 28mm and 35mm, making stars look like little three-pointed triangles. 

This compares 400% blow-ups of the extreme corners at five focal lengths with the RF15-35mm stopped down one stop to f/4.

The aberrations reduce when stopped down to f/4, but are still present, especially at 24mm, this lens’s weakest focal length, though only just. 

While the RF15-35mm isn’t perfect, it outperforms other prime lenses I have, and that I suspect most users will own or have used in the past with DSLRs. Only new wide-angle premium primes for the RF mount, if and when we see them, will provide better performance. 

Canon RF28-70mm F/2 L USM

This compare 400% blow-ups of the extreme corners at four focal lengths with the RF28-70mm wide open at f/2.

The RF28-70mm’s fast f/2 speed, unusual for any zoom lens, was surely a challenge to design for. Off-axis when wide open at f/2 it does show astigmatism at the extreme corners at all focal lengths, but the least at 50mm, and the worst at 28mm where a little lateral chromatic aberration is also visible, adding slight colour fringing. 

This compare 400% blow-ups of the extreme corners at four focal lengths with the RF28-70mm stopped down one stop to f/2.8.

Sharpness off-axis improves markedly when stopped down one stop to f/2.8, where at 50mm stars are now nearly perfect to the corners. Indeed, performance is so good at 50mm, I think there would be little need to buy the Canon RF50mm prime, unless its f/1.2 speed is deemed essential. 

With the RF28-70mm at f/2.8, stars still show some residual astigmatism at 28mm and 35mm, but only at the extreme corners. 

Canon RF70-200mm F/4 L IS USM

This compare 400% blow-ups of the extreme corners at four focal lengths with the RF70-200mm wide open at f/4.

The RF70-200mm telephoto zoom shows some astigmatism and coma at the corners when wide open at f/4, with it worse at the shorter focal lengths. While lens corrections have been applied here, the 200mm image still shows a darker corner from the vignetting described below. 

This compare 400% blow-ups of the extreme corners at four focal lengths with the RF70-200mm stopped down one stop to f/5.6.

Stopping down to f/5.6 eliminates most of the off-axis aberrations at 135mm and 200mm focal lengths but some remain at 70mm and to a lesser degree at 100mm. 

This is a lens that can be used at f/4 even for the demands of deep-sky imaging, though perfectionists will want to stop it down. At f/5.6 it is similar in speed to many astrographic refractors, though most of those start at about 250mm focal length. 

Frame Vignetting

In the previous test images, I applied lens corrections (but no other adjustments) to each of the raw files in Adobe Camera Raw, using the settings ACR automatically selects from its lens database. These corrections brightened the corners.

In this next set I show the lenses’ weakest point, their high level of vignetting. This light falloff darkens the corners by a surprising amount. In the new generation of lenses for mirrorless cameras, it seems lens designers are choosing to sacrifice uniform frame illumination in order to maximize aberration corrections. The latter can’t be corrected entirely, if at all, by software. 

However, corrections applied either in-camera or at the computer can brighten corners, “flattening” the field. I show that improvement in the section that follows this one.

Canon RF15-35mm F/2.8 L IS USM

This compares the level of vignetting present in the RF15-35mm without the benefit of lens corrections, showing the difference at five focal lengths. 

In the wide-angle zoom, vignetting darkens just the corners at 15mm, but widens to affect progressively more of the frame at the longer focal lengths. The examples show the entire right side of the frame. I show the effect just at f/2.8. 

Though I don’t show examples with the two wider zooms, with all lenses vignetting decreases dramatically when each lens is stopped down by even one stop. The fields become much more evenly illuminated, though some darkening at the very corners remains one stop down.

Canon RF28-70mm F/2 L USM

This compares the level of vignetting present in the RF28-70mm without the benefit of lens corrections, showing the difference at four focal lengths.

In this “normal” zoom, vignetting performance is similar at all focal lengths, though it affects a bit more of the field at 70mm than at 28mm. Again, while I’m not presenting an example, vignetting decreases a lot when this lens is stopped down to f/2.8. While the extra stop of speed is certainly nice to have at times, I usually shoot the RF28-70mm at f/2.8.

Canon RF70-200mm F/4 L IS USM

This compares the level of vignetting present in the RF70-200mm without the benefit of lens corrections, showing the difference at four focal lengths.

In this telephoto zoom, vignetting is fairly mild at the shorter focal lengths but becomes severe at 200mm, affecting much of the field. It is far worse than I see with my older Canon EF200mm f/2.8 prime, a lens that is not as sharp at f/4 as the RF zoom. 

The faster RF70-200mm f/2.8 lens, which I had the chance to test one night last year, showed as much, if not more, vignetting than the f/4 version. See my test here at AstroGearToday.com. I thought the f/4 version would be better for vignetting, but it is not.

This shows how much the RF-70-200mm’s vignetting improves when it is stopped down.

In this case, as the vignetting is so prominent at 200mm, I show above how much it improves when stopped down to f/5.6, in a comparison with the lens at f/4, both with no lens corrections applied in processing. The major improvement comes from the smaller aperture alone. For twilight scenes, I’d suggest stopping this lens down to better ensure a uniform sky background. 

LENS Corrections

In this next set I show how well applying lens corrections improves the vignetting at the focal lengths where each of the lenses is at its worse, and with each at its widest aperture. 

I show this with Adobe Camera Raw but Lightroom would provide identical results. I did not test lens corrections with other programs such as CaptureOne, DxO PhotoLab, or ON1 Photo Raw, which all have automatic lens corrections as well.

Canon RF15-35mm F/2.8 L IS USM

This compare the RF15-35mm lens at f/2.8 and 35mm with and without lens corrections applied, to show how much they improve the vignetting. 

Applying lens corrections in Adobe Camera Raw certainly brightened the corners and edges, though still left some darkening at the very corners that can be corrected by hand in the Manual tab. 

Canon RF28-70mm F/2 L USM

This compare the RF28-70mm lens at f/2 and 70mm with and without lens corrections applied, to show how much they improve the vignetting.

ACR’s lens corrections helped but did not completely eliminate the vignetting here. Corner darkening remained. Manually increasing the vignetting slider can provide that extra level of correction needed. 

Canon RF70-200mm F/4 L IS USM

This compare the RF70-200mm lens at f/4 and 200mm with and without lens corrections applied, to show how much they improve the vignetting.

The high level of vignetting with this lens at 200mm largely disappeared with lens corrections, though not entirely. For deep-sky imaging, users might prefer to shoot and apply flat-field frames. I prefer to apply automatic and manual corrections to the raw files, to stay within a raw workflow as much as possible. 

Same Focal Length Comparisons

With the trio of lenses offering some of the same focal lengths, here I show how they compare at three of those shared focal lengths. I zoom into the upper right corners here, as with the Corner Aberrations comparisons above. 

RF15-35mm vs. RF28-70mm at 28mm

This compares the RF15-35mm at 28mm to the RF28-70mm also at 28mm and with both at f/2.8.

With both lenses at 28mm and at the same f/2.8 aperture (though the RF28-70mm is now stopped down one stop), it’s a toss up. Both show corner aberrations, though of a different mix, distorting stars a little differently. The RF28-70mm shows some lateral chromatic aberration, but the RF15-35mm shows a bit more flaring from astigmatism. 

RF15-35mm vs. RF28-70mm at 35mm

This compares the RF15-35mm at 35mm to the RF28-70mm also at 35mm and with both at f/2.8.

The story is similar with each lens at 35mm. Stars seem a bit sharper in the RF15-35mm though are elongated more by astigmatism at the very corners. Lens corrections have been applied here and with the other two-lens comparison pairs. 

RF28-70mm vs. RF70-200mm at 70mm

This compares the RF28-70mm at 70mm and f/2.8 to the RF70-200mm also at 70mm but wide open at f/4.

Here I show the RF28-70mm at f/2.8 and the RF70-200mm wide open at f/4, with both set to 70mm focal length. The telephoto lens shows a little more softening and star bloating from corner aberrations, though both perform well.

Compared to DSLR Lenses

Here I try to demonstrate just how much better at least one of the zooms on test here is compared to older prime lenses made for DSLRs. The Canon lenses are labeled EF, for Canon’s EF lens mount used for decades on their DSLRs and EOS film cameras. Both are premium L lenses. 

I shot this set on a different night than the previous examples, with some light cloud present which added various amounts of glows around stars. But the test shots still show corner sharpness and aberrations well, in this case of the upper left corners of all frames. 

Canon RF15-35mm at 35mm vs. Canon EF35mm L

This compares the RF15-35mm zoom at 35mm to the older EF35mm L prime lens. Some light cloud added the glows at right.

The Canon EF35mm is the original Mark I version, which Canon replaced a few years ago with an improved Mark II model. So I’m sure if you were to buy an EF35mm lens now (or if that’s the model you own) it will perform better than what I show here. 

Both lenses are at f/2.8, wide open for the RF lens, but stopped down two stops for the f/1.4 EF lens. 

The zoom lens is much sharper to the corners, with far less astigmatism and none of the lateral chromatic aberration and field curvature (softening stars at the very corner) of the old EF35mm prime. I thought the EF35mm was a superb lens, and used it a lot over the last 15 years for Milky Way panoramas. I would not use it now! 

Canon RF15-35mm at 24mm vs. Canon EF24mm L

This compares the RF15-35mm zoom at 24mm to the older EF24mm L prime lens. Some light cloud added the glows at right.

Bought in the early years of DSLRs, the EF24mm tested here is also an original Mark I model, since replaced by an improved Mark II 24mm. The old 24mm is good, but shows more astigmatism than the RF lens, and some field curvature and purple chromatic aberration not present at all in the RF lens. 

And this is comparing it to the RF lens at its weakest focal length, 24mm. It still handily outperforms the old EF24mm prime. 

Canon RF15-35mm at 15mm vs. Rokinon 14mm SP

This compares the RF15-35mm at 15mm to the Rokinon 14mm SP prime lens.

Canon once made an EF14mm f/2.8 L prime, but I’ve never used it. For a lens in this focal length, one popular with nightscape photographers, I’ve used the ubiquitous Rokinon/Samyang 14mm f/2.8 manual lens. While a bargain at about $300, I always found it soft and aberrated at the corners. See my test of 14mm ultra-wides here. 

A few years ago I upgraded to the Rokinon 14mm f/2.4 lens in their premium SP series (about $800 for the EF-mount version). While a manual lens, it does have electrical contacts to communicate lens metadata to the camera. Like all EF-mount lenses from any brand, it can be adapted to Canon R cameras using Canon’s $100 EF-EOS R lens adapter.

Older DSLR lenses like the Rokinon SP can be adapted to all Canon R cameras with the Canon lens adapter ring which transmits lens data to the camera. 

The Rokinon SP is the only prime I found that beat the RF zoom. It provided sharper images to the corners than the RF15-35mm at 15mm. The Rokinon also offers the slightly faster maximum aperture of f/2.4 (which Canon cameras register as f/2.5). Vignetting is severe, but like the RF lenses can be corrected – Camera Raw has this lens in its database. What is not so easy to correct is some slight colour shift at the corners.

Another disadvantage, as with many other 14mm lenses, is that the SP lens cannot accept front-mounted filters. The RF15-35mm can. 

Nevertheless, until Canon comes out with a 12mm to 14mm RF prime, or allows Sigma to, an adapted Rokinon 14mm SP is a good affordable alternative to the RF15-35mm.

The RF15-35mm (left) takes 82mm filters, the RF28-70mm (centre) requires 95mm filters, but the RF70-200mm (right) can accept common 77mm filters. 

Mechanical Points

  • All the RF lens bodies are built of weight-saving engineered plastic incorporating thorough weather sealing. There is nothing cheap about their fit, finish or handling. Each lens has textured grip rings for the zoom, focus and a control ring that can be programmed to adjust either aperture, ISO, exposure compensation or other settings of your choosing. 
  • As with all modern auto-focus lenses, the manual focus ring on each lens does not mechanically move glass. It controls a motor that in turn focuses the lens, so-called “focus-by-wire.” However, I found that focus could be dialled in accurately. But if the camera is turned off, then on again, the lens will not return to its previous focus position. You have to refocus to infinity each time the camera is powered up, a nuisance. 
  • Unlike some Nikon, Sony, Samyang, and Sigma lenses, none of the Canon lenses have a focus lock button, or any way of presetting an infinity focus point, or simply having the lens remember where it was last set. I would hope Canon could address that deficiency in a firmware update. 
  • With all the zooms, I did not find any issue with “zoom creep.” The telescoping barrels  remained in place during long exposures and did not slowly retract when aimed up. While the RF28-70mm and RF70-200mm each have a zoom lock switch, it locks the lens only at its shortest focal length. 
  • Each lens is parfocal within its zoom range. Focus at one zoom position, and it will be in focus for all the focal lengths. I usually focus at the longest focal length where it is easiest to judge focus by eye, then zoom out to frame the scene. 

FINISHED IMAGES GALLERIES

Here I present a selection of final, processed images (four for each lens), so you can better see how each performs on real-world celestial subjects. To speed download, the images are downsized to 2048 pixels wide.

As per my comments at top, the RF15-35mm is my primary nightscape lens, the RF28-70mm my lens for wide-field constellation and Milky Way shots, while the RF70-200mm is for conjunctions and Moon scenes. It would also be good for eclipses.

Image Gallery with Canon RF15-35mm F/2.8 L IS USM

Image Gallery with Canon RF28-70mm F/2 L USM

Orion in H-Alpha Light with Narrowband Filter

Image Gallery with Canon RF70-200mm F/4 L IS USM

Click on the images to bring them up full screen with caption information.

CONCLUSIONs and recommendations

If you are a Canon user switching from your aging but faithful DSLR to one of their mirrorless R cameras, each of these lenses will perform superbly for astrophotography. At a price! Each is costly. But the cost of older EF lenses has also increased in recent months. 

The other native RF L-series lenses in this focal length range, Canon’s RF50mm and RF85mm f/1.2 primes, are stunning … but also expensive. As I’m sure any coming RF wide-angle L primes will be, if and when they ever appear! 

This shows the relative difference in size and height of the lens trio, with all collapsed to their minimum size. 

The cheaper alternative – not the least because you might already own them! – is using adapted EF-mount lenses made for DSLRs, either from Canon or other brands. But in many cases, as I’ve shown, the new RF glass is sharper, especially when on a high-resolution camera such as the Canon R5 I used for all the testing. 

And there’s the harsh reality that Canon is discontinuing many EF lenses. You can now buy some only used. For example, the EF135mm f/2 L and EF200mm f/2.8 L are both gone. 

Until Canon licenses other companies to issue approved lenses for their RF mount – if that happens at all – our choices for native RF lenses are limited. However, the quality of Canon’s L lenses is superb. I now use these zooms almost exclusively, and financed most of their considerable cost by selling off a ream of older cameras and lenses. 

If there’s one lens to buy for most astrophotography, it might be the big RF28-70mm F/2, a zoom lens that comes close to offering it all: flexibility, optical quality and speed. The RF24-70mm F/2.8 is a more affordable choice, though I have not tested one. 

If nightscapes are the priority, the RF15-35mm F/2.8 would see a lot of use, as perhaps the only lens you’d need. 

Of the trio, the RF70-200mm was the lowest priority on my wish list. But it has proven to be very useful for framing horizon scenes. 

The superb optics of these and other new lenses made for mirrorless cameras is one good reason to upgrade from a DSLR to a mirrorless camera, in whatever brand you prefer.

— Alan, September 21, 2022 / © 2022 Alan Dyer / AmazingSky.com  

All images are © 2022 by Alan Dyer/AmazingSky.com. Use without permission is prohibited.

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Testing the Canon R5 for Astrophotography


In a format similar to my other popular camera tests, I put the 45-megapixel Canon R5 mirrorless camera through its paces for the demands of astrophotography. 

In a sequel to my popular post from September 2021 where I reviewed the Canon R6 mirrorless camera, here is a similar test of its higher-megapixel companion, the Canon R5. Where the R6 has a modest 20-megapixel sensor with relatively large 6.6-micron pixels, the R5 is (at present) Canon’s highest megapixel camera, with 45 megapixels. Each pixel is only 4.4 microns across, providing higher resolution but risking more noise. 

Is the higher noise noticeable? If so, does that make the R5 less than ideal for astrophotography? To find out, I tested an R5 purchased locally in Calgary from The Camera Store in May 2022. 

NOTE: CLICK orTAP on any image to bring it up full screen for closer inspection. The blog contains a lot of high-res images, so they may take a while to all load. Patience! Thanks! 

All images are © 2022 by Alan Dyer/AmazingSky.com. Use without permission is prohibited.

The Canon R5 uses a full-frame sensor offering 45 megapixels, producing images with 8192 x 5464 pixels, and making 8K video possible.

TL;DR Summary

The Canon R5 proved to be surprisingly low in noise, and has worked very well for nightscape, lunar and deep-sky photography (as shown below), where its high resolution does produce a noticeable improvement to image detail, with minimal penalty from higher noise. Its 8K video capability has a place in shooting the Moon, Sun and solar eclipses. It was not so well suited to shooting videos of auroras. 

This is a stack of 12 x 5-minute exposures with a Sharpstar 94EDPH refractor at f/4.5 and the Canon R5 at ISO 800, taken as a test of the R5 for deep-sky imaging. No filters were employed. Close-ups of sub-frames from this shoot with the R5, and also with the R6 and Ra, are used throughout the review.

R5 Pros

The Canon R5 is superb for its:

  • High resolution with relatively low noise
  • ISO invariant sensor performance for good shadow recovery 
  • Good live view display with ISO boost in Movie mode 
  • 8K video has its attraction for eclipse photography
  • Good top LCD information screen missing in the R6
  • No magenta edge “amp glow” that the R6 shows
  • Higher 6x and 15x magnifications for precise manual focusing
  • Good battery life 
  • Pro-grade Type N3 remote port

R5 Cons

The Canon R5 is not so superb for its:

  • Noise in stills and movies is higher than in the R6
  • Propensity for thermal-noise hot pixels in shadows
  • Not so suitable for low-light video as the R6
  • Overheating in 8K video
  • Live View image is not as bright as in the R6’s Movie mode
  • High cost! 
The flip-out screen of the R5 (and all recent Canon cameras) requires an L-bracket with a notch in the side (a Small Rig unit is shown here) to accommodate the tilting screen.  

CHOOSING THE R5

Since late 2019 my main camera for all astrophotography has been the Canon Ra, a limited-edition version of the original R, Canon’s first full-frame mirrorless camera that started the R series. The Ra had a special infra-red cutoff filter in front of the sensor that passed a higher level of visible deep-red light, making it more suitable for deep-sky astrophotography than a standard DSLR or DSLM (mirrorless) camera. The Ra was discontinued after two years on the market, a lifetime similar to Canon’s previous astronomical “a” models, the 20Da and 60Da. 

I purchased the Canon R6 in late 2021, primarily to use it as a low-light video camera for aurora photography, replacing the Sony a7III I had used for several years and reviewed here. Over the last year, I sold all my non-Canon cameras, as well as the Canon 6D MkII DSLR (reviewed here), to consolidate my camera gear to just Canon mirrorless cameras and lenses. 

The R6 has proven to be an able successor to the Sony for me, with the R6’s modest megapixel count and larger pixels making it excellent for low-light video. But the higher resolution of the R5 was still attractive. So I have now added it to my Canon stable. Since doing so, I have put it through several of my standard tests to see how suitable it is for the demands of astrophotography, both stills and video. 

Here are my extensive results, broken down by various performance criteria. I hope you will find my review useful in helping you make a purchase decision.

LIVE VIEW FRAMING

This compares the back-of-camera views of the R5 vs. the R6, with both set to their highest ISO in Movie mode for the brightest preview image.

First, why go mirrorless at all? For astrophotography, the big difference compared to even a high-end DSLR, is how much brighter the “Live View” image is when shooting at night. DSLM cameras are always in Live View – even the eye-level viewfinder presents a digital image supplied by the sensor. 

And that image is brighter, often revealing more than what a DSLR’s optical viewfinder can show, a great advantage for framing nightscape scenes, and deep-sky fields at the telescope.

The R5 certainly presents a good live view image. However, it is not as bright nor as detailed as what the R6 can provide when placed in its Movie mode and with the ISO bumped up to the R6’s highest level of ISO 204,800, where the Milky Way shows up, live! 

The R5 only goes as high as ISO 51,200, and so as I expected it does not provide as bright or detailed a preview at night as the R6 can. However, the R5 is better than the original R for live-view framing, and better than any Canon DSLR I’ve used. 

LIVE VIEW FOCUSING

As with other Canon mirrorless cameras, the R5 offers a Focus Assist overlay (top) to aid manual focusing. It works on bright stars. It also has a 6x and 15x magnifications for even more precise focusing.

Like the R6, the R5 can autofocus accurately on bright stars and planets. By comparison, while the Ra can autofocus on distant bright lights, it fails on bright stars or planets. 

Turning on Focus Peaking makes stars turn red, yellow or blue (your choice of colours) when they are in focus, as a reassuring confirmation. 

Turning on Focus Guide provides the arrowed overlays shown above.

In manual focus, an additional Focus Aid overlay, also found in the R6, provides arrows that close up and turn green when in focus on a bright star or planet. 

Or, as shown above, you can zoom in by 6x or 15x to focus by eye the old way by examining the star image. These are magnification levels higher than the 5x and 10x of the R6 and most other Canon cameras, and are a great aid to precise focusing, necessary to make full use of the R5’s high resolution, and the sharpness of Canon’s RF lenses. The 15x still falls short of the Ra’s 30x for ultra-precise focusing on stars, but it’s a welcome improvement nonetheless. 

In all, while the R5 is not as good as the R6 for framing in low light, it is better for precise manual focusing using its higher 15x magnification. 

NOISE PERFORMANCE — NIGHTSCAPES

The key camera characteristic for astrophoto use is noise. There is no point in having lots of resolution if, at the high ISOs we use for most astrophotography, the detail is lost in noise. But I was pleasantly surprised that proved not to be the case with the R5.

As I show below, noise is well controlled, making the R5 usable for nightscapes at ISOs up to 3200, if not 6400 when needed in a pinch. 

This compares the noise on a dark nightscape at the typical ISOs used for such scenes. A level of noise reduction shown has been applied in Camera Raw. 

With 45 megapixels, at the upper end of what cameras offer today, the R5 has individual pixels, or more correctly “photosites,” that are each 4.4 microns in size, the “pixel pitch.” 

This is still larger than the 3.7-micron pixels in a typical 24-megapixel cropped-frame camera like the Canon R10, or the 3.2-micron pixels found in a 32-megapixel cropped-frame camera like the Canon R7. Both are likely to be noisier than the R5, though will provide even higher resolution, as well as greater magnification with any given lens or telescope. 

By comparison, the 30-megapixel full-frame R (and Ra) has a pixel pitch of 5.4 microns, while the 20-megapixel R6’s pixel pitch is a generous 6.6 microns. Only the 12-megapixel Sony a7SIII has larger 8.5-micron pixels, making it the low-light video champ.

The bigger the photosites (i.e. the larger the pixel pitch), the more photons each photosite can collect in a given amount of time – and the more photons they can collect, period, before they overfill and clip highlights. More photons equals more signal, and therefore a better signal-to-noise ratio, while the greater “full-well depth” yields higher dynamic range. 

However, each generation of camera improves the signal-to-noise ratio by suppressing noise via its sensor design and improved signal processing hardware and firmware. The R5 and R6 each use Canon’s latest DIGIC X processor. 

This compares the R5 to the R6 and Ra cameras at the high ISOs of 3200 and 6400 often used for Milky Way nightscapes. 

In nightscapes the R5 did show more noise at high ISOs, especially at ISO 6400, than the R6 and Ra, but the difference was not large, perhaps one stop at most, if that. What was noticeable was the presence in the R5 of more hot pixels from thermal noise, as described later. 

This compares the R5 to the R6 and Ra cameras at the more moderate ISOs of 800 and 1600 used for brighter nightscapes. 

At slower ISOs the R5 showed a similar level of noise as the R6 and Ra, but a finer-grained noise than the R6, in keeping with the R5’s smaller pixels. In this test set, the R5 did not exhibit noticeably more noise than the other two cameras. This was surprising.

NOTE: In these comparisons I have not resampled the R5 images down to the megapixel count of the R6 to equalize them, as that’s not what you would do if you bought an R5. Instead, I have magnified the R6 and Ra’s smaller images so we examine the same area of each camera’s images. 

As with the R6, I also saw no “magic ISO” setting where the R5 performed better than at other settings. Noise increased in proportion to the ISO speed. The R5 proved perfectly usable up to ISO 3200, with ISO 6400 acceptable for stills when necessary. But I would not recommend the R5 for those who like to shoot Milky Way scenes at ISO 12,800. 

For nightscapes, a good practice that would allow using lower ISO speeds would be to shoot the sky images with a star tracker, then take separate long untracked exposures for the ground.

NOTE: In my testing I look first and foremost at actual real-world results. For those interested in more technical tests and charts, I refer you to DxOMark’s report on the Canon R5.  

NOISE PERFORMANCE — DEEP-SKY

This compares the R5 at the typical ISO settings used for deep-sky imaging, with no noise reduction applied to the raw files for this set. The inset shows the portion of the frame contained in the blow-ups.

Deep-sky imaging with a tracking mount is more demanding, due to its longer exposures of up to several minutes for each “sub-frame.” 

On a series of deep-sky exposures through a telescope, above, the R5 again showed quite usable images up to ISO 1600 and 3200, with ISO 6400 a little too noisy in my opinion unless a lot of noise reduction was applied or many images were shot to stack later.  

This compares the R5 to the R6 and Ra cameras at ISO 6400, higher than typically used for deep-sky imaging. No noise reduction was applied to the raw files.

As with the nightscape set, at high ISOs, such as at ISO 6400, the R5 did show more noise than the R6 and Ra, as well as more colour splotchiness in the dark sky, and lower contrast. The lower dynamic range of the R5’s smaller pixels is evident here. 

Just as with nightscapes, the lesson with the R5 is to keep the ISO low if at all possible. That means longer exposures with good auto-guiding, but that’s a best practice with any camera.

This compares the R5 to the R6 and Ra cameras at the lower ISOs of 800 and 1600 best for deep-sky imaging, for better dynamic range. No noise reduction was applied to the raw files. 

At lower ISOs that provide better dynamic range, shown above, the difference in noise levels between the three cameras was not that obvious. Each camera presented very similar images, with the R6 having a coarser noise than the Ra and R5. 

In all, I was surprised the R5 performed as well as it did for deep-sky imaging. See my comments below about its resolution advantage. 

ISO INVARIANCY

The flaw in many Canon DSLRs, one documented in my 2017 review of the 6D Mark II, was their poor dynamic range due to the lack of an ISO invariant sensor design. 

Canon R-series mirrorless cameras have largely addressed this weakness. As with the R and R6, the sensor in the R5 appears to be nicely ISO invariant. 

Where ISO invariancy shows itself to advantage is on nightscapes where the starlit foreground is often dark and underexposed. Bringing out detail in the shadows in raw files requires a lot of Shadow Recovery or increasing the Exposure slider. Images from an ISO invariant sensor can withstand the brightening “in post” far better, with minimal noise increase or degradations such as a loss of contrast, added banding, or horrible discolourations. 

This shows the same scene with the R5 progressively underexposed by shooting at a lower ISO then boosted in exposure in Adobe Camera Raw.

As I do for such tests, I shot sets of images at the same shutter speed, one well-exposed at a high ISO, then several at successively lower ISOs to underexpose by 1 to 4 stops. I then brightened the underexposed images by increasing the Exposure in Camera Raw by the same 1 to 4 stops. In an ideal ISO invariant sensor, all the images should look the same. 

The R5 performed well in images underexposed by up to 3 stops. Images underexposed by 4 stops started to fall apart with low contrast and a magenta cast. This was worse performance than the R6, which better withstood underexposure by as much as 4 stops, and fell apart at 5 stops of underexposure. 

While it can withstand underexposure, the lesson with the R5 is to still expose nightscapes as well as possible, likely requiring a separate longer exposure for the dark ground. Expose to the right! Don’t depend on being able to save the image by brightening “in post.” But again, that’s a best practice with any camera. 

THERMAL NOISE

Here I repeat some of the background information from my R6 review. But it bears repeating, as even skilled professional photographers often misunderstand the various forms of noise and how to mitigate them.

All cameras will exhibit thermal noise in long exposures, especially on warm nights. This form of heat-induced noise peppers the shadows with bright or “hot” pixels, often brightly coloured. 

This is not the same as the shot and read noise that adds graininess to high-ISO images and that noise reduction software can smooth out later in post. 

Thermal noise is more insidious and harder to eliminate in processing without harming the image. However, Monika Deviat offers a clever method here at her website. 

This shows a long-exposure nightscape scene both without and with Long Exposure Noise Reduction turned on. LENR eliminated most, though not all, of the hot pixels in the shadows. 

I found the R5 was prone to many hot pixels in long nightscape exposures where they show up in dark, underexposed shadows. I did not find a prevalence of hot pixels in well-exposed deep-sky images. 

LONG EXPOSURE NOISE REDUCTION

With all cameras a setting called Long Exposure Noise Reduction (LENR) eliminates this thermal noise by taking a “dark frame” and subtracting it in-camera to yield a raw file largely free of hot pixels, and other artifacts such as edge glows. 

The LENR option on the R5 did eliminate most hot pixels, though sometimes still left, or added, a few (or they might be cosmic ray hits). LENR is needed more on warm nights, and with longer exposures at higher ISOs. So the extent of thermal noise in any camera can vary a lot from shoot to shoot, and season to season.

This compares a long exposure of nothing (with the lens cap on), both without LENR (left) and with LENR (right), to show the extent of just the thermal noise.

The comparison above shows just thermal noise in long exposures with and without LENR, to show its effectiveness. However, bear in mind in this demo the raw files have been boosted a lot in exposure and contrast (using DxO PhotoLab with the settings shown) to exaggerate the visibility of the noise. 

Like the R6, when LENR is actively taking a dark frame, the R5’s rear screen indicates “Busy,” which is annoyingly bright at night, exactly when you would be employing LENR. To hide this display, the only option is to close the screen. Instead, the unobtrusive top LCD screen alone should be used to indicate a dark frame is in progress. It does with the Ra, though Busy also displays on its rear screen as well, which is unnecessary.

As with all mirrorless cameras, the R5 lacks the “dark frame buffer” present in Canon full frame DSLRs that allows several exposures to be taken in quick succession even with LENR on.

Long Exposure Noise Reduction is useful when the gap in time between exposures it produces is not critical.

With all Canon R cameras, turning on LENR forces the camera to take a dark frame after every light frame, doubling the time it takes to finish every exposure. That’s a price many photographers aren’t willing to pay, but on warm nights I find it can be essential, and a best practice, for the reward of cleaner images out of camera. I found it is certainly a good practice with the R5. 

TIP: If you find hot pixels are becoming more obvious over time, try this trick: turn on the Clean Manually routine for 30 seconds to a minute. In some cameras this can remap the hot pixels so the camera can better eliminate them. 

STAR QUALITY 

Using LENR with the R5 did not introduce any oddities such as oddly-coloured, green or wiped-out stars. Even without LENR I saw no evidence of green stars, a flaw that plagues some Sony cameras at all times, or Nikons when using LENR. 

This is a single developed raw frame from the stack of four minute exposures used to create the final image shown at the top. It shows sharp and nicely coloured stars, with no odd green stars. 

Canons have always been known for their good star colours, and the R5 maintains the tradition. According to DPReview the R5 has a mild low-pass anti-alias filter in front of its sensor. Cameras which lack such a sensor filter do produce sharper images, but stars that occupy only one or two pixels might not de-Bayer properly into the correct colours. I did not find that an issue with the R5.

As in the R6, I also saw no evidence of “star-eating,” a flaw Nikons and Sonys have been accused of over the years, due to aggressive in-camera noise reduction even on raw files. Canons have largely escaped charges of star-eating. 

RED SENSITIVITY 

The R5 I bought was a stock “off-the-shelf” model. It is Canon’s now-discontinued EOS Ra that was “filter-modified” to record a greater level of the deep-red wavelength from red nebulas in the Milky Way. As I show below, compared to the Ra, the R5 did well, but could not record the depth of nebulosity the Ra can, to be expected for a stock camera. 

However, bright nebulas will still be good targets for the R5. But if it’s faint nebulosity you are after, both in wide-field Milky Way images and telescopic close-ups, consider getting an R5 “spectrum modified” by a third-party supplier. Or modifying an EOS R.  

This compares identically processed four-minute exposures at ISO 800 with the R5 vs. the red-sensitive Ra. 

EDGE ARTIFACTS and EDGE GLOWS

DSLRs are prone to vignetting along the top and bottom of the frame from shadowing by the upraised mirror and mirror box. Not having a mirror, and a sensor not deeply recessed in the body, largely eliminates this edge vignetting in mirrorless cameras. 

While the Ra shows a very slight vignetting along the bottom of the frame (visible in the example above), the R5 was clean and fully illuminated to the edges, as it should be.

I was also pleased to see the R5 did not exhibit any annoying “amp glows” — dim, often magenta glows at the edge of the frame in long exposures, created by heat emitted from sensor electronics adding infrared (IR) glows to the image. 

I saw noticeable amp glows in the Canon R6 which could only be eliminated by taking LENR dark frames. It’s a flaw that has yet to be eliminated with firmware updates. Taking LENR darks is not required with the R5, except to reduce thermal hot pixels as noted above.

With a lack of IR amp glows, the R5 should work well when filter-modified to record either more visible Hydrogen-alpha red light, or deeper into the infrared spectrum. 

Resolution — Nightscapes 

Now we come to the very reason to get an R5, its high resolution. Is the difference visible in typical astrophotos? In a word, yes. If you look closely. 

If people only see your photos on Facebook or Instagram, no one will ever see any improvement in your images! But if your photos are seen as large prints, or you are simply a stickler for detail, then you will be happy with the R5’s 45 megapixels. (Indeed, you might wish to wait for the rumoured even higher megapixel Canon 5S!)

This compares identically processed four-minute exposures at ISO 800 with the R5 vs. the red-sensitive Ra. 

Nightscapes, and indeed all landscape photos by day or by night, is where you will see the benefit of more megapixels. Finer details in the foreground show up better. Images are less pixelated. In test images with all three cameras, the R5 did provide sharper images to be sure. But you do have to zoom in a lot to appreciate the improvement. 

Resolution — lunar imaging

This compares blow-ups of images of the Moon taken through a 5-inch f/6 refractor (780mm focal length) with the R6 and R5. 

The Moon through a telescope is another good test of resolution. The above comparison shows how the R5’s smaller 4.4-micron pixels do provide much sharper details and less pixelation than the R6. 

Of course, one could shoot at an even longer focal length to increase the “plate scale” with the R6. But at that same longer focal length the R5 will still provide better resolution, up to the point where its pixels are sampling more than what the atmospheric seeing conditions permit to be resolved. For lunar and planetary imaging, smaller pixels are always preferred, as they allow you to reach the seeing limit with shorter and often faster optical systems. 

Resolution — deep sky

This compares extreme blow-ups of images of the North America Nebula used for the other tests, shot with a 94mm f/4.5 refractor with the three cameras.

On starfields, the difference is not so marked. As I showed in my review of the R6, with “only” 20 megapixels the R6 can still provide detailed deep-sky images. 

However, in comparing the three cameras above, with images taken at a focal length of 420mm, the R5 does provide sharper stars, with faint stars better recorded, and with less blockiness (i.e. “square stars”) on all the star images. At that focal length the plate scale with the R5 is 2.1 arc seconds per pixel. With the R6 it is 3.2 arc seconds per pixel. 

This is dim green Comet PanSTARRS C/2017 K2, at top, passing above the star clusters IC 4756 at lower left and NGC 6633 at lower right on May 25-26, 2022. This is a stack of ten 5-minute exposures with a William Optics RedCat 51 at f/4.9 and the Canon R5 at ISO 800. 

The R5 is a good choice for shooting open and globular star clusters, or any small targets such as planetary nebulas, especially with shorter focal length telescopes. Bright targets will allow using lower ISOs, mitigating any of the R5’s extra noise. 

With an 800mm focal length telescope, the plate scale with the R5 will be 1.1 arc seconds per pixel, about the limit most seeing conditions will permit resolving. With even longer focal length telescopes, the R5’s small pixels would be oversampling the image, with little gain in resolution, at least for deep-sky subjects. Lunar and planetary imaging can benefit from plate scales of 0.5 arc seconds per pixel or smaller. 

CAN YOU CreatE resolution?

This compares an original R6 image with the same image rescaled 200% in ON1 Resize AI and Topaz Gigapixel AI, and with those three compared to an original R5 image. 

Now, one can argue that today’s AI-driven scaling programs such as ON1 Resize AI and Topaz Gigapixel AI can do a remarkable job up-sizing images while enhancing and sharpening details. Why buy a higher-megapixel camera when you can just sharpen images from a lower-resolution model? 

While these AI programs can work wonders on regular images, I’ve found their machine-learning seems to know little about stars, and can often create unwanted artifacts. 

In scaling up an R6 image by 200%, ON1 Resize AI 2022 made a mess of the stars and sky background. Topaz Gigapixel AI did a much better job, leaving few artifacts. But using it to double the R6 image in pixel count still produced an image that does not look as sharp as an original R5 image, despite the latter having fewer pixels than the upsized R6 image. 

Yes, we are definitely pixel-peeping! But I think this shows that it is better to have the pixels to begin with in the camera, and to not depend on software to generate sharpness and detail. 

VIDEO Resolution 

The R5’s 45-megapixel sensor also makes possible its headline selling point when it was released in 2020: 8K movie recording, with movies sized 8192 x 4320 (DCI standard) or 7680 x 4320 (UHD standard) at 29.97 frames per second, almost IMAX quality.

Where the R6’s major selling point for me was its low-light video capability, the R5’s 8K video prowess was less important. Or so I thought. With testing, I can see it will have its place in astrophotography, especially solar eclipses. 

The R5 offers the options of 8K and 4K movies each in either the wider DCI Digital Cinema standard (8K-D and 4K-D) or more common Ultra-High Definition standard (8K-U and 4K-U), as well as conventional 1080 HD.
This shows the Moon shot with the same 460mm-focal length telescope, with full-width frame grabs from movies shot in 8K, 4K, and 4K Movie Crop modes.

Unlike the original Canon R and Rp, the R5 and R6 can shoot 4K movies sampled from the full width of their sensors, so there is no crop factor in the field of view recorded with any lens. 

However, like the R6, the R5 also offers the option of a Movie Crop mode which samples a 4K movie from the central 4096 (4K-D) or 3840 (4K-U) pixels of the sensor. As I show above, this provides a “zoomed-in” image with no loss of resolution, useful when wide field of view is not so important as is zooming into small targets, such as for lunar and solar movies. 

This compares close-ups of frame grabs of the Moon movies shown in full-frame above, as well as a frame from an R6 movie, to compare resolutions.

So what format produces the best resolution when shooting movies? As I show above, magnified frame grabs of the Moon demonstrate that shooting at 8K provides a much less pixelated and sharper result than either the 4K-Fine HQ (which creates a “High-Quality” 4K movie downsampled from 8K) or a standard 4K movie. 

Shooting a 4K movie with the R6 also produced a similar result to the 4K movies from the R5. The slightly softer image in the R5’s 4K frame can, I think, be attributed more to atmospheric seeing. 

Solar eclipse use

Shooting the highest resolution movies of the Moon will be of prime interest to astrophotographers when the Moon happens to be passing in front of the Sun! 

That will happen along a narrow path that crosses North America on April 8, 2024. Capturing the rare total eclipse of the Sun in 8K video will be a goal of many. At the last total solar eclipse in North America, on August 21, 2017, I was able to shoot it in 4K by using a then state-of-the-art top-end Canon DSLR loaned to me by an IMAX movie production company! 

And who knows, by 2024 we might have 100-megapixel cameras capable of shooting and recording the firehose of data from 12K video! But for now, even 8K can be a challenge.

This compares the R5 at 8K with it in the best quality 4K Fine HQ vs. the R5 and R6 in their 4K Movie Crop modes.

However, do you need to shoot 8K to get sharp Moon, Sun or eclipse movies? The above shows the 8K frame-grab compared to the R5’s best quality full-frame 4K Fine, and the R5’s and R6’s 4K Movie Crop mode that doesn’t resample or bin pixels from the larger sensor to create a 4K movie. The Cropped movies look only slightly softer than the R5 at 8K, with less pixelation than the 4K Fine HQ movie. 

When shooting the Sun or Moon through a telescope or long telephoto lens, the wide field of a full-frame movie might not be required, even to take in the two- or three-degree-wide solar corona around the eclipsed Sun. 

However, if a wide field for the maximum extent of the outer corona, combined with sharp resolution is the goal, then a camera like the Canon R5 capable of shooting 8K movies will be the ticket. 

And 8K will be ideal for wide-angle movies of the passage of the Moon’s shadow during any eclipse, or for moderate fields showing the eclipsed Sun flanked by Jupiter and Venus on April 8, 2024.

Canon CLOG3

This shows the difference (using frame grabs from 4K movies) between shooting in Canon C-Log3 and shooting with normal “in-camera” colour grading. The exposures were the same. 

Like the R6, the R5 offers the option of shooting movies in Canon’s C-Log3 profile, which records internally in 10-bit, preserving more dynamic range in movies, up to 12 stops. The resulting movie looks flat, but when “colour graded” later in post, the movie records much more dynamic range, as I show above. Without C-Log3, the bright sunlit lunar crescent is blown out, as will be the Sun’s inner corona. 

The bright crescent Moon with dim Earthshine is a good practice-run stand-in for the eclipsed Sun with its wide range of brightness from the inner to the outer corona. 

Sample Moon Movies

For the full comparison of the R5 and R6 in my test shoot of the crescent Moon, see this narrated demo movie on Vimeo for the 4K movies, shot in various modes, both full-frame and cropped, with C-Log3 on and off. 

Keep in mind that video compression in the on-line version may make it hard to see the resolution difference between shooting modes. 

A “private link” 10-minute video on Vimeo demonstrating 4K video clips with the R5 and R6.

For a movie of the 8K footage, though downsized to 4K for the Vimeo version (the full sized 8K file was 29 Gigs!), see this sample movie below on Vimeo. 

A “private link” video on Vimeo demonstrating 8K video clips with the R5.

LOw-Light VIDEO 

Like the R6, the R5 can shoot at a dragged shutter speed as slow as 1/8-second. That slow shutter, combined with a fast f/1.4 to f/2 lens, and ISOs as high as 51,200 are the keys to shooting movies of the night sky. 

Especially auroras. Only when auroras get shadow-casting bright can we shoot at the normal 1/30-second shutter speed of movies and at lower ISOs. 

This compares frame grabs of aurora movies shot the same night with the R5 at 8K and 4K with the Canon R6 at 4K, all at ISO 51,200.

I was able to shoot a decent aurora one night from home with both the R5 and R6, and with the same fast TTArtisan 21mm f/1.5 RF lens. The sky and aurora changed in brightness from the time I shot with the R6 first to the R5 later. But even so, the movies serve as a look at how the two cameras perform for real-time aurora movies. 

Auroras are where we need to shoot full-frame, for the maximum field of view, and at high ISOs. The R5’s maximum ISO is 51,200, while the R6 goes up to 204,800, though it is largely unusable at that speed for actual shooting, just for previewing scenes.

As expected, the R6 was much less noisy than the R5, by about two stops. The R5 is barely usable at ISO 51,200, while the R6 works respectably well at that speed. If auroras get very bright, then slower ISOs can be used, making the R5 a possible camera for low-light use, but it would not be a first choice, unless 8K auroras are a must-have. 

 Sample aurora Movies

For a narrated movie comparing the R5 and R6 at 4K on the aurora, stepping both through a range of ISO speeds, see this movie at Vimeo.

A “private link” video on Vimeo demonstrating 4K aurora clips with the R5 and R6.

For a movie showing the same aurora shot with the R5 at 8K, see this movie. However, it has been down-sized to 4K for on-line viewing, so you’ll see little difference between it and the 4K footage. Shooting at 8K did not improve or smooth noise performance. 

A “private link” video on Vimeo demonstrating 8K aurora clips with the R5.

BATTERY LIFE — Stills and video

Canon’s new LP-E6NH battery supports charging through the USB-C port and has a higher 2130mAh capacity than the 1800mAh LP-E6 batteries. However, the R5 is compatible with the older batteries.

Like the R6, the R5 comes with a new version of Canon’s standard LP-E6 battery, the LP-E6NH. 

On mild nights, I found the R5 ran fine on one battery for the 3 to 4 hours needed to shoot a time-lapse sequence, or set of deep-sky images, with power to spare. Now, that was with the camera in “Airplane Mode,” which I always use regardless, to turn off the power-consuming WiFi and Bluetooth, which I never use on cameras.

As I noted with the R6, for demanding applications, especially in winter, the R5 can be powered by an outboard USB power bank that has Power Delivery or “PD” capability.

The exception for battery use is when shooting videos, especially 8K. That can drain a battery after an hour of recording, though it takes only 10 to 12 minutes of 8K footage to fill a 128 gigabyte card. While less than half that length will be needed to capture any upcoming total eclipse from diamond ring to diamond ring, the result is still a massive file.

OVERHEATING

More critically, the R5 is also infamous for overheating and shutting down when shooting 8K movies, after a time that depends on how hot the environment is. I found the R5 shot 8K or 4K Fine HQ for about 22 minutes at room temperature before the overheat warning first came on, then shut off recording two or three minutes later. Movie recording cannot continue until the R5 cools off sufficiently, which takes at least 10 to 15 minutes. 

That deficiency might befoul unwary eclipse photographers in 2024. The answer for “no-worry” 8K video recording is the Canon R5C, the video-centric version of the R5, with a built-in cooling fan. 

Features and usability

While certainly not designed with astrophotography in mind, the R5 has several hardware and firmware features that are astrophoto friendly. 

The R5’s Canon-standard flip screen

Like all Canon cameras made in the last few years, the R5 has Canon’s standard articulated screen, which can be angled up for convenient viewing when on a telescope. It is also a full touch screen, with all important camera settings and menus adjustable on screen, good for use at night. 

With 2.1 million dots, the R5’s rear screen has a higher resolution than the 1.62-million-dot screen of the R6, and much higher than the 1 million pixels of the Rp’s screen, but is the same resolution as in the R and Ra. 

The R5’s top-mounted backlit LCD screen

The R5, like the original R, has a top backlit LCD screen for display of current camera settings, battery level and Bulb timer. The lack of a top screen was one of my criticisms of the R6. 

Yes, the hardware Mode dial of the R6 and Rp does make it easier to switch shooting modes, such as quickly changing from Stills to Movie. However, for astrophotography the top screen provides useful information during long exposures, and is handy to check when the camera is on a telescope or tripod aimed up to the sky, without spoiling dark adaptation. I prefer to have one. 

The R5’s front-mounted N3-style remote port

The R5’s remote shutter port, used for connecting external intervalometers or time-lapse motion controllers, is Canon’s professional-grade three-pronged N3 connector. It’s sturdier than the 2.5mm mini-phono plug used by the Rp, R and R6. It’s a plus for the R5. 

As with all new cameras, the R5’s USB port is a USB-C type. A USB-C cable is included.

The R5’s back panel buttons and controls

Like the R6, the R5 has a dedicated magnification button on the back panel for zooming in when manually focusing or inspecting images. In the R and Ra, that button is only on the touch panel rear screen, where it has to be called up by paging to that screen, an inconvenience. While virtual buttons on a screen are easier to see and operate at night than physical buttons, I find a real Zoom button handy as it’s always there.

The R5’s twin cards, a CFexpress Type B and an SD UHS-II 

To handle the high data rates of 8K video and also 4K video when set to the high frame rate option of 120 fps, one of the R5’s memory card slots requires a CFexpress Type B card, a very fast but more costly format. 

As I had no card reader for this format, I had to download movies via a USB cable directly from the camera to my computer, using Canon’s EOS Utility software, as Adobe Downloader out of Adobe Bridge refused to do the job. Plan to buy a card reader.

Allocating memory card use

In the menus, you can choose to record video only to the CFexpress, and stills only to the SD card, or both stills and movies to each card for a backup, with the limitation that 8K and 4K 120fps won’t record to the SD card, even very fast ones. 

FIRMWARE FEATURES

Setting the Interval Timer

Unlike the Canon R and Ra (which both annoyingly lack a built-in intervalometer), but like the R6, the R5 has an Interval Timer in its firmware. This can be used to set up a time-lapse sequence, but with exposures only up to the maximum of 30 seconds allowed by the camera’s shutter speed settings, true of most in-camera intervalometers. Even so, this is a useful function for simple time-lapses.

Setting the Bulb Timer

As with most recent Canon DSLRs and DSLMs, the R5 also includes a built-in Bulb Timer. This allows setting an exposure of any length (many minutes or hours) when the camera is in Bulb mode. However, it cannot be combined with the Interval Timer for multiple exposures; it is good only for single shots. Nevertheless, I find it useful for shooting long exposures for the ground component of nightscape scenes. 

Custom button functions

While Canon cameras don’t have Custom Function buttons per se (unlike Sonys), the R5’s various buttons and dials can be custom programmed to functions other than their default assignments. I assign the * button to turning on and off the Focus Peaking display and, as shown, the AF Point button to a feature only available as a custom function, one that temporarily brightens the rear screen to full, good for quickly checking framing at night. 

Assigning Audio Memos to the Rate button

A handy feature of the R5 is the ability to add an audio notation to images. You shoot the image, play it back, then use the Rate button (if so assigned) to record a voice memo of up to 30 seconds, handy for making notes in the field about an image or a shoot. The audio notes are saved as WAV files with the same file number as the image. 

The infamous Release Shutter Without Lens command

Like other EOS R cameras, the R5 has this notorious “feature” that trips up every new user who attaches their Canon camera to a telescope or manual lens, only to find the shutter suddenly doesn’t work. The answer is to turn ON “Release Shutter w/o Lens” found buried under Custom Functions Menu 4. Problem solved! 

OTHER FEATURES

I provide more details of other features and settings of the R5, many of which are common to the R6, in my review of the R6 here. 

Multi-segment panoramas with the R5, like this aurora scene, yield superb resolution but can become massive in size, pressing the ability of software and hardware to process them. 

CONCLUSION

No question, the Canon R5 is costly. Most buyers would need to have very good daytime uses to justify its purchase, with astrophotography a secondary purpose. 

That said, other than low-light night sky videos, the R5 does work very well for all forms of astrophotography, providing a level of resolution that lesser cameras simply cannot. 

Nevertheless, if it is just deep-sky imaging that is of interest, then you might be better served with a dedicated cooled-sensor CMOS camera, such as one of the popular ZWO models, and the various accessories that need to accompany such a camera. 

But for me, when it came time to buy another premium camera, I still preferred to have a model that could be used easily, without computers, for many types of astro-images, particularly nightscapes, tracked wide-angle starfields, as well as telescopic images. 

Since buying the R5, after first suspecting it would prove too noisy to be practical, it has in fact become my most used camera, at least for all images where the enhanced red sensitivity of the EOS Ra is not required. But for low-light night videos, the R6 is the winner.

However, to make use of the R5’s resolution, you do have to match it with sharp, high-quality lenses and telescope optics, and have the computing power to handle its large files, especially when stitching or stacking lots of them. The R5 can be just the start of a costly spending spree! 

— Alan, June 23, 2022 / © 2022 Alan Dyer / AmazingSky.com  

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Testing the Canon R6 for Astrophotography


In an extensive technical blog, I put the Canon R6 mirrorless camera through its paces for the demands of astrophotography. 

Every major camera manufacturer, with the lone exception of stalwart Pentax, has moved from producing digital lens reflex (DSLR) cameras, to digital single lens mirrorless (DSLM) cameras. The reflex mirror is gone, allowing for a more compact camera, better movie capabilities, and enhanced auto-focus functions, among other benefits. 

But what about for astrophotography? I reviewed the Sony a7III and Nikon Z6 mirrorless cameras here on my blog and, except for a couple of points, found them excellent for the demands of most astrophotography. 

For the last two years I’ve primarily used Canon’s astro-friendly and red-sensitive EOS Ra mirrorless, a model sadly discontinued in September 2021 after just two years on the market. I reviewed that camera in the April 2020 issue of Sky & Telescope magazine, with a quick first look here on my blog. 

The superb performance of the Ra has prompted me to stay with the Canon mirrorless R system for future camera purchases. Here I test the mid-priced R6, introduced in August 2020.

NOTE: In early November 2022 Canon announced the EOS R6 MkII, which one assumes will eventually replace the original R6 once stock of that camera runs out. The MkII has a 24 Mp sensor for slightly better resolution, and offers longer battery life. But the main improvements over the R6 is to autofocus accuracy, a function of little use to astrophotographers. Only real-world testing will tell if the R6 MkII has better or worse noise levels than the R6, or has eliminated the R6’s amp glow, reported on below.

CLICK or TAP on an image to bring it up full screen for closer inspection. All images are © 2021 by Alan Dyer/AmazingSky.com. Use without permission is prohibited.

M31, the spiral galaxy in Andromeda, with the Canon R6 mirrorless camera. It is a stack of 8 x 8-minute exposures at ISO 800, blended with a stack of 8 x 2-minute exposures at ISO 400 for the core, to prevent it from overexposing too much, all with a SharpStar 76mm apo refractor at f/4.5 with its field flattener/reducer.

TL;DR SUMMARY

The Canon R6 has proven excellent for astrophotography, exhibiting better dynamic range and shadow recovery than most Canon DSLRs, due to the ISO invariant design of the R6 sensor. It is on par with the low-light performance of Nikon and Sony mirrorless cameras. 

The preview image is sensitive enough to allow easy framing and focusing at night. The movie mode produces usable quality up to ISO 51,200, making 4K movies of auroras possible. Canon DSLRs cannot do this. 

Marring the superb performance are annoying deficiencies in the design, and one flaw in the image quality – an amp glow – that particularly impacts deep-sky imaging.

R6 pros

The Canon R6 is superb for its:

  • Low noise, though not exceptionally so
  • ISO invariant sensor performance for good shadow recovery 
  • Sensitive live view display with ultra-high ISO boost in Movie mode 
  • Relatively low noise Movie mode with full frame 4K video
  • Low light auto focus and accurate manual focus assist  
  • Good battery life 

R6 cons

The Canon R6 is not so superb for its:

Design Deficiencies 

  • Lack of a top LCD screen
  • Bright timer display in Bulb on the rear screen
  • No battery level indication when shooting 
  • Low grade R3-style remote jack, same as on entry-level Canon DSLRs 

Image Quality Flaw

  • Magenta edge “amp glow” in long exposures 
The Canon Ra on the left with the 28-70mm f/2 RF lens and the Canon R6 on the right with the 70-200mm f/2/8 RF lens, two superb but costly zooms for the R system cameras.

CHOOSING THE R6

Canon’s first full-frame mirrorless camera, the 30-megapixel EOS R, was introduced in late 2018 to compete with Sony. As of late-2021 the main choices in a Canon DSLM for astrophotography are either the original R, the 20-megapixel R6, the 26-megapixel Rp, or the 45-megapixel R5. 

The new 24-megapixel Canon R3, while it has impressive low-noise performance, is designed primarily for high-speed sports and news photography. It is difficult to justify its $6,000 cost for astro work. 

I have not tested Canon’s entry-level, but full-frame Rp. While the Rp’s image quality is likely quite good, its small battery and short lifetime on a single charge will be limiting factors for astrophotography. 

Nor have I tested the higher-end R5. Friends who use the R5 for nightscape work love it, but with smaller pixels the R5 will be noisier than the R6, which lab tests at sites such as DPReview.com seem to confirm. 

Meanwhile, the original EOS R, while having excellent image quality and features, is surely destined for replacement in the near future – with a Canon EOS R Mark II? The R’s successor might be a great astrophoto camera, but with the Ra gone, I feel the R6 is currently the prime choice from Canon, especially for nightscapes.

I tested an R6 purchased in June 2021 and updated in August with firmware v1.4. I’ll go through its performance and functions with astrophotography in mind. I’ve ignored praised R6 features such as eye tracking autofocus, in-body image stabilization, and high speed burst rates. They are of limited or no value for astrophotography. 

Along the way, I also offer a selection of user tips, some of which are applicable to other cameras. 

LIVE VIEW FOCUSING AND FRAMING

“Back-of-the-camera” views of the R6 in its normal Live View mode (upper left) and its highly-sensitive Movie Mode (upper right), compared to views with four other cameras. Note the Milky Way visible with the R6 in its Movie mode, similar to the Sony in Bright Monitoring mode.

The first difference you will see when using any new mirrorless camera, compared to even a high-end DSLR, is how much brighter the “Live View” image is when shooting at night. DSLM cameras are always in Live View – even the eye-level viewfinder presents a digital image supplied by the sensor. 

As such, whether on the rear screen on in the viewfinder, you see an image that closely matches the photo you are about to take, because it is the image you are about to take. 

To a limit. DSLMs can do only so much to simulate what a long 30-second exposure will look like. But the R6, like many DSLMs, goes a long way in providing a preview image bright enough to frame a dark scene and focus on bright stars. Turn on Exposure Simulation to brighten the live image, and open the lens as wide as possible. 

The Canon R6 in its Movie Mode at ISO 204,800 and with a lens wide open.

But the R6 has a trick up its sleeve for framing nightscapes. Switch the Mode dial to Movie, and set the ISO up to 204,800 (or at night just dial in Auto ISO), and with the lens wide open and shutter on 1/8 second (as above), the preview image will brighten enough to show the Milky Way and dark foreground, albeit in a noisy image. But it’s just for aiming and framing.

This is similar to the excellent, but well-hidden Bright Monitoring mode on Sony Alphas. This high-ISO Movie mode makes it a pleasure using the R6 for nightscapes. The EOS R and Ra do not have this ability. While their live view screens are good, they are not as sensitive as the R6’s, with the R and Ra’s Movie modes able to go up to only ISO 12,800. The R5 can go up to “only” ISO 51,200 in its Movie mode, good but not quite high enough for live framing on dark nights. 

Comparing Manual vs. Auto Focus results with the R6.

The R6 will also autofocus down to a claimed EV -6.5, allowing it to focus in dim light for nightscapes, a feat impossible in most cameras. In practice with the Canon RF 15-35mm lens at f/2.8, I found the R6 can’t autofocus on the actual dark landscape, but it can autofocus on bright stars and planets (provided, of course, the camera is fitted with an autofocus lens). 

Autofocusing on bright stars proved very accurate. By comparison, while the Ra can autofocus on distant bright lights, it fails on bright stars or planets. 

Turning on Focus Peaking makes stars turn red, yellow or blue (your choice of colours) when they are in focus, as a reassuring confirmation. 

The Focus Peaking and Focus Guide menu.
The R6 live view display with Focus Guide arrows on and focused on a star, Antares.

In manual focus, an additional Focus Aid overlay provides arrows that close up and turn green when in focus on a bright star or planet. Or you can zoom in by 5x or 10x to focus by eye the old way by examining the star image. I wish the R6 had a 15x or 20x magnification; 5x and 10x have long been the Canon standards. Only the Ra offered 30x for ultra-precise focusing on stars. 

In all, the ease of framing and focusing will be the major improvement you’ll enjoy by moving to any mirrorless, especially if your old camera is a cropped-frame Canon Rebel or T3i! But the R6 particularly excels at ease of focusing and framing. 

NOISE PERFORMANCE

The key camera characteristic for astrophoto use is noise. I feel it is more important than resolution. There’s little point in having lots of fine detail if it is lost in a blizzard of high-ISO noise. And for astro work, we are almost always shooting at high ISOs.

Comparing the R6’s noise at increasingly higher ISO speeds on a starlit nightscape.

With just 20 megapixels, low by today’s standards, the R6 has individual pixels, or more correctly “photosites,” that are each 6.6 microns in size, the “pixel pitch.” 

By comparison, the 30-megapixel R (and Ra) has a pixel pitch of 5.4 microns, the 45-megapixel R5’s pixel pitch is 4.4 microns, while the acclaimed low-light champion in the camera world, the 12-megapixel Sony a7sIII, has large 8.5-micron photosites. 

The bigger the photosites (i.e. the larger the pixel pitch), the more photons each photosite can collect in a given amount of time – and the more photons they can collect, period, before they overfill and clip highlights. More photons equals more signal, and therefore a better signal-to-noise ratio, while the greater “full-well depth” yields higher dynamic range. 

Each generation of camera also improves the signal-to-noise ratio by suppressing noise via its sensor design and improved signal processing hardware and firmware. The R6 uses Canon’s latest DIGIC X processor shared by the company’s other mirrorless cameras. 

Comparing the R6 noise with the 6D MkII and EOS Ra on a deep-sky subject, galaxies.

In noise tests comparing the R6 against the Ra and Canon 6D Mark II, all three cameras showed a similar level of noise at ISO settings from 400 up to 12,800. But the 6D Mark II performed well only when properly exposed. Both the R6 and Ra performed much better for shadow recovery in underexposed scenes. 

Comparing the R6 noise with with the 6D MkII and EOS Ra on a shadowed nightscape.
Comparing the R6 noise with the EOS Ra on the Andromeda Galaxy at typical deep-sky ISO speeds.

In nightscapes and deep-sky images the R6 and Ra looked nearly identical at each of their ISO settings. This was surprising considering the Ra’s smaller photosites, which perhaps attests to the low noise of the astronomical “a” model. 

Or it could be that the R6 isn’t as low noise as it should be for a 20 megapixel camera. But it is as good as it gets for Canon cameras, and that’s very good indeed.

I saw no “magic ISO” setting where the R6 performed better than at other settings. Noise increased in proportion to the ISO speed. It proved perfectly usable up to ISO 6400, with ISO 12,800 acceptable for stills when necessary. 

ISO INVARIANCY

The flaw in many Canon DSLRs, one documented in my 2017 review of the 6D Mark II, was their poor dynamic range due to the lack of an ISO invariant sensor design. 

The R6, as with Canon’s other R-series cameras, has largely addressed this weakness. The sensor in the R6 appears to be nicely ISO invariant and performs as well as the Sony and Nikon cameras I have used and tested, models praised for their ISO invariant behaviour. 

Where this trait shows itself to advantage is on nightscapes where the starlit foreground is often dark and underexposed. Bringing out detail in the shadows in raw files requires a lot of Shadow Recovery or increasing the Exposure slider. Images from an ISO invariant sensor can withstand the brightening “in post” far better, with minimal noise increase or degradations such as a loss of contrast, added banding, or horrible discolourations. 

Comparing the R6 for ISO Invariancy on a starlit nightscape.

To test the R6, I shot sets of images at the same shutter speed, one well-exposed at a high ISO, then several at successively lower ISOs to underexpose by 1 to 5 stops. I then brightened the underexposed images by increasing the Exposure in Camera Raw by the same 1 to 5 stops. In an ideal ISO invariant sensor, all the images should look the same. 

The R6 did very well in images underexposed by up to 4 stops. Images underexposed by 5 stops started to fall apart, but I’ve seen that in Sony and Nikon images as well. 

Comparing the R6 for ISO Invariancy on a moonlit nightscape.

This behaviour applies to images underexposed by using lower ISOs than what a “normal” exposure might require. Underexposing with lower ISOs can help maintain dynamic range and avoid highlight clipping. But with nightscapes, foregrounds can often be too dark even when shot at an ISO high enough to be suitable for the sky. Foregrounds are almost always underexposed, so good shadow recovery is essential for nightscapes, and especially time-lapses, when blending in separate longer exposures for the ground is not practical.

With its improved ISO invariant sensor, the R6 will be a fine camera for nightscape and time-lapse use, which was not true of the 6D Mark II. 

For those interested in more technical tests and charts, I refer you to DxOMark’s report on the Canon R6.  

Comparing R6 images underexposed in 1-stop increments by using shorter shutter speeds.
Comparing R6 images underexposed in 1-stop increments by using smaller apertures.

However, to be clear, ISO invariant behaviour doesn’t help you as much if you underexpose by using too short a shutter speed or too small a lens aperture. I tested the R6 in series of images underexposed by keeping ISO the same but decreasing the shutter speed then the aperture in one-stop increments. 

The underexposed images fell apart in quality much sooner, when underexposed more than 3 stops. Again, this is behaviour similar to what I’ve seen in Sonys and Nikons. For the best image quality I feel it is always a best practice to expose well at the camera. Don’t count on saving images in post. 

An in-camera image fairly well exposed with an ETTR histogram.

TIP: Underexposing by using too short an exposure time is the major mistake astrophotographers make, who then wonder why their images are riddled with odd artifacts and patten noise. Always Expose to the Right (ETTR), even with ISO invariant cameras. The best way to avoid noise is to give your sensor more signal, by using longer exposures or wider apertures. Use settings that push the histogram to the right. 

LONG EXPOSURE NOISE REDUCTION

All cameras will exhibit thermal noise in long exposures, especially on warm nights. This form of noise peppers the shadows with hot pixels, often brightly coloured. 

This is not the same as the shot and read noise that adds graininess to high-ISO images and that noise reduction software can smooth out. This is a common misunderstanding, even among professional photographers who should know better! 

Thermal noise is more insidious and harder to eliminate in post without harming the image. However, Monika Deviat offers a clever method here at her website. 

The standard Canon LENR menu.

Long Exposure Noise Reduction (LENR) eliminates this thermal noise by taking a “dark frame” and subtracting it in-camera to yield a raw file free of hot pixels. 

And yes, LENR does apply to raw files, another fact even many professional photographers don’t realize. It is High ISO Noise Reduction that applies only to JPGs, along with Color Space and Picture Styles.

Comparing a dark nightscape without and with LENR on a warm night. Hot pixels are mostly gone at right.

The LENR option on the R6 did eliminate most hot pixels, though sometimes still left, or added, a few. LENR is needed more on warm nights, and with longer exposures at higher ISOs. So the extent of thermal noise in any camera can vary a lot from shoot to shoot.

When LENR is active, the R6’s rear screen lights up with “Busy,” which is annoyingly bright. To hide this display, the only option is to close the screen. 

As with the EOS Ra, and all mirrorless cameras, the R6 has no “dark frame buffer” that allows several exposures to be taken in quick succession even with LENR on. Canon’s full-frame DSLRs have this little-known buffer that allows 3, 4, or 5 “light frames” to be taken in a row before the LENR dark frame kicks in a locks up the camera on Busy. 

Comparing long exposure images with the lens cap on (dark frames), to show just thermal noise. The right edge of the frame is shown, blown up, to reveal the amp glow, which LENR removes.

With all Canon R cameras, and most other DSLRs, turning on LENR forces the camera to take a dark frame after every light frame, doubling the time it takes to finish every exposure. That’s a price many photographers aren’t willing to pay, but on warm nights it can be necessary, and a best practice, for the reward of cleaner images.

The standard Canon Sensor Cleaning menu.

TIP: If you find hot pixels are becoming more obvious over time, try this trick: turn on the Clean Manually routine for 30 seconds to a minute. In some cameras this can remap the hot pixels so the camera can better eliminate them.  

STAR QUALITY 

Using LENR with the R6 did not introduce any oddities such as oddly-coloured, green or wiped-out stars. Even without LENR I saw no evidence of green stars, a flaw that plagues some Sony cameras at all times, or Nikons when using LENR. 

Comparing the R6 for noise and star colours at typical deep-sky ISOs and exposure times.

Canons have always been known for their good star colours, and the R6 is no exception. According to DPReview the R6 has a low-pass anti-alias filter in front of its sensor. Cameras which lack such a sensor filter do produce sharper images, but stars that occupy only one or two pixels might not de-Bayer properly into the correct colours. That’s not an issue with the R6.

I also saw no “star-eating,” a flaw Nikons and Sonys have been accused of over the years, due to aggressive in-camera noise reduction even on raw files. Canons have always escaped charges of star-eating. 

VIGNETTING/SHADOWING

DSLRs are prone to vignetting along the top and bottom of the frame from shadowing by the upraised mirror and mirror box. Not having a mirror, and a sensor not deeply recessed in the body, largely eliminates this edge vignetting in mirrorless cameras. 

This illustrates the lack of edge shadows but magenta edge glows in a single Raw file boosted for contrast.

That is certainly true of the R6. Images boosted a lot in contrast, as we do with deep-sky photos, show not the slightest trace of vignetting along the top or bottom edges There were no odd clips or metal bits intruding into the light path, unlike in the Sony a7III I tested in 2018. 

The full frame of the R6 can be used without need for cropping or ad hoc edge brightening in post. Except …

EDGE ARTIFACTS/AMP GLOWS

The R6 did exhibit one serious and annoying flaw in long-exposure high-ISO images – a magenta glow along the edges, especially the right edge and lower right corner. 

Comparing a close-up of a nightscape, without and with LENR, to show the edge glow gone with LENR on.

Whether this is the true cause or not, it looks like “amplifier glow,” an effect caused by heat from circuitry illuminating the sensor with infra-red light. It shows itself when images are boosted in contrast and brightness in processing. It’s the sort of flaw revealed only when testing for the demands of astrophotography. It was present in images I took through a telescope, so it is not IR leakage from an auto-focus lens. 

I saw this type of amp glow with the Sony a7III, a flaw eventually eliminated in a firmware update that, I presume, turned off unneeded electronics in long exposures. 

Amp glow is something I have not seen in Canon cameras for many years. In a premium camera like the R6 it should not be there. Period. Canon needs to fix this with a firmware update.

UPDATE AUGUST 1, 2022: As of v1.6 of the R6 firmware, released in July 2022, the amp glow issue remains and has not been fixed. It may never be at this point.

It is the R6’s only serious image flaw, but it’s surprising to see it at all. Turning on LENR eliminates the amp glow, as it should, but using LENR is not always practical, such as in time-lapses and star trails.

For deep-sky photography high-ISO images are pushed to extremes of contrast, revealing any non-uniform illumination or colour. The usual practice of taking and applying calibration dark frames should also eliminate the amp glow. But I’d rather it not be there in the first place!

RED SENSITIVITY

The R6 I bought was a stock “off-the-shelf” model. It is Canon’s now-discontinued EOS Ra model that is (or was) “filter-modified” to record a greater level of the deep red wavelength from red nebulas in the Milky Way. Compared to the Ra, the R6 did well, but could not record the depth of nebulosity the Ra can, to be expected for a stock camera. 

Comparing the stock R6 with the filter-modified Ra on Cygnus nebulosity.

In wide-field images of the Milky Way, the R6 picked up a respectable level of red nebulosity, especially when shooting through a broadband light pollution reduction filter, and with careful processing. 

Comparing the stock R6 with the filter-modified Ra on the Swan Nebula with a telescope with minimal processing to the Raw images.
Comparing the stock R6 with the filter-modified Ra on the Swan Nebula with a telescope with a dual narrowband filter and with colour correction applied to the single Raw images.

However, when going after faint nebulas through a telescope, even the use of a narrowband filter did not help bring out the target. Indeed, attempting to correct the extreme colour shift introduced by such a filter resulted in a muddy mess and accentuated edge glows with the R6, but worked well with the Ra. 

While the R6 could be modified by a third party, the edge amp glow might spoil images, as a filter modification can make a sensor even more sensitive to IR light, potentially flooding the image with unwanted glows. 

TIP: Buying a used Canon Ra (if you can find one) might be one choice for a filter-modified mirrorless camera, one much cheaper than a full frame cooled CMOS camera such as a ZWO ASI2400MC. Or Spencer’s Camera sells modified versions of all the R series cameras with a choice of sensor filters. But I have not used any of their modded cameras.

RESOLUTION 

A concern of prospective buyers is whether the R6’s relatively low 20-megapixel sensor will be sharp enough for their purposes. R6 images are 5472 by 3648 pixels, much less than the 8000+ pixel-wide images from high-resolution cameras like the Canon R5, Nikon Z7II or Sony a1.

Unless you sell your astrophotos as very large prints, I’d say don’t worry. In comparisons with the 30-megapixel Ra I found it difficult to see a difference in resolution between the two cameras. Stars were nearly as well resolved in the R6, and only under the highest pixel-peeping magnification did stars look a bit more pixelated in the R6 than in the Ra. Faint stars were equally well recorded. 

Comparing resolution of the R6 vs. Ra with a blow-up of wide-field 85mm images
Comparing resolution of the R6 vs. Ra on blow-ups of the Andromeda Galaxy with a 76mm apo refractor. The R6 is more pixellated but it takes pixel peeping to see it!

The difference between 20 and 30 megapixels is not as great as you might think for arc-second-per-pixel plate scale. I think it would take going to the R5 with its 45 megapixel sensor to provide enough of a difference in resolution over the R6 to be obvious in nightscape scenes, or when shooting small, detailed deep-sky subjects such as globular clusters. 

If landscape or wildlife photography by day is your passion, with astrophotography a secondary purpose, then the more costly but highly regarded R5 might be the better choice. 

Super Resolution menu in Adobe Lightroom.

TIP: Adobe now offers (in Lightroom and in Camera Raw) a Super Resolution option, that users might think (judging by the rave reviews on-line) would be the answer to adding resolution to astro images from “low-res” cameras like the R6. 

Comparing a normal R6 image with the same image upscaled with Super Resolution.

Sorry! In my tests on astrophotos I’ve found Super Resolution results unsatisfactory. Yes, stars were less pixelated, but they became oddly coloured in the AI-driven up-scaling. Green stars appeared! The sky background also became mottled and uneven. 

I would not count on such “smart upscaling” options to add more pixels to astro-images from the R6. Then again, I don’t think there’s a need to. 

RAW vs. cRAW

Canon now offers the option of shooting either RAW or cRAW files, the latter being the same megapixel count but compressed in file size by almost a factor of two. This allows shooting twice as many images before card space runs out, perhaps useful for shooting lots of time-lapses on extended trips away from a computer. 

The R6 Image Quality menu with the cRAW Option.
Comparing an R6 cRAW with a RAW image.

However, the compression is not lossless. In high-ISO test images purposely underexposed, then brightened in post, I could see a slight degradation in cRAW images – the noise background looked less uniform and exhibited a blocky look, like JPG artifacts. 

The R6’s dual SD card slots.

TIP: With two SD card slots in the R6 (the second card can be set to record either a backup of images on card one, or serve as an overflow card) and the economy of large SD cards, there’s not the need to conserve card space as there once was. I would suggest always shooting in the full RAW format. Why accept any compression and loss of image quality? 

BATTERY LIFE

The R6 uses a new version of Canon’s standard LP-E6 battery, the LP-E6NH, that supports charging through the USB-C port and has a higher 2130mAh capacity than the 1800mAh LP-E6 batteries. However, the R6 is compatible with older batteries.

On warm nights, I found the R6 ran fine on one battery for the 3 to 4 hours needed to shoot a time-lapse sequence, with power to spare. However, as noted below, the lack of a top LCD screen means there’s no ongoing display of battery level, a deficiency for time-lapse and deep-sky work. 

For demanding applications, especially in winter, the R6 can be powered by an outboard USB power bank that has “Power Delivery” capability. That’s a handy feature. There’s no need to install a dummy battery leading out to a specialized power source. 

The R6’s Connection menu with Airplane mode to turn off battery-eating WiFi and Bluetooth.

TIP: Putting the camera into Airplane mode (to turn off WiFi and Bluetooth), turning off the viewfinder, and either switching off or closing the rear screen all helps conserve power. The R6 does not have GPS built in. Tagging images with location data requires connecting to your phone.

VIDEO USE

A major selling point for me was the R6’s low-light video capability. It replaces my Sony A7III, which had been my “go to” camera for real-time 4K movies of auroras. 

As best I can tell (from the dimmer auroras I’ve shot to date), the R6 performs equally as well as the Sony. It is able to record good quality (i.e. acceptably noise-free) 4K movies at ISO 25,600 to ISO 51,200. While it can shoot at up to ISO 204,800, the excessive noise makes the top ISO an emergency-use only setting. 

The R6’s Movie size and quality options, with 4K and Full HD formats and frame rates.
Comparing the R6 on a dim aurora at various high ISO speeds. Narrated at the camera — excuse the wind noise! Switch to HD mode for the best video playback quality. This was shot in 4K but WordPress plays back only in HD.

The R6 can shoot at a dragged shutter speed as slow as 1/8-second – good, though not as slow as the Sony’s 1/4-second slowest shutter speed in movie mode. That 1/8-second shutter speed and a fast f/1.4 to f/2 lens are the keys to shooting movies of the night sky. Only when auroras get shadow-casting bright can we shoot at the normal 1/30-second shutter speed and at lower ISOs.

As with Nikons (but not Sonys), the Canon R6 saves its movie settings separately from its still settings. When switching to Movie mode you don’t have to re-adjust the ISO, for example, to set it higher than it might have been for stills, very handy for taking both stills and movies of an active aurora, where quick switching is often required. 

Unlike the R and Rp, the R6 captures 4K movies from the full width of the sensor, preserving the field of view of wide-angle lenses. This is excellent for aurora shooting. 

The R6’s Movie Cropping menu option
A 4K movie of the Moon in full-frame and copped-frame modes, narrated at the camera. Again, this was shot in 4K but WordPress plays back only in HD.
Comparing blow-ups of frame-grabbed stills from a full-frame 4K vs. Cropped frame 4K. The latter is less pixellated.

However, the R6 offers the option of a “Movie Crop” mode. Rather than taking the 4K movie downsampled from the entire sensor, this crop mode records from a central 1:1 sampled area of the sensor. That mode can be useful for high-magnification lunar and planetary imaging, for ensuring no loss of resolution. It worked well, producing videos with less pixelated fine details in test movies of the Moon. 

Though of course I have yet to test it on one, the R6 should be excellent for movies of total solar eclipses. It can shoot 4K up to 60 frames per second in both full frame and cropped frame. It cannot shoot 6K (buy the R3!) or 8K (buy the R5!). 

The R6’s Canon Log settings menu for video files.

Shooting in the R6’s Canon cLog3 profile records internally in 10-bit, preserving more dynamic range in movies, up to 12 stops. During eclipses, that will be a benefit for recording totality, with the vast range of brightness in the Sun’s corona. It should also aid in shooting auroras which can vary over a huge range in brightness. 

Grading a cLog format movie in Final Cut under Camera LUT.

TIP: Processing cLog movies, which look flat out of camera, requires applying a cLog3 Look Up Table, or LUT, to the movie clips in editing, a step called “colour grading.” This is available from Canon, from third-party vendors or, as it was with my copy of Final Cut Pro, might be already installed in your video editing software. When shooting, turn on View Assist so the preview looks close to what the final graded movie will look like.

EXPOSURE TRACKING IN TIME-LAPSES

In one test, I shot a time-lapse from twilight to darkness with the R6 in Aperture Priority auto-exposure mode, of a fading display of noctilucent clouds. I just let the camera lengthen the shutter speed on its own. It tracked the darkening sky very well, right down to the camera’s maximum exposure time of 30 seconds, using a fish-eye lens at f/2.8. This demonstrated that the light meter in the R6 was sensitive enough to work well in dim light.

Other cameras I have used cannot do this. The meter fails at some point and the exposure stalls at 5 or 6 seconds long, resulting in most frames after that being underexposed. By contrast, the R6 showed excellent performance, negating the need for special bulb ramping intervalometers for some “holy grail” scenes. Here’s the resulting movie.

A time-lapse of 450 frames from 0.4 seconds to 30 seconds, with the R6 in Av mode. Set to 1080P for the best view!
A screenshot from LRTimelapse showing the smoothness of the exposure tracking (the blue line) through the sequence,

In addition, the R6’s exposure meter tracked the darkening sky superbly, with nary a flicker or variation. Again, few cameras can do this. Nikons have an Exposure Smoothing option in their Interval Timers which works well.

The R6 has no such option but doesn’t seem to need it. The exposure did fail at the very end, when the shutter reached its maximum of 30 seconds. If I had the camera on Auto ISO, it might have started to ramp up the ISO to compensate, a test I have yet to try. Even so, this is impressive time-lapse performance in auto-exposure.

MISSING FEATURES

The R6, like the low-end Rp, lacks a top LCD screen for display of camera settings and battery level. In its place we get a traditional Mode dial, which some daytime photographers will prefer. But for astrophotography, a backlit top LCD screen provides useful information during long exposures. 

The R6 top and back of camera view.

Without it, the R6 provides no indication of battery level while a shoot is in progress, for example, during a time-lapse. A top screen is also useful for checking ISO and other settings by looking down at the camera, as is usually the case when it’s on a tripod or telescope. 

The lack of a top screen is an inconvenience for astrophotography. We are forced to rely on looking at the brighter rear screen for all information. It is a flip-out screen, so can be angled up for convenient viewing on a telescope.

The R6’s flip screen, similar to most other new Canon cameras.

The R6 has a remote shutter port for an external intervalometer, or control via a time-lapse motion controller. That’s good! 

However, the port is Canon’s low-grade 2.5mm jack. It works, and is a standard connector, but is not as sturdy as the three-pronged N3-style jack used on Canon’s 5D and 6D DSLRs, and on the R3 and R5. Considering the cost of the R6, I would have expected a better, more durable port. The On/Off switch also seems a bit flimsy and easily breakable under hard use. 

The R6’s side ports, including the remote shutter/intervalometer port.

These deficiencies provide the impression of Canon unnecessarily “cheaping out” on the R6. You can forgive them with the Rp, but not with a semi-professional camera like the R6.

INTERVAL TIMER

Unlike the Canon R and Ra (which still mysteriously lack a built-in interval timer, despite firmware updates), the R6 has one in its firmware. Hurray! This can be used to set up a time-lapse sequence, but on exposures only up to the maximum of 30 seconds allowed by the camera’s shutter speed settings, true of most in-camera intervalometers. 

The Interval Timer menu page.

For 30-second exposures taken in succession as quickly as possible the interval on the R6 has to be set to 34 seconds. The reason is that the 30-second exposure is actually 32 seconds, true of all cameras. With the R6, having a minimum gap in time between shots requires an Interval not of 33 seconds as with some cameras, but 34 seconds. Until you realize this, setting the intervalometer correctly can be confusing. 

Like all Canon cameras, the R6 can be set to take only up to 99 frames, not 999. That seems a dumb deficiency. Almost all time-lapse sequences require at least 200 to 300 frames. What could it possibly take in the firmware to add an extra digit to the menu box? It’s there at in the Time-lapse Movie function that assembles a movie in camera, but not here where the camera shoots and saves individual frames. It’s another example where you just can’t fathom Canon’s software decisions.

Setting the Interval Timer for rapid sequence shots with a 30-second exposure.

TIP: If you want to shoot 100 or more frames, set the Number of Frames to 00, so it will shoot until you tell the camera to stop. But awkwardly, Canon says the way to stop an interval shoot is to turn off the camera! That’s crude, as doing so can force you to refocus if you are using a Canon RF lens. Switching the Mode dial to Bulb will stop an interval shoot, an undocumented feature. 

BULB TIMER

As with most recent Canon DSLRs and DSLMs, the menu also includes a Bulb Timer. This allows setting an exposure of any length (many minutes or hours) when the camera is in Bulb mode. This is handy for single long shots at night. 

The Bulb Timer menu page. Bulb Timer only becomes an active choice when the camera is on Bulb.

However, it cannot be used in conjunction with the Interval Timer to program a series of multi-minute exposures, a pity. Instead, a separate outboard intervalometer has to be used for taking an automatic set of any exposures longer than 30 seconds, true of all Canons. 

In Bulb and Bulb Timer mode, the R6’s rear screen lights up with a bright Timer readout. While the information is useful, the display is too bright at night and cannot be dimmed, nor turned red for night use, exactly when you are likely to use Bulb. The power-saving Eco mode has no effect on this display, precisely when you would want it to dim or turn off displays to prolong battery life, another odd deficiency in Canon’s firmware. 

The Bulb Timer screen active during a Bulb exposure. At night it is bright!

The Timer display can only be turned off by closing the flip-out screen, but now the viewfinder activates with the same display. Either way, a display is on draining power during long exposures. And the Timer readout lacks any indication of battery level, a vital piece of information during long shoots. The Canon R, R3 and R5, with their top LCD screens, do not have this annoying “feature.” 

TIP: End a Bulb Timer shoot prematurely by hitting the Shutter button. That feature is documented. 

IN-CAMERA IMAGE STACKING

The R6 offers a menu option present on many recent Canon cameras: Multiple Exposure. The camera can take and internally stack up to 9 images, stacking them by using either Average (best for reducing noise) or Bright mode (best for star trails). An Additive mode also works for star trails, but stacking 9 images requires reducing the exposure of each image by 3 stops, say from ISO 1600 to ISO 200, as I did in the example below. 

The Multiple Exposure menu page.

The result of the internal stacking is a raw file, with the option of also saving the component raws. While the options work very well, in all the cameras I’ve owned that offer such functions, I’ve never used them. I prefer to do any stacking needed later at the computer. 

Comparing a single image with a stack of 9 exposures with 3 in-camera stacking methods.

TIP: The in-camera image stacking options are good for beginners wanting to get advanced stacking results with a minimum of processing fuss later. Use Average to stack ground images for smoother noise. Use Bright for stacking sky images for star trails. Activate one of those modes, then control the camera with a separate intervalometer to automatically shoot and internally stack several multi-minute exposures. 

SHUTTER OPERATION

Being a mirrorless camera, there is no reflex mirror to introduce vibration, and so no need for a mirror lockup function. The shutter can operate purely mechanically, with physical metal curtains opening and closing to start and end the exposure. 

However, the default “out of the box” setting is Electronic First Curtain, where the actual exposure, even when on Bulb, is initiated electronically, but ended by the mechanical shutter. That’s good for reducing vibration, perhaps when shooting the Moon or planets through a telescope at high magnification. 

R6 Shutter Mode options.

In Mechanical, the physical curtains both start and end the exposure. It’s the mode I usually prefer, as I like to hear the reassuring click of the shutter opening. I’ve never found shutter vibration a problem when shooting deep sky images on a telescope mount of any quality. 

In Mechanical mode the shutter can fire at up to 12 frames a second, or up to 20 frames a second in Electronic mode where both the start and end of the exposure happen without the mechanical shutter. That makes for very quiet operation, good for weddings and golf tournaments! 

Electronic Shutter Mode is for fastest burst rates but has limitations.

Being vibration free, Electronic shutter might be great during total solar eclipses for rapid-fire bursts at second and third contacts when shooting through telescopes. Maximum exposure time is 1/2 second in this mode, more than long enough for capturing fleeting diamond rings.

Longer exposures needed for the corona will require Mechanical or Electronic First Curtain shutter. Combinations of shutter modes, drive rates (single or continuous), and exposure bracketing can all be programmed into the three Custom Function settings (C1, C2 and C3) on the Mode dial, for quick switching at an eclipse. It might not be until April 8, 2024 until I have a chance to test these features. And by then the R6 Mark II will be out! 

TIP: While the R6’s manual doesn’t state it, some reviews mention (including at DPReview) that when the shutter is in fully Electronic mode the R6’s image quality drops from 14-bit to 12-bit, true of most other mirrorless cameras. This reduces dynamic range. I would suggest not using Electronic shutter for most astrophotography, even for exposures under 1/2 second. For longer exposures, it’s a moot point as it cannot be used. 

The menu option that fouls up all astrophotographers using an R-series camera.

TIP: The R6 has the same odd menu item that befuddles many a new R-series owner, found on Camera Settings: Page 4. “Release Shutter w/o Lens” defaults to OFF, which means the camera will not work if it is attached to a manual lens or telescope it cannot connect to electronically. Turn it ON and all will be solved. This is a troublesome menu option that Canon should eliminate or default to ON. 

OTHER MENU FEATURES

The rear screen is fully touch sensitive, allowing all settings to be changed on-screen if desired, as well as by scrolling with the joystick and scroll wheels. I find going back to an older camera without a touchscreen annoying – I keep tapping the screen expecting it to do something! 

The Multi-Function Button brings up an array of 5 settings to adjust. This is ISO.

The little Multi-Function (M-Fn) button is a worth getting used to, as it allows quick access to a choice of five important functions such as ISO, drive mode and exposure compensation. However, the ISO, aperture and shutter speed are all changeable by the three scroll wheels. 

The Q button brings up the Quick Menu for displaying and adjusting key functions.

There’s also the Quick menu activated by the Q button. While the content of the Quick menu screen can’t be edited, it does contain a good array of useful functions, adjustable with a few taps. 

Under Custom settings, the Dials and Buttons can be re-assigned to other functions.

Unlike Sonys, the R6 has no dedicated Custom buttons per se. However, it does offer a good degree of customization of its buttons, by allowing users to re-assign them to other functions they might find more useful than the defaults. For example ….

This shows the AF Point button being re-assigned to the Maximize Screen Brightness (Temporary) command.
  • I’ve taken the AF Point button and assigned it to the Maximize Screen Brightness function, to temporarily boost the rear screen to full brightness for ease of framing. 
  • The AE Lock button I assigned to switch the Focus Peaking indicators on and off, to aid manual focusing when needed. 
  • The Depth of Field Preview button I assigned to switching between the rear screen and viewfinder, through that switch does happen automatically as you put your eye to the viewfinder.
  • The Set button I assigned to turning off the Rear Display, though that doesn’t have any effect when the Bulb Timer readout is running, a nuisance. 

While the physical buttons are not illuminated, having a touch screen makes it less necessary to access buttons in the dark. It’s a pity the conveniently positioned but mostly unused Rate button can’t be re-programmed to more useful functions. It’s a waste of a button. 

Set up the Screen Info as you like it by turning on and off screen pages and deciding what each should show.

TIP: The shooting screens, accessed by the Info button (one you do need to find in the dark!), can be customized to show a little, a lot, or no information, as you prefer. Take the time to set them up to show just the information you need over a minimum of screen pages. 

LENS AND FILTER COMPATIBILITY

The new wider RF mount accepts only Canon and third-party RF lenses. However, all Canon and third-party EF mount lenses (those made for DSLRs) will fit on RF-mount bodies with the aid of the $100 Canon EF-to-RF lens adapter. 

The Canon ER-to-RF lens adapter will be needed to attach R cameras to most telescope camera adapters and Canon T-rings made for older DSLR cameras.

This adapter will be necessary to attach any Canon R camera to a telescope equipped with a standard Canon T-ring. That’s especially true for telescopes with field flatterers where maintaining the standard 55mm distance between the flattener and sensor is critical for optimum optical performance. 

The shallower “flange distance” between lens and sensor in all mirrorless cameras means an additional adapter is needed not just for the mechanical connection to the new style of lens mount, but also for the correct scope-to-sensor spacing. 

The extra spacing provided by a mirrorless camera has the benefit of allowing a filter drawer to be inserted into the light path. Canon offers a $300 lens adapter with slide-in filters, though the choice of filters useful for astronomy that fit Canon’s adapter is limited. AstroHutech offers a few IDAS nebula filters.

Clip-in filters made for the EOS R, such as those offered by Astronomik, will also fit the R6. Though, again, most narrowband filters will not work well with an unmodified camera.

The AstroHutech adapter allows inserting filters into the light path on telescopes.

TIP: Alternatively, AstroHutech also offers its own lens adapter/filter drawer that goes from a Canon EF mount to the RF mount, and accepts standard 52mm or 48mm filters. It is a great way to add interchangeable filters to any telescope when using an R-series camera, while maintaining the correct back-focus spacing. I use an AstroHutech drawer with my Ra, where the modified camera works very well with narrowband filters. Using such filters with a stock R6 won’t be as worthwhile, as I showed above. 

A trio of Canon RF zooms — all superb but quite costly.

As of this writing, the selection of third-party lenses for the Canon RF mount is limited, as neither Canon or Nikon have “opened up” their system to other lens makers, unlike Sony with their E-mount system. For example, we have yet to see much-anticipated RF-mount lenses from Sigma, Tamron and Tokina. 

A trio of third party RF lenses — L to R: the TTArtisan 7.5mm f/2 and 11mm f/2.8 fish-eyes and the Samyang/Rokinon AF 85mm f/1.4.

Samyang offers 14mm and 85mm auto-focus RF lenses, but now only under their Rokinon branding. I tested the Samyang RF 85mm f/1.4 here at AstroGearToday. 

The few third-party lenses that are available, from TTArtisan, Venus Optics and other boutique Chinese lens companies, are usually manual focus lenses with reverse-engineered RF mounts offering no electrical contact with the camera. Some of these wide-angle lenses are quite good and affordable. (I tested the TTArtisan 11mm fish-eye here.)

Until other lens makers are “allowed in,” if you want lenses with auto-focus and camera metadata connections, you almost have to buy Canon. Their RF lenses are superb, surpassing the quality of their older EF-mount equivalents. But they are costly. I sold off a lot of my older lenses and cameras to help pay for the new Canon glass! 

I also have reviews of the superb Canon RF 15-35mm f/2.8, as well as the unique Canon RF 28-70mm f/2 and popular Canon RF 70-200mm f/2.8 lenses (a trio making up the  “holy trinity” of zooms) at AstroGearToday.com.

CONTROL COMPATIBILITY 

Astrophotographers often like to operate their cameras at the telescope using computers running specialized control software. I tested the R6 with two popular Windows programs for controlling DSLR and now mirrorless cameras, BackyardEOS (v3.2.2) and AstroPhotographyTool (v3.88). Both recognized and connected to the R6 via its USB port. 

Both programs recognized the Canon R6.

Another popular option is the ASIair WiFi controller from ZWO. It controls cameras via one of the ASIair’s USB ports, and not (confusingly) through the Air’s remote shutter jack marked DSLR. Under version 1.7 of its mobile app, the ASIair now controls Canon R cameras and connected to the R6 just fine, allowing images to be saved both to the camera and to the Air’s own MicroSD card. 

With an update in 2021, the ZWO ASIair now operates Canon R-series cameras.

The ASIair is an excellent solution for both camera control and autoguiding, with operation via a mobile device that is easier to use and power in the field than a laptop. I’ve not tried other hardware and software controllers with the R6. 

TIP: While the R6, like many Canon cameras, can be controlled remotely with a smartphone via the CanonConnect mobile app, the connection process is complex and the connection can be unreliable. The Canon app offers no redeeming features for astrophotography, and maintaining the connection via WiFi or Bluetooth consumes battery power. 

A dim red and green aurora from Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta, on August 29/30, 2021. This is a stack of 4 exposures for the ground to smooth noise and one exposure for the sky, all 30 seconds at f/2.8 with the Canon 15-35mm RF lens at 25mm and the Canon R6 at ISO 4000.

SUGGESTIONS TO CANON

To summarize, in firmware updates, Canon should:

  • Fix the low-level amp glow. No camera should have amp glow. 
  • Allow either dimming the Timer readout, turning it red, or just turning it off!
  • Add a battery display to the Timer readout. 
  • Expand the Interval Timer to allow up to 999 frames, as in the Time-Lapse Movie. 
  • Allow the Rate button to be re-assigned to more functions.
  • Default the Release Shutter w/o Lens function to ON.
  • Revise the manual to correctly describe how to stop an Interval Timer shoot.
  • Allow programming multiple long exposures by combining Interval and Bulb Timer, or by expanding the shutter speed range to longer than 30 seconds, as some Nikons can do.
The Zodiacal Light in the dawn sky, September 14, 2021, from home in Alberta, with the winter sky rising. This is a stack of 4 x 30-second exposures for the ground to smooth noise, and a single 30-second exposure for the sky, all with the TTArtisan 7.5mm fish-eye lens at f/2 and on the Canon R6 at ISO 1600.

CONCLUSION

The extended red sensitivity of the Canon EOS Ra makes it better suited for deep-sky imaging. But with it now out of production (Canon traditionally never kept its astronomical “a” cameras in production for more than two years), I think the R6 is now Canon’s best camera (mirrorless or DSLR) for all types of astrophotography, both stills and movies. 

However, I cannot say how well it will work when filter-modified by a third-party. But such a modification is necessary only for recording red nebulas in the Milky Way. It is not needed for other celestial targets and forms of astrophotography. 

A composite showing about three dozen Perseid meteors accumulated over 3 hours of time, compressed into one image showing the radiant point of the meteor shower in Perseus. All frames were with the Canon R6 at ISO 6400 and with the TTArtisan 11mm fish-eye lens at f/2.8.

The low noise and ISO invariant sensor of the R6 makes it superb for nightscapes, apart from the nagging amp glow. That glow will also add an annoying edge gradient to deep-sky images, best dealt with when shooting by the use of LENR or dark frames. 

As the image of the Andromeda Galaxy, M31, at the top of the blog attests, with careful processing it is certainly possible to get fine deep-sky images with the R6. 

For low-light movies the R6 is Canon’s answer to the Sony alphas. No other Canon camera can do night sky movies as well as the R6. For me, it was the prime feature that made the R6 the camera of choice to complement the Ra. 

— Alan, September 22, 2021 / © 2021 Alan Dyer / AmazingSky.com  

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Banff by Moonlight, a 25-Year Challenge


Selfie at Lake Louise in Moonlight

For two magical nights I was able to capture the Rockies by moonlight, with the brilliant stars of winter setting behind the mountains.

I’ve been waiting for nights like these for many years! I consider this my “25-Year Challenge!”

Back during my early years of shooting nightscapes I was able to capture the scene of Orion setting over Lake Louise and the peaks of the Continental Divide, with the landscape lit by the Moon.

Such a scene is possible only in late winter, before Orion sets out of sight and, in March, with a waxing gibbous Moon to the east to light the scene but not appear in the scene. There are only a few nights each year the photograph is possible. Most are clouded out!

Orion Over Lake Louise, 1995
Orion over Lake Louise, Banff National Park, Alberta March 1995 at Full Moon 28mm lens at f/2.8 Ektachrome 400 slide film

Above is the scene in March 1995, in one of my favourite captures on film. What a night that was!

But it has taken 24 years for my schedule, the weather, and the Moon phase to all align to allow me to repeat the shoot in the digital age. Thus the Challenge.

Here’s the result.

Orion Setting over Victoria Glacier
Orion setting over the iconic Victoria Glacier at Lake Louise, with the scene lit by the light of the waxing Moon, on March 19, 2019. This is a panorama of 3 segments stitched with Adobe Camera Raw, each segment 8 seconds at f/3.5 with the Sigma 24mm Art lens and Nikon D750 at ISO 800.

Unlike with film, digital images make it so much easier to stitch multiple photos into a panorama.

In the film days I often shot long single exposures to produce star trails, though the correct exposure was an educated guess factoring in variables like film reciprocity failure and strength of the moonlight.

Below is an example from that same shoot in March 1995. Again, one of my favourite film images.

Orion Setting Over Mt Temple
Orion setting over Mount Temple, near Lake Louise, Banff National park, Alberta. March 1995. On Ektachrome 100 slide film, with a 28mm lens at f/8 for a roughly 20 minute exposure. Full moonlight provides the illumination

This year, time didn’t allow me to shoot enough images for a star trail. In the digital age, we generally shoot lots of short exposures to stack them for a trail.

Instead, I shot this single image of Orion setting over Mt. Temple.

Orion and Canis Major over Mt. Temple
The winter stars of Orion (centre), Canis Major (left) and Taurus (upper right) over Mt. Temple in Banff National Park. This is from the Morant’s Curve viewpoint on the Bow Valley Parkway, on March 19, 2019. Illumination is from moonlight from the waxing gibbous Moon off frame to the left. This is a single 8-second exposure at f/3.2 with the 24mm Sigma Art lens and Nikon D750 at ISO 800.

Plus I shot the panorama below, both taken at Morant’s Curve, a viewpoint named for the famed CPR photographer Nicholas Morant who often shot from here with large format film cameras. Kevin Keefe of Trains magazine wrote a nice blog about Morant.

Night Train in the Moonlight at Morant's Curve
A panorama of Morant’s Curve, on the Bow River in Banff National Park, with an eastbound train on the CPR tracks under the stars of the winter sky. Illumination is from the 13-day gibbous Moon off frame at left. Each segment is 8 seconds at f/3.2 and ISO 800 with the 24mm Sigma Art lens and Nikon D750 in portrait orientation.

I was shooting multi-segment panoramas when a whistle in the distance to the west alerted me to the oncoming train. I started the panorama segment shooting at the left, and just by good luck the train was in front of me at centre when I hit the central segment. I continued to the right to catch the blurred rest of the train snaking around Morant’s Curve. I was very pleased with the result.

The night before I was at another favourite spot, Two Jack Lake near Banff, to again shoot panoramas of the moonlit scene below the bright stars of the winter sky.

Parks Canada Red Chairs under the Winter Sky at Two Jack Lake
These are the iconic red chairs of Parks Canada, here at frozen Two Jack Lake, Banff National Park, and under the moonlit winter sky. This was March 18, 2019, with the scene illuminated by the gibbous Moon just at the frame edge here. This is a panorama of 11-segments, each 10 seconds at f/4 with the Sigma 24mm Art lens and Nikon D750 at ISO 800.

A run up to the end of the Vermilion Lakes road at the end of that night allowed me to capture Orion and Siris reflected in the open water of the upper lake.

Orion Setting in the Moonlight at Vermilion Lakes
The winter stars setting at Vermilion Lakes in Banff National Park, on March 18, 2019. This is a panorama cropped from a set of 11 images, all with the 24mm Sigma Art lens at f/3.2 for 10 seconds each and the Nikon D750 at ISO 800, in portrait orientation.

Unlike in the film days, today we also have some wonderful digital planning tools to help us pick the right sites and times to capture the scene as we envision it.

This is a screen shot of the PhotoPills app in its “augmented reality” mode, taken by day during a scouting session at Two Jack, but showing where the Milky Way will be later that night in relation to the real “live” scene shot with the phone’s camera.

PhotoPills
PhotoPills

The app I like for planning before the trip is The Photographer’s Ephemeris. This is a shot of the plan for the Lake Louise shoot. The yellow lines are the sunrise and sunset points. The thin blue line at lower right is the angle toward the gibbous Moon at about 10 p.m. on March 19.

TPE
The Photographer’s Ephemeris

Even better than TPE is its companion program TPE 3D, which allows you to preview the scene with the mountain peaks, sky, and illumination all accurately simulated for your chosen location. I am impressed!

TPE 3D
TPE 3D

Compare the simulation above to the real thing below, in a wide 180° panorama.

Lake Louise Panorama by Winter Moonlight
A panorama of Lake Louise in winter, in Banff National Park, Alberta, taken under the light of the waxing gibbous Moon, off frame here to the left. This was March 19, 2019. This is a crop from the original 16-segment panorama, each segment with the 24mm Sigma Art lens and Nikon D750, oriented “portrait.” Each segment was 8 seconds at f/3.2 and ISO 800.

These sort of moonlit nightscapes are what I started with 25 years ago, as they were what film could do well.

These days, everyone chases after dark sky scenes with the Milky Way, and they do look wonderful, beyond anything film could do. I shoot many myself. And I include an entire chapter in my ebook above about shooting the Milky Way.

But … there’s still a beauty in a contrasty moonlit scene with a deep blue sky from moonlight, especially with the winter sky and its population of bright stars and constellations.

Parks Canada Red Chairs under the Winter Stars at Mount Rundle
These are the iconic red chairs of Parks Canada, here on the Tunnel Mountain Drive viewpoint overlooking the Bow River and Mount Rundle, in Banff National Park, and under the moonlit winter sky. This is a panorama cropped from the original 12-segments, each 15 seconds at f/4 with the Sigma 24mm Art lens and Nikon D750 at ISO 800.

I’m glad the weather and Moon finally cooperated at the right time to allow me to capture these magical moonlit panoramas.

— Alan, March 26, 2019 / © 2019 Alan Dyer / AmazingSky.com

 

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Testing ON1 Photo RAW for Astrophotography


ON1 Testing Title

Can the new version of ON1 Photo RAW match Photoshop for astrophotography? 

The short TL;DR answer: No.

But … as always, it depends. So do read on.

Released in mid-November 2018, the latest version of ON1 Photo RAW greatly improves a non-destructive workflow. Combining Browsing, Cataloging, Raw Developing, with newly improved Layers capabilities, ON1 is out to compete with Adobe’s Creative Cloud photo suite – Lightroom, Camera Raw, Bridge, and Photoshop – for those looking for a non-subscription alternative.

Many reviewers love the new ON1 – for “normal” photography.

But can it replace Adobe for night sky photos? I put ON1 Photo RAW 2019 through its paces for the demanding tasks of processing nightscapes, time-lapses, and deep-sky astrophotos.

The Conclusions

In my eBook “How to Photograph and Process Nightscapes and Time-Lapses” (linked to at right) I present dozens of processing tutorials, including several on how to use ON1 Photo RAW, but the 2018 edition. I was critical of many aspects of the old version, primarily of its destructive workflow when going from its Develop and Effects modules to the limited Layers module of the 2018 edition.

I’m glad to see many of the shortfalls have been addressed, with the 2019 edition offering a much better workflow allowing layering of raw images while maintaining access to all the original raw settings and adjustments. You no longer have to flatten and commit to image settings to layer them for composites. When working with Layers you are no longer locked out of key functions such as cropping.

I won’t detail all the changes to ON1 2019 but they are significant and welcome.

The question I had was: Are they enough for high-quality astrophotos in a non-destructive workflow, Adobe Photoshop’s forté.

While ON1 Photo RAW 2019 is much better, I concluded it still isn’t a full replacement of Adobe’s Creative Cloud suite, as least not for astrophotography.

NOTE: All images can be downloaded as high-res versions for closer inspection. 

ON1 2019 is Better, But for Astrophotography …

  1. Functions in Layers are still limited. For example, there is no stacking and averaging for noise smoothing. Affinity Photo has those.
  2. Filters, though abundant for artistic special effect “looks,” are limited in basic but essential functions. There is no Median filter, for one.
  3. Despite a proliferation of contrast controls, for deep-sky images (nebulas and galaxies) I was still not able to achieve the quality of images I’ve been used to with Photoshop.
  4. The lack of support for third-party plug-ins means ON1 cannot work with essential time-lapse programs such as Timelapse Workflow or LRTimelapse.

ON1 Final Composite
A finished nightscape composite, with stacked exposures for the ground and stacked and tracked exposures for the sky, layered and blended in ON1.

Recommendations

Nightscapes: ON1 Photo RAW 2019 works acceptably well for nightscape still images:

  1. Its improved layering and excellent masking functions are great for blending separate ground and sky images, or for applying masked adjustments to selected areas.

Time-Lapses: ON1 works is just adequate for basic time-lapse processing:

  1. Yes, you can develop one image and apply its settings to hundreds of images in a set, then export them for assembly into a movie. But there is no way to vary those settings over time, as you can by mating Lightroom to LRTimelapse.
  2. As with the 2018 edition, you still cannot copy and paste masked local adjustments from image to image, limiting their use.
  3. Exporting those images is slow.

Deep-Sky: ON1 is not a program I can recommend for deep-sky image processing:

  1. Stars inevitably end up with unsightly sharpening haloes.
  2. De-Bayering artifacts add blocky textures to the sky background.
  3. And all the contrast controls still don’t provide the “snap” and quality I’m used to with Photoshop when working with low-contrast subjects.

Library / Browse Functions

ON1 Browse Module
ON1 cannot catalog or display movie files or Photoshop’s PSB files (but then again with PSBs neither can Lightroom!).

ON1 is sold first and foremost as a replacement for Adobe Lightroom, and to that extent it can work well. Unlike Lightroom, ON1 allows browsing and working on images without having to import them formally into a catalog.

However, you can create a catalog if you wish, one that can be viewed even if the original images are not “on-line.” The mystery seems to be where ON1 puts its catalog file on your hard drive. I was not able to find it, to manually back it up. Other programs, such as Lightroom and Capture One, locate their catalogs out in the open in the Pictures folder.

For those really wanting a divorce from Adobe, ON1 now offers an intelligent AI-based function for importing Lightroom catalogs and transferring all your Lightroom settings you’ve applied to raw files to ON1’s equivalent controls.

However, while ON1 can read Photoshop PSD files, it will flatten them, so you would lose access to all the original image layers.

ON1’s Browse module is good, with many of the same functions as Lightroom, such as “smart collections.” Affinity Photo – perhaps ON1’s closest competitor as a Photoshop replacement – still lacks anything like it.

But I found ON1’s Browse module buggy, often taking a long while to allow access into a folder, presumably while it is rendering image previews.

There are no plug-ins or extensions for exporting directly to or synching to social media and photo sharing sites.

Nightscape Processing – Developing Raw Images

ON1 Before and After Processing
On the left, a raw image as it came out of the camera. On the right, after developing (with Develop and Effects module settings applied) in ON1.

For this test I used the same nightscape image I threw at Adobe competitors a year ago, in a test of a dozen or more raw developers. It is a 2-minute tracked exposure with a Sigma 20mm Art lens at f/2 and Nikon D750 at ISO 1600.

ON1 did a fairly good job. Some of its special effect filters, such a Dynamic Contrast, Glow, and Sunshine, can help bring out the Milky Way, though do add an artistic “look” to an image which you might or might not like.

Below, I compare Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) to ON1. It was tough to get ON1’s image looking the same as ACR’s result, but then again, perhaps that’s not the point. Does it just look good? Yes, it does.

ON1 & ACR Raw Image Comparison
On the left, a single raw image developed with Adobe Camera Raw. On the right, the same image with ON1 and its basic Develop and more advanced Effects settings.

Compared to Adobe Camera Raw, which has a good array of basic settings, ON1 has most of those and more, in the form of many special Effects, with many combined as one-click Presets, as shown below.

ON1 Presets
ON1 offers a huge array of Presets that apply combinations of its filters with one click from the Browse module.

A few presets and individual filters – the aforementioned Dynamic Contrast and Glow – are valuable. However, most of ON1’s filters and presets will not be useful for astrophotography, unless you are after highly artistic and unnatural effects.

Noise Reduction and Lens Correction

ON1 Noise Reduction
On the left, an image in ON1 without any Noise Reduction. On the right, with noise reduction and sharpening (under Details) applied with the settings shown.

Critical to all astrophotography is excellent noise reduction. ON1 does a fine job here, with good smoothing of noise without harming details.

Lens Correction works OK. It detected the 20mm Sigma art lens and automatically applied distortion correction, but not any vignetting (light “fall-off”) correction, perhaps the most important correction in nightscape work. You have to dial this in manually by eye, a major deficiency.

By comparison, ACR applies both distortion and vignetting correction automatically. It also includes settings for many manual lenses that you can select and apply in a click. For example, ACR (and Lightroom) includes settings for popular Rokinon and Venus Optics manual lenses; ON1 does not.

Hot Pixel Removal

Hot Pixel Removal Comparison
On the left, ACR with noise reduction applied (it offers no user-selectable Hot Pixel Removal tool). In the middle, ON1 with Remove Hot Pixels turned on; on the right, with it turned off – showing more hot pixels than ACR does.

I shot the example image on a warm summer night and without using in-camera Long Exposure Noise Reduction (to keep the gap between exposures short when shooting sets of tracked and untracked exposures for later compositing).

However, the penalty for not using LENR to expedite the image taking is a ground filled with hot pixels. While Adobe Camera Raw does have some level of hot pixel removal working “under the hood,” many specks remained.

ON1 showed more hot pixels, until you clicked Remove Hot Pixels, found under Details. As shown at centre above, it did a decent job getting rid of the worst offenders.

But as I’ll show later, the penalty is that stars now look distorted and sometimes double, or you get the outright removal of stars. ON1 doesn’t do a good job distinguishing between true sharp-edged hot pixels and the softer images of stars. Indeed, it tends to over sharpen stars.

A competitor, Capture One 11, does a better job, with an adjustable Single Pixel removal slider, so you can at least select the level of star loss you are willing to tolerate to get rid of hot pixels.

Star Image Quality

ON1 & ACR Star Image Comparison
On the left, a 700% blow-up of the stars in Adobe Camera Raw. On the right, the same image processed in ON1 and exported out as a PSD.

Yes, we are pixel peeping here, but that’s what we do in astrophotography. A lot!

Stars in ON1 don’t look as good as in Camera Raw. Inevitably, as you add contrast enhancements, stars in ON1 start to exhibit dark and unsightly “sharpening haloes” not present in ACR, despite me applying similar levels of sharpening and contrast boosts to each version of the image.

Camera Raw has been accused of producing images that are not as sharp as with other programs such as Capture One and ON1.

There’s a reason. Other programs over-sharpen, and it shows here.

We can get away with it here in wide-field images, but not later with deep-sky close-ups. I don’t like it. And it is unavoidable. The haloes are there, albeit at a low level, even with no sharpening or contrast enhancements applied, and no matter what image profile is selected (I used ON1 Standard throughout).

De-Bayering Artifacts

ON1-Debayer
ON1, with contrast boosts applied but with no sharpening or noise reduction, shows star haloes, while the sky shows a blocky pattern at the pixel level in high ISO shots.

ACR-Debayer
Adobe Camera Raw, with similar settings but also no sharpening or noise reduction, shows a smooth and uniform sky background.

You might have to download and closely inspect these images to see the effect, but ON1’s de-Bayering routine exhibits a cross-hatched blocky pattern at the pixel-peeping level. ACR does not.

I see this same effect with some other raw developers. For example, the free Raw Therapee shows it with many of its choices for de-Bayering algorithms, but not all. Of the more than a dozen raw developers I tested a year ago, ACR and DxO PhotoLab had (and still have) the most artifact-free de-Bayering and smoothest noise reduction

Again, we can get away with some pixel-level artifacts here, but not later, in deep-sky processing.

Nightscape Processing — Layering and Compositing

ON1 Perfect Brush
ON1’s adjustable “Perfect Brush” option for precise masking around edges and objects isn’t quite as effective as Photoshop’s Quick Selection Tool.

Compositing

The 2018 version of ON1 forced you to destructively flatten images when bringing them into the Layers module.

The 2019 version of ON1 improves that. It is now possible to composite several raw files into one image and still retain all the original Develop and Effects settings for non-destructive work.

You can then use a range of masking tools to mask in or out the sky.

For the example above, I have stacked tracked and untracked exposures, and am starting to mask out the trailed stars from the untracked exposure layer.

To do this with Adobe, you would have to open the developed raw files in Photoshop (ideally using “smart objects” to retain the link back to the raw files). But with ON1 we stay within the same program, to retain access to non-destructive settings. Very nice!

To add masks, ON1 2019 does not have the equivalent of Photoshop’s excellent Quick Selection Tool for selecting the sky or ground. It does have a “Perfect Brush” option which uses the tonal value of the pixels below it, rather than detecting edges, to avoid “painting over the lines.”

While the Perfect Brush does a decent job, it still requires a lot of hand painting to create an accurate mask without holes and defects. There is no non-destructive “Select and Mask” refinement option as in Photoshop.

Yes, ON1’s Refine Brush and Chisel Mask tools can help clean up a mask edge but are destructive to the mask. That’s not acceptable to my non-destructive mindset!

Local Adjustments 

ON1 Masking Adjustments
Local Adjustments can be painted in or out with classic and easy-to-adjust and view masks and layers, rather than adjustment pins used by many raw developers such as ACR.

The masking tools are also applicable to adding “Local Adjustments” to any image layer, to brighten or darken regions of an image for example.

These work well and I find them more intuitive than the “pins” ACR uses on raw files, or DxO PhotoLab’s quirky “U-Point” interface.

ON1’s Local Adjustments work more like Photoshop’s Adjustment Layers and are similarly non-destructive. Excellent.

Luminosity Masks

ON1 Luminosity Masking
ON1 has one-click Luminosity masking, an excellent feature.

A very powerful feature of ON1 is its built-in Luminosity masking.

Yes, Camera Raw now has Range Masks, and Photoshop can be used to create luminosity masks, but making Photoshop’s luminosity masks easily adjustable requires purchasing third-party extension panels.

ON1 can create an adjustable and non-destructive luminosity mask on any image or adjustment layer with a click.

While such masks, based on the brightness of areas, aren’t so useful for low-contrast images like the Milky Way scene above, they can be very powerful for merging high-contrast images (though ON1 also has an HDR function not tested here).

Glow Effect
ON1’s handy Orton-style Glow effect, here with a Luminosity mask applied. The mask can be adjusted with the Levels and Window sliders, and applied to a range of colors as well.

ON1 has the advantage here. Its Luminosity masks are a great feature for compositing exposures or for working on regions of bright and dark in an image.

Final Composite

ON1 Final Composite
A finished nightscape composite, with stacked exposures for the ground and stacked and tracked exposures for the sky, layered and blended in ON1.

Here again is the final result, above.

It is not just one image each for the sky and ground, but is instead a stack of four images for each half of the composite, to smooth noise. This form of stacking is somewhat unique to astrophotography, and is commonly used to reduce noise in nightscapes and in deep-sky images, as shown later.

Stacking

ON1-Layer Opacities
This shows an intermediate step in creating the final composite shown above: Four sky layers are stacked, with opacities as shown, which has the effect of smoothing noise. But to continue working on the image requires making a single “New Stamped Layer” out of the group of four – in this case, the sky layers. The same can be done for the four ground layers.

Here I show how you have to stack images in ON1.

Unlike Photoshop and Affinity Photo, ON1 does not have the ability to merge images automatically into a stack and apply a mathematical averaging to the stack, usually a Mean or Median stack mode. The averaging of the image content is what reduces the random noise.

Instead, with ON1 you have perform an “old school” method of average stacking – by changing the opacity of the layers, so that Layer 2 = 50%, Layer 3 = 33%, Layer 4 = 25%, and so on. The result is identical to performing a Mean stack mode in Photoshop or Affinity.

Fine, except there is no way to perform a Median stack, which can be helpful for eliminating odd elements present in only one frame, perhaps an aircraft trail.

Copy and Paste Settings

ON1 Pasting Settings
ON1 allows easy copying and pasting of settings from one raw image to others, with the annoying exception of Local Adjustments and their masks.

Before we even get to the stacking stage, we have to develop and process all the images in a set. Unlike Lightroom or Camera Raw, ON1 can’t develop and synchronize settings to a set of images at once. You can work on only one image at a time.

So, you work on one image (one of the sky images here), then Copy and Paste its settings to the other images in the set. I show the Paste dialog box here.

This works OK, though I did find some bugs – the masks for some global Effects layers did not copy properly; they copied inverted, as black instead of white masks.

However, Luminosity masks did copy from image to image, which is surprising considering the next point.

The greater limitation is that no Local Adjustments (ones with masks to paint in a correction to a selected area) copy from one image to another … except ones with gradient masks. Why the restriction?

So as wonderful as ON1’s masking tools might be, they aren’t of any use if you want to copy their masked adjustments across several images, or, as shown next, to a large time-lapse set.

While Camera Raw’s and Lightroom’s Local Adjustment pins are more awkward to work with, they do copy across as many images as you like.

Time-Lapse Processing

ON1 Copy & Paste
ON1 does allow developing one image in a set, then copying and pasting its settings to perhaps hundreds of other images in a time-lapse set.

A few Adobe competitors, such as Affinity Photo (as of this writing) simply can’t do this.

By comparison, with the exception of Local Adjustments, ON1 does have good functions for Copying and Pasting Settings. These are essential for processing a set of hundreds of time-lapse frames.

ON1 Export
This is ON1’s Export dialog box, set up here to export the developed raw files into another “intermediate” set of 4K-sized JPGs for movie assembly.

Once all the images are processed – whether it be with ON1 or any other program – the frames have to exported out to an intermediate set of JPGs for assembly into a movie by third-party software. ON1 itself can’t assemble movies, but then again neither can Lightroom (as least not very well), though Photoshop can, through its video editing functions.

For my test set of 220 frames, each with several masked Effects layers, ON1 took 2 hours and 40 minutes to perform the export to 4K JPGs. Photoshop, through its Image Processor utility, took 1 hour and 30 minutes to export the same set, developed similarly and with several local adjustment pins.

ON1 did the job but was slow.

A greater limitation is that, unlike Lightroom, ON1 does not accept any third party plug-ins (it serves as a plug-in for other programs). That means ON1 is not compatible with what I feel are essential programs for advanced time-lapse processing: either Timelapse Workflow (from https://www.timelapseworkflow.com) or the industry-standard LRTimelapse (from https://lrtimelapse.com).

Both programs work with Lightroom to perform incremental adjustments to settings over a set of images, based on the settings of several keyframes.

Lacking the ability to work with these programs means ON1 is not a program for serious and professional time-lapse processing.

Deep-Sky Processing

ON1-Tracked Milky Way
A tracked 2-minute exposure of the Cygnus Milky Way, with a Sony a7III camera at ISO 800 and Venus Optics Laowa 15mm lens at f/2, developed in ON1.

ACR-Tracked Milky Way
The same Milky Way image developed in Adobe Camera Raw. It looks better!

Wide-Angle Milky Way

Now we come to the most demanding task: processing long exposures of the deep-sky, such as wide-angle Milky Way shots and close-ups of nebulas and galaxies taken through telescopes. All require applying generous levels of contrast enhancement.

As the above example shows, try as I might, I could not get my test image of the Milky Way to look as good with ON1 as it did with Adobe Camera Raw. Despite the many ways to increase contrast in ON1 (Contrast, Midtones, Curves, Structure, Haze, Dynamic Contrast and more!), the result still looked flat and with more prominent sky gradients than with ACR.

And remember, with ACR that’s just the start of a processing workflow. You can then take the developed raw file into Photoshop for even more precise work.

With ON1, its effects and filters all you have to work with. Yes, that simplifies the workflow, but its choices are more limited than with Photoshop, despite ON1’s huge number of Presets.

Deep-Sky Close-Ups

ON1 Processed M31
The Andromeda Galaxy, in a stack of six tracked and auto-guided 8-minute exposures with a stock Canon 6D MkII through an 80mm f/6 refractor.

Photoshop Processed M31
The same set of six exposures, stacked and processed with ACR and Photoshop, with multiple masked adjustment layers as at right. The result looks better.

Similarly, taking a popular deep-sky subject, the Andromeda Galaxy, aka M31, and processing the same original images with ON1 and ACR/Photoshop resulted in what I think is a better-looking result with Photoshop.

Of course, it’s possible to change the look of such highly processed images with the application of various Curves and masked adjustment layers. And I’m more expert with Photoshop than with ON1.

But … as with the Cygnus Milky Way image, I just couldn’t get Andromeda looking as good in ON1. It always looked a little flat.

Dynamic Contrast did help snap up the galaxy’s dark lanes, but at the cost of “crunchy” stars, as I show next. A luminosity “star mask” might help protect the stars, but I think the background sky will inevitably suffer from the de-Bayering artifacts.

Star and Background Sky Image Quality

ON1 Processed M31-Close-Up
A 400% close-up of the final Andromeda Galaxy image. It shows haloed stars and a textured and noisy sky background.

Photoshop Processed M31-Close-Up
The same area blown up 400% of the Photoshop version of the Andromeda Galaxy image. Stars and sky look smoother and more natural.

As I showed with the nightscape image, stars in ON1 end up looking too “crunchy,” with dark halos from over sharpening, and also with the blocky de-Bayering artifacts now showing up in the sky.

I feel it is not possible to avoid dark star haloes, as any application of contrast enhancements, so essential for these types of objects, brings them out, even if you back off sharpening at the raw development stage, or apply star masks.

ON1 Processed M31-With & Without
On the left, the image before any processing applied; on the right, after the level of processing needed for such deep-sky images. What starts out looking OK, turns messy.

ON1 is applying too much sharpening “under the hood.” That might “wow” casual daytime photographers into thinking ON1 is making their photos look better, but it is detrimental to deep-sky images. Star haloes are a sign of poor processing.

Noise and Hot Pixels

ON1 With & Without NR and Hot Pixels
With and without noise reduction and hot pixel removal shows stars becoming lost and misshapen with the Remove Hot Pixel option.

ON1’s noise reduction is quite good, and by itself does little harm to image details.

But turn on the Remove Hot Pixel button and stars start to be eaten. Faint stars fade out and brighter stars get distorted into double shapes or have holes in them.

Hot pixel removal is a nice option to have, but for these types of images it does too much harm to be useful. Use LENR or take dark frames, best practices in any case.

Image Alignment and Registration

ON1 Auto-Alignment
The six Andromeda images stacked then “Auto-Aligned” in ON1, with just the top (first) and bottom (last) images turned on here. with the top image switched to Difference blend mode to show any mis-alignment.

Photoshop Auto-Alignment
The same set stacked and “Auto-Aligned” in Photoshop, with the same first and last images turned on and blended with Difference. PS’s alignment is much better, indicated by the image “blacking out” as the two registered frames cancel out.

Before any processing of deep-sky images is possible, it is first necessary to stack and align them, to make up for slight shifts from image to image, usually due to the mount not being perfectly polar aligned. Such shifts can be both translational (left-right, up-down) and rotational (turning about the guide star).

New to ON1 2019 is an Auto-Align Layers function. It worked OK but not nearly as well as Photoshop’s routine. In my test images of M31, ON1 didn’t perform enough rotation.

Once stacked and aligned, and as I showed above, you then have to manually change the opacities of each layer to blend them for noise smoothing.

By comparison, Photoshop has a wonderful Statistics script (under File>Scripts) that will automatically stack, align, then mean or median average the images, and turn the result into a non-destructive smart object, all in one fell swoop. I use it all the time for deep-sky images. There’s no need for separate programs such as Deep-Sky Stacker.

In ON1, however, all that has to be done manually, step-by-step. ON1 does do the job, just not as well.

Wrap-Up

M31 from ON1
The final M31, Andromeda Galaxy image processed with ON1.

ON1 Photo RAW 2019 is a major improvement, primarily in providing a more seamless and less destructive workflow.

Think of it as Lightroom with Layers! 

But it isn’t Photoshop.

Dynamic Contrast
ON1’s useful Dynamic Contrast filter. A little goes a long way.

True to ON1’s heritage as a special effect plug-in, it has some fine Effect filters, such as Dynamic Contrast above, ones I sometimes use from within Photoshop as plug-in smart filters.

Under Sharpen, ON1 does offer a High Pass option, a popular method for sharpening deep-sky objects.

Missing Filters and Adjustments

But for astrophoto use, ON1 is missing a lot of basic but essential filters for pixel-level touch-ups. Here’s a short list:

• Missing are Median, Dust & Scratches, Radial Blur, Shake Reduction, and Smart Sharpen, just to mention a handful of filters I find useful for astrophotography, among the dozens of others Photoshop has, but ON1 does not. But then again, neither does Lightroom, another example of how ON1 is more light Lightroom with layers and not Photoshop.

ON1 Color Adjustment
ON1’s selective Color Adjustment. OK, but where’s the Black and Neutrals?

• While ON1 has many basic adjustments for color and contrast, its version of Photoshop’s Selective Color lacks Neutral or Black sliders, great for making fine changes to color balance in astrophotos.

• While there is a Curves panel, it has no equivalent to Photoshop’s “Targeted Adjustment Tool” for clicking on a region of an image to automatically add an inflection point at the right spot on the curve. This is immensely useful for deep-sky images.

• Also lacking is a basic Levels adjustment. I can live without it, but most astrophotographers would find this a deal-breaker.

• On the other hand, hard-core deep-sky photographers who do most of their processing in specialized programs such as PixInsight, using Photoshop or Lightroom only to perform final touch-ups, might find ON1 perfectly fine. Try it!

Saving and Exporting

ON1 saves its layered images as proprietary .onphoto files and does so automatically. There is no Save command, only a final Export command. As such it is possible to make changes you then decide you don’t like … but too late! The image has already been saved, writing over your earlier good version. Nor can you Save As … a file name of your choice. Annoying!

Opening a layered .onphoto file (even with ON1 itself already open) can take a minute or more for it to render and become editable.

Once you are happy with an image, you can Export the final .onphoto version as a layered .PSD file but the masks ON1 exports to the Photoshop layers may not match the ones you had back in ON1 for opacity. So the exported .PSD file doesn’t look like what you were working on. That’s a bug.

Only exporting a flattened TIFF file gets you a result that matches your ON1 file, but it is now flattened.

Bugs and Cost

I encountered a number of other bugs, ones bad enough to lock up ON1 now and then. I’ve even seen ON1’s own gurus encounter bugs with masking during their live tutorials. These will no doubt get fixed in 2019.x upgrades over the next few months.

But by late 2019 we will no doubt be offered ON1 Photo RAW 2020 for another $80 upgrade fee, over the original $100 to $120 purchase price. True, there’s no subscription, but ON1 still costs a modest annual fee, presuming you want the latest features.

Now, I have absolutely no problem with that, and ON1 2019 is a significant improvement.

However, I found that for astrophotography it still isn’t there yet as a complete replacement for Adobe.

But don’t take my word for it. Download the trial copy and test it for yourself.

— Alan, November 22, 2018 / © 2018 Alan Dyer/AmazingSky.com 

 

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A Wonderful Night in Waterton


The Milky Way over Vimy Peak

A clear break between storms provided a marvellous night in the mountains to shoot nightscapes. 

Every year I travel to Waterton Lakes National Park in southwest Alberta to deliver public talks and photo workshops, usually as part of one of the festivals held each year. I was there June 15 to 17 to participate in the annual Wildflower Festival.

On Sunday, June 17 skies cleared to allow my workshop group to travel to one of my favourite spots, Maskinonge, to practice nightscape shooting techniques. The sunset was stunning, then as skies darkened the Moon and Venus over Waterton River provided the scene.

As twilight deepened, a display of noctilucent clouds appeared to the north, my first sighting of the season for this unusual northern sky phenomenon. These clouds at the edge of space are lit by sunlight even at local midnight and form only around summer solstice over the Arctic.

As the sky slowly darkened and the Moon set, the Milky Way appeared arching across the east and down into the south. The sky was never “astronomically dark,” but even with perpetual twilight illuminating the sky, the Milky Way still made a superb subject, especially this night with it reflected in the calm waters on this unusually windless night for Waterton.

On the way back to town, I stopped at another favourite spot, Driftwood Beach on Middle Waterton Lake, to take more images of the Milky Way over Waterton, including the lead image at top.

It was a perfect night in Waterton for shooting the stars and enjoying the night sky. By morning it was raining again!

— Alan, June 21, 2018 / © 2018 Alan Dyer / AmazingSky.com

 

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Testing the Sony a7III for Astrophotography


Milky Way Rising at Dino Park

I put the new Sony a7III mirrorless camera through its paces for the features and functions we need to shoot the night sky.

Sony’s a7III camera has enjoyed rave reviews since its introduction earlier in 2018. Most tests focus on its superb auto exposure and auto focus capabilities that rival much more costly cameras, including Sony’s own a7rIII and a9. 

For astrophotography, none of those auto functions are of any value. We shoot everything on manual. Indeed, the ease of manually focusing in Live View is a key function. 

In my testing I compared the Sony a7III to two competitive DSLRs, the Canon 6D MkII and Nikon D750.

All three are “entry-level” full-frame cameras, with 24 to 26 megapixels and in a similar price league of $1,500 (Nikon) to 2,000 (Sony). 

I tested a Sony a7III purchased locally. It was not supplied to me by Sony in return for an “influential” blog post.

I did this testing in preparation for the new third edition of my Nightscapes and Time-Lapse eBook, which includes information on Sony mirrorless cameras, as well as many, many other updates and additions!

NOTE: Click or Tap on most images to bring them up full-frame for inspection.

Milky Way Rising at Dino Park
MILKY WAY AT DINOSAUR PARK A stack of 2 x 90-second exposures for the ground, to smooth noise, and at f/2.8 for better depth of field, plus a single 30-second untracked exposure at f/2 for the sky. All with the Laowa 15mm lens and Sony a7III at ISO 3200.

Mirrorless vs. DSLR

Sony a7III with Loawa 15mm
COMPACT CAMERA and LENS
The Sony a7III with the compact but fast Laowa Venus Optics 15mm f/2 lens.

As with Sony’s other popular Alpha 7 and 9 series cameras, the new Alpha 7III is a full-frame mirrorless camera, a class of camera Canon and Nikon have yet to offer, though models are rumoured or promised. 

In the meantime, Sony commands the full-frame mirrorless market.

As its name implies, a mirrorless camera lacks the reflex mirror of a digital single lens reflex camera that, in a DSLR, provides the light path for framing the scene though the optical viewfinder. 

Sony Live View
SONY LIVE VIEW
The Sony a7III’s excellent Live View screen display. You can see the Milky Way!

In a mirrorless, the camera remains in “live view” all the time, with the sensor always feeding a live image to either or both the rear LCD screen and electronic viewfinder (EVF). While you can look through and frame using the EVF as you would with a DSLR, you are looking at an electronic image from the sensor, not an optical image from the lens. 

The advantage of purely electronic viewing is that the image you are previewing matches the image you’ll capture, at least for short exposures. The disadvantage is that full-time live view draws more power, with mirrorless cameras notorious for being battery hungry. 

Other mirrorless advantages include:

  • Compact size and lighter weight, yet offering all the image quality of a full-frame DSLR.
  • The thinner body allows the use of lenses from any manufacturer, albeit requiring the right adapter, an additional expense.
  • Lenses developed natively for mirrorless models can be smaller and lighter. An example is the Laowa 15mm f/2 I used for some of the testing.
  • The design lends itself to video shooting, with many mirrorless cameras offering 4K as standard, while often in DSLRs only high-end models do.
  • More rapid-fire burst modes and quieter shutters are a plus for action and wedding photographers, though they are of limited value for astrophotography.

Points of Comparison

Camera Trio-Sony, Nikon, Canon
CAMERA TRIO
The Sony a7III, Nikon D750, and Canon 6D Mark II. Note the size difference.

In testing the Sony a7III I ignored all the auto functions. Instead, I concentrated on those points I felt of most concern to astrophotographers, such as:

  • Noise levels
  • Effectiveness of Long Exposure Noise Reduction (LENR) 
  • Quality of Raw files, such as sharpness of stars
  • Brightness of Live View for framing and focusing
  • Uniformity of sensor illumination
  • Compatibility for time-lapse imaging
  • Battery life

TL;DR Conclusions

Sony a7III and Meade 70mm
DEEP-SKY TEST
The North America Nebula with the Sony a7III and a Meade 70mm f/5 astrographic refractor, for a single 4-minute exposure at ISO 1600. The reds have been boosted in processing.

Noise
Levels of luminance and chrominance noise were excellent and similar to – but surprisingly not better than – the Nikon D750.

Star Eater
The Star Eater is effectively gone. Stars are not smoothed out in long exposures. 

ISO Invariance 
The Sony exhibited good – though not great – “ISO invariant” performance.

Dark Frames 
Dark frame subtraction using Long Exposure Noise Reduction removed most – but not all – hot pixels from thermal noise. 

Live View Focusing and Framing
Live View was absolutely superb, though the outstanding Bright Monitoring function is as well-hidden as Sony could possibly make it. 

Sensor Illumination Uniformity
The Sony showed some slight edge-of-frame shadowing from the mask in front of the sensor, as well as a weak purple amp glow.

Features 
• The a7III lacks any internal intervalometer or ability to add one via an app. But it is compatible with many external intervalometers and controllers.

• The a7III’s red sensitivity for recording H-Alpha-emitting nebulas was poor. 

• It lacks the “light-frame” buffer offered by full-frame Canons that allows shooting several frames in quick succession even with LENR turned on.

Video Capability 
The a7III offers 4K video and, at 24 frames-per-second, is full-frame. Shutter speeds can be as slow as 1/4-second, allowing real-time aurora shooting at reasonable ISO speeds. 

Battery Life
Shooting typical 400-frame time-lapses used about 40% of the battery capacity, similar to the other DSLRs. 

Overall Recommendations
The Sony a7III is a superb camera for still and time-lapse nightscape shooting, and excellent for real-time aurora videos. It is good, though not great, for long-exposure deep-sky imaging. 

Liberty Schoolhouse with Star Trails
STAR TRAILS and AURORA With the Laowa 15mm lens and Sony a7III, for 155 exposures, all 20 seconds at f/2.8 and at ISO 800, and taken as part of a 360-frame time-lapse.

Noise

The Sony a7III uses a sensor that is “Backside Illuminated,” a feature that promises to improve low-light performance and reduce noise. 

I saw no great benefit from the BSI sensor. Noise at typical astrophoto ISO speeds – 800 to 6400 – were about equal to the four-year-old Nikon D750. 

That was a bit surprising. I expected the new BSI-equipped Sony to better the Nikon by about a stop. It did not. This emphasizes just how good the Nikon D750 is. 

Nevertheless, noise performance of the Sony a7III was still excellent, with both the Sony and Nikon handily outperforming the Canon 6D MkII, with its slightly smaller pixels, by about a stop in noise levels. 

NOTE: I performed all Raw developing with Adobe Camera Raw v10.3. It is possible some of the artifacts I saw are due to ACR not handling the a7III’s .ARW files as well as it should. But to develop all the images from Sony, Nikon, and Canon equally for comparisons, ACR is the best choice. 

1-Sony vs Nikon vs Canon Noise
COMPARING NOISE
The Sony a7III exhibited noise levels similar to the Nikon D750 at high ISOs, with the Sony and Nikon each about a stop better for noise than the Canon 6D MkII.

2A-Sony vs Nikon vs Canon at 3200
NOISE AT ISO 3200
At ISO 3200, a common nightscape ISO speed, all three cameras performed well in this moonlit scene. The Canon shows a darker sky as its images were taken a few minutes later. The Nikon had the Sigma 14mm Art lens; the Canon and Sony used the same Rokinon 14mm SP lens.

2B-Sony vs Nikon vs Canon at 6400
NOISE AT ISO 6400
At ISO 6400, the Canon begins to show excessive noise, about a stop worse than the Nikon and Sony. No luminance noise reduction was applied to these images. All cameras show an equal number of stars recorded.

ISO Invariance

Both the Sony and Nikon use sensor and signal path designs that are “ISO invariant.” As a result, images shot underexposed at slower ISOs, then boosted in exposure later in processing look identical to properly exposed high-ISO images. Well, almost.

The Sony still showed some discoloration artifacts and added noise when boosting images by +4 EV that the Nikon did not. Even with uncompressed Raws, the Sony was not quite as ISO invariant as the Nikon, though the difference shows up only under extreme push-processing of badly underexposed frames. 

Plus, the Sony was far better than the Canon 6D MkII’s “ISO variant” sensor. Canon really needs to improve their sensors to keep in the game. 

3A-Sony vs Nikon vs Canon ISO Invariancy
ISO INVARIANCE COMPARISON
Here I shot all three cameras at ISO 6400 for a correct exposure for the scene, and also at ISO 1600 and ISO 400, for images 2 and 4 stops underexposed respectively. These were then boosted in Adobe Camera Raw by 2 and 4 stops in Exposure Value (EV) to compensate. With ISO invariant sensors the boosted images should look similar to the well-exposed image.

3B-Sony vs Nikon vs Canon ISO Invariancy CU
ISO INVARIANCE CLOSE-UP
A closeup of the scene shows the ISO variant Canon exhibited more noise and magenta discoloration in the +4 EV boosted image. The Nikon looks very clean, but the Sony also shows discoloration, green here, and an increase in noise. These are all uncompressed 14-bit Raw files.

4-Sony vs Nikon ISO Invariancy
SONY vs. NIKON
Comparing just the two ISO-invariant cameras, the Sony and the Nikon, on another night, shows a similar performance difference when boosting underexposed slow-ISO images later in Camera Raw. The Sony begins to show more noise and now a magenta discoloration in the +3 and +4 EV images, similar to, but not as badly as does the ISO-variant Canon 6D MkII.

Compressed vs. Uncompressed 

Sony-Comp-UnCompThe Sony a7III offers a choice of shooting Uncompressed or Compressed Raw files. Uncompressed Raws are 47 Mb in size; Compressed Raws are 24 Mb. 

In well-exposed images, I saw little difference in image quality. 

But the dark shadows in underexposed nightscapes withstood shadow recovery better in the uncompressed files. Compressed files showed more noise and magenta discoloration in the shadows. 

It is not clear if Sony’s compressed Raws are 12-bit vs. 14-bit for uncompressed files. 

Nevertheless, for the demands of nightscape and deep-sky shooting and processing, I suggest shooting Uncompressed Raws. Use Compressed only if you plan to take lots of time-lapse frames and need to conserve memory card space on extended shoots. 

5A-Sony UnCompressed vs Compressed at -1EV
UNCOMPRESSED vs. COMPRESSED
Here I compare any image degradation from using compressed vs. uncompressed Raws, and from employing Long Exposure Noise Reduction. Images are only slightly underexposed and boosted by +1 EV in Camera Raw. Shadow noise is similar in all images, with the ones taken with LENR on showing elimination of colored hot pixels, as they should.

5B-Sony UnCompressed vs Compressed at -4EV
UNCOMPRESSED vs. COMPRESSED at -4EV
The same scene but now underexposed by 4 stops and boosted by +4 EV later shows greater differences. The compressed image shows more noise and discoloration, and the images taken with LENR on, while eliminating hot pixels, show more random luminance noise. Keep in mind, these are vastly underexposed images. 

6-Sony Comp vs Uncomp + DF
UNCOMPRESSED vs. COMPRESSED DEEP-SKY
A real-world deep-sky example shows the same comparison. All images are well-exposed, for tracked and guided 4-minute exposures. The ones taken with LENR on show fewer hot pixels. The compressed images appear identical to the uncompressed files for noise and star content.

Star Eater (Updated March 27, 2021)

Over the last year or so, firmware updates from Sony introduced a much-publicized penchant for Sony Alphas to “eat” stars even in Raw files, apparently due to an internal noise reduction or anti-aliasing routine users could not turn off. Stars were smoothed away along with the noise in exposures longer than 3.2 seconds in some Sony cameras (longer than 30 seconds in others).

I feel that in the a7III the Star Eater has been largely vanquished.

While others beg to differ and claim this camera still eats stars, they offer no evidence of it other than graphs and charts, not A-B photos of actual tracked starfields taken with the Sony vs. another camera thought not to eat stars.

As the images below show, there is a very slight one-pixel-level softening that kicks in at 4 seconds and longer but it did not eat or wipe out stars. Stars are visible to the same limiting magnitude and close double stars are just as well resolved across all exposures. Indeed, at slower ISOs and longer exposures, more stars are visible.

I saw none of the extreme effects reported by others with other Sonys, where masses of faint stars disappeared or turned into multi-colored blotches. It is possible the effect is still present in other Sony Alpha models. I have not tested those.

But in the a7III, I did not see any significant “star eating” in any long exposures even up to the 4 minutes I used for some deep-sky shots. In images taken at the same time with other cameras not accused of star eating, the Sony showed just as many faint stars as the competitors. Stars were visible to just as faint a limiting magnitude, and that’s what counts, NOT graphs and charts, especially when such results are not shown for other cameras.

In short, long exposures showed just as many stars as did short exposures.

This was true whether I was shooting compressed or uncompressed Raws, with or without Long Exposure Noise Reduction. Neither compression nor LENR invoked “star eating.” 

Sony-Star Eater Series @ 200%
STAR EATER SERIES at 200%
This series of tracked images (shown here blown up 200%) goes from 2 seconds to 2 minutes, with decreasing ISO speed to equalize the exposure value across the series. Between 3.2s and 4s a very slight one-pixel-level softening does kick in, reducing noise and very slightly blurring stars. Yet, just as many stars are recorded and are resolved, and at the lower ISOs/longer exposures more stars are visible because faint stars are not lost in the noise.

Sony-Star Eater Series @ 400%
STAR EATER SERIES at 400%
This is the same series as above but now blown up 400% to better reveal the very subtle change in pixel-level sharpness as exposure lengthened from 3.2 to 4 seconds. Noise (most noticeable in the trees) is reduced and stars are very slightly softened. But none are “eaten” or wiped out. And star colors are not affected, though very small stars are sometimes green, an effect seen in other cameras due to de-Bayering artifacts.

7A-Sony vs Canon for Star Eater v1
STAR EATER DEEP-SKY #1
Tracked deep-sky images through a telescope using 4-minute exposures show the Sony a7III recording an equal number of faint stars as the Canon 6D MkII. No luminance noise reduction was applied to these images in processing.

7B-Sony vs Canon for Star Eater v2
STAR EATER DEEP-SKY #2
Another example with 4-minute exposures again demonstrates no problems recording faint stars. The Canon does show more noise than the Sony. No noise reduction was applied in processing. 

7C-Sony vs Nikon for Star Eater
SONY and NIKON COMPARED
For yet more evidence, this is a comparison of the Sony a7III vs. the Nikon D750 in tracked 90-second exposures with 14mm lenses. Again, the Sony records just as many stars as the Nikon.

LENR Dark frames 

Sony-LENRFor elimination of hot pixels from thermal noise I prefer to use Long Exposure Noise Reduction when possible for nightscape and deep-sky images, especially on warm summer nights.

Exceptions are images taken for star trail stacking and for time-lapses, images that must be taken in quick succession, with minimal time gap between frames.

Turning on LENR did eliminate most hot pixels in long exposures, but not all. A few remained. Also, when boosting the exposure a lot in processing, the images taken with LENR on showed more shot and read noise than non-LENR frames. 

The dark frame the camera was taking and subtracting was actually adding some noise, perhaps due to a temperature difference. The cause is not clear. 

Sony advises that when using LENR Raw images are recorded with only 12-bit depth, not 14-bit. This might be a contributing factor. Yet frames taken with LENR on were the same 47 Mb size as normal uncompressed frames.

For those who think this is normal for LENR use, the Nikon D750 shows nothing like this – frames taken with LENR on are free of all hot pixels and do not show more shot or read noise, nor deterioration of shadow detail from lower bit depths.

However, I emphasize that the noise increase from using LENR with the Sony was visible only when severely boosting underexposed images in processing. 

In most shooting situations, I found using LENR provided the overriding positive benefit of reducing hot pixels. It just needs to be better, Sony!

8A-Sony Dark Frames (W and WO LENR)
SONY WITH AND WITHOUT LENR
These are 4-minute exposures of dark frames (i.e. the lens cap on!) taken at room temperature with and without Long Exposure Noise Reduction. In the Sony, LENR did not eliminate all hot pixels nor the magenta amp glow at the left edge. LENR also added a background level of fine noise. These have had exposure and contrast increased to exaggerate the differences.

8B-Nikon Dark Frames (W and WO LENR)
NIKON WITH AND WITHOUT LENR
Dark frames taken with the Nikon D750 under the same circumstances and processed the same show none of the residual hot pixels and added background noise when LENR is employed. Nor is there any amp glow anywhere along the frame edges.

8C-Sony With and Without LENR
SONY REAL-WORLD LENR COMPARISON
A real-world example with the Sony, with a properly exposed nightscape, shows that the ill effects of using LENR don’t show up under normal processing. You do get the benefit of reduced hot pixels in shadows, especially on a warm night like this was. This is a blow-up of the lower corner of the frame, as indicated.

Sensor Illumination 

How evenly an image is illuminated is a common factor when testing lenses. 

But astrophotography, which often requires extreme contrast boosts, reveals non-uniform illumination of the sensor itself, regardless of the optics, originating from hardware elements in front of the sensor casting shadows onto the sensor. 

This is most noticeable – indeed usually only noticeable – when shooting deep-sky targets though telescopes. 

With DSLRs it is the raised mirror which often casts a shadow, produced a dark vignetted band along the bottom of the frame. Its extent varies from camera model to model.

With a mirrorless camera the sensor is not set far back in a mirror box, as it is in a DSLR. As such, I would have expected a more uniformly illuminated sensor. 

Sony a7III - Sensor CU
SENSOR CLOSE-UP showing intruding mask edges.

Instead, I saw a slight shadowing at the top and bottom edges but just at the corners. This is from a thin metal mask in front of the sensor. It intrudes into the light path ever so slightly. It shouldn’t. 

This is an annoying flaw, though applying “flat fields” or ad hoc local adjustments should eliminate this. But that’s a nuisance to do, and should not be necessary with a mirrorless camera.

Worse is that long deep-sky exposures at high ISOs also exhibited a faint purple glow at the left edge, perhaps from heat from nearby electronics, a so-called “amp glow.” Or I’ve read where this is from an internal infrared source near the sensor.

Taking a dark frame with LENR did not eliminate this, and it should, demonstrating again that for whatever reason in the a7III LENR is not as effective as it should be. 

I have not seen such “amp” glows in cameras (at least in the DSLRs I’ve used) for a number of years, so seeing it in the new Sony a7III was another surprise. 

This would be much tougher to eliminate in deep-sky images where the extreme contrast boosts we typically apply to images of nebulas and galaxies will accentuate any odd glows. 

UPDATE: March 27, 2021 — Subsequent firmware updates seem to have eliminated this amp glow. One supplier of filter-modified cameras, Spencer’s Camera, who had refused to modify Sonys because of this glow, now lists many Sony Alphas as suitable for modification. However, the sensor masks and “green stars” (described below) still make the Sony a7III less desirable for deep-sky imaging than other mirrorless cameras I’ve tested.

9A-Sony Full Field
SONY FIELD ILLUMINATION #1
The full field of a deep-sky image taken through an f/5 70mm astrographic refractor shows the minor level of edge darkening at the corners from shadowing of the sensor in the Sony.

New Sony Blog Example
SONY FIELD ILLUMINATION #2 The full field of a deep-sky image taken through an f/6 105mm refractor shows the level of edge darkening at the edges from shadowing of the sensor in the Sony, and the purple “amplifier” glow at the left edge present in all very long exposures.

Red Sensitivity

When shooting deep-sky objects, particularly red nebulas, we like a camera to have a less aggressive infrared cutoff filter, to pick up as much of the deep red Hydrogen-Alpha emission line as possible. 

The Sony showed poor deep-red sensitivity, though not unlike other cameras. It was a little worse than the stock Canon 6D MkII. 

This isn’t a huge detriment, as anyone who really wants to go after deep nebulosity must use a “filter-modified” camera anyway. 

Canon and Nikon both offered factory modified cameras at one time, notably the Canon 60Da and Nikon D810a. Sony doesn’t have an “a” model mirrorless.

To get the most out of the Sony for deep-sky imaging you would have to have it modified by a third-party, though the amp glow described above makes it a poor choice for modification.

10-Canon5D vs 6D vs Sony (Red Nebula)
RED SENSITIVITY COMPARED
Three deep-sky exposures compare cameras for red sensitivity: a filter-modified Canon 5D MkII, a stock Canon 6D MkII, and the stock Sony a7III. As expected the filter-modified camera picks up much more red nebulosity. The Sony doesn’t do quite as well as the Canon 6D MkII.

Live View Focusing and Framing 

Up to now my report on the Sony a7III hasn’t shown as glowing a performance as all the YouTube reviews would have you believe. 

But Live Focus is where the a7III really stands out. I love it!

In Live View it is possible to make the image so bright you can actually see the Milky Way live on screen! Wow! This makes it so easy to frame nightscapes and deep-sky fields.  

Sony-Custom Buttoms
FINDING BRIGHT MONITORING
The excellent Bright Monitoring function is accessible only off the Custom Key menu where it appears as a choice on the Display/Auto Review2 page (below) that can be assigned to a C button.

But this special “Bright Monitoring” mode is as well hidden as Sony could make it. Unless you actually read the full-length 642-page PDF manual (you have to download it), you won’t know about it. Bright Monitoring does not appear in any of the in-camera menus you can scroll through, so you won’t stumble across it.

Instead, you have to go to the Camera Settings 2 page, then select Still Image–Custom Key. In the menu options that appear you can now scroll to one called Bright Monitoring. Surprise! Assign it to one of the hardware Custom C buttons. I put it on C2, making it easy to call up when needed. 

Sony-Bright Monitoring

The other Live View function that works well, but also needs assigning to a C button is the Camera Settings 1 > Focus Magnifier. I put this on C1. It magnifies the Live View by 5.9x or 11.7x, allowing for precise manual focusing on a star. 

Sony-LiveViewDisp

Two other functions are useful for Live View: 

  • Camera Settings 2 > Live View Display > Setting Effect ON. This allows the Live View image to reflect the camera settings in use, better simulating the actual exposure, even without Bright Monitoring on.
  • Camera Settings 1 > Peaking Setting. Turning this ON superimposes a shimmering effect on parts of an image judged in focus. This might be an aid, or an annoyance. Try it. 

In all, the Sony provides superb, if well-hidden, Live View options that make accurately framing and focusing a nightscape or time-lapse scene a joy. 

Great Features for Astrophotography 

Here are some other Sony a7III features I found of value for astrophotography, and for operating the camera at night. 

Sony a7III with Tilt Screen
SONY TILTING SCREEN It tilts up and down but does not flip out as with the Canon 6D MkII’s. Still, this is a neck- and back-saving feature for astrophotography.

Tilting LCD Screen 
Like the Nikon D750, the Sony’s screen tilts vertically up and down, great for use when on a telescope, or on any tripod when aimed up at the sky. As photographers age, this becomes a more essential feature!

Sony-CustomKey

Custom Buttons 
The four C buttons can be programmed for oft-used functions, making them easy to access at night. Standard functions such as ISO and Drive Mode are easy to get at on the thumb wheel, unlike the Nikon D750 where I am forever hunting for the ISO or Focus Zoom buttons, or the Canon 6D MkII which successfully hides the Focus Zoom and Playback buttons at night.

Sony-MyMenu

My Menu 
In new models, Sony now offers the option of a final “My Menu” page which you can populate with often-used functions from the other 35 pages of menu commands!

Adaptability to Many Lenses 
Using the right lens adapter (I use one from Metabones), it is possible to use lenses with mounts made for Canon, Nikon, Sigma and others. Plus there are an increasing number of lenses from third parties offered with native Sony E-mounts. This is good news, as astrophotography requires fast, high-quality lenses, and the Sony allows more choices.

Lighter Weight / Smaller Size
The compact a7III body weighs a measured 750 grams, vs. 900 grams each for the Nikon D750 and Canon 6D MkII. The lower weight can be helpful for use on lightweight telescopes, on small motion control devices, and for simply keeping weight and bulk down when traveling. 

Sony a7III - Dual Slots

Dual Card Slots 
Not essential, but having two card slots is very helpful, for backup, for handling overflows from very long time-lapse shoots, or assigning them for stills vs. movies, or Raws vs. JPGs. Only Slot 1 will work with the fastest UHS II cards that are needed for recording the highest quality 4K video.

USB Power 
It is possible to power the camera though the USB port (indeed that’s how you charge the battery, as no separate battery charger is supplied as standard, a deficiency). This might be useful for long shoots, though likely as not that same USB port will be needed for an intervalometer or motion control device. But if the Sony had a built-in intervalometer…!

Sony-DispInfo

Display Options
To reduce battery drain it is possible to turn off the EVF completely – I find I never use it at night – and to turn off the LCD display when shooting, though the latter is an option you have to activate to add to the Display button’s various modes. 

The downside is that when shooting is underway you get no reassuring indication anything is happening, except for a brief LED flash when an image is written to a card.  

Sony-ECurtain

Electronic Front Curtain Shutter
Most DSLRs do not offer this, but the Sony’s option of an electronic front curtain shutter and the additional Silent Shooting mode completely eliminates vibration, useful for some high-magnification shooting through telephotos and telescopes.

11-Sony Shutter Vibration
LUNAR CLOSE-UPS COMPARED
This trio compares closeups of the Moon taken with and without electronic front curtain shutter. All were taken through a 130mm refractor telescope at f/12 using a Barlow lens. The image with e-shutter and in Silent Mode is a tad sharper, but that could be just as much from variations in seeing conditions as from the lower vibration from using the electronic shutter.

What’s Missing for Astrophotography

Intervalometer — NOW INCLUDED!
UPDATE: In April 2019 Sony issued a v3 Firmware update for the a7III which added an internal intervalometer. I’ve used this new function and it works very well.

I had originally remarked that this useful function was missing. But no more! Thank you Sony!

While a built-in intervalometer is not essential, I find I often do use the Canon and Nikon in-camera intervalometers for simple shoots. So it is great to have one available on the Sony. However, like other brands’ internal intervalometers Sony’s is good only for exposures up to 30 seconds long.

Bulb Timer or Long Exposures
However, while the Sony has a Bulb setting there is no Bulb Timer as there is with the Canon. The Bulb Timer would allow setting long Bulb exposures of any length in the camera. 

Instead, for any exposures over 30 seconds long (or time-lapses with >30-second-long frames) the Sony must be used with an external Intervalometer. I use a $50 Vello unit, and it works very well. It controls the Sony through the camera’s Multi USB port.

In-Camera Image Stacking 
Also missing, and present on most new Canons, are Multiple Exposure modes for in-camera stacking of exposures in a Brighten mode (for star trails) or Averaging mode (for noise smoothing). 

Yes, this can all be done later in processing, but having the camera do the stacking can often be convenient, and great for beginners, as long as they understand what those functions do, or even that they exist!

Time-Lapse Smoothing 
When using its internal intervalometer, the Nikon D750 has an excellent Exposure Smoothing option. This does a fine job smoothing frame-to-frame flickering in time-lapses, something the Canon cannot do. Nor the Sony, as it has no intervalometer at all.

Light Frame Buffer in LENR
This feature is little known and utilized, and only Canon full-frame cameras offer it. Turn on LENR and it is possible to shoot three (with the 6D MkII) or four (with the 6D) Raw images in quick succession even with LENR turned on. The Canon 5D series also has this. 

The dark frame kicks in and locks up the camera only after the series of “light frames” are taken. This is wonderful for taking a set of noise-reduced deep-sky images for later stacking. Nikons don’t have this, not even the D810a, and not Sonys. 

Illuminated Buttons 
The Sony’s buttons are not illuminated. While these might add glows to long exposure images, if they could be designed not to do that (i.e. they turn off during exposures), lit buttons would be very handy at night. 

Limited Touch Screen Functions 
An alternative would be an LCD screen that was touch sensitive. The Sony a7III’s screen is, but only to select an area for auto focus or zooming up an image in playback. The Canon 6D MkII has a fully functional touch screen which can be, quite literally, handy at night.  

Sony a7III with Vello Intervalometer
INTERVALOMETER
For time-lapses, the Sony must be used with an external intervalometer like this Vello unit.

Video Capability 

Here’s another area where the new Sony a7III really shines. 

It offers 4K (or more precisely UltraHD) video recording for videos of 3840 x 2160 pixels. (True 4K is actually 4096 x 2160 pixels.)

With a fast enough UHS-II Class card it can record 4K video up to 30 frames per second and at a bit rate of either 60 or 100 Mbps. 

Sony-MovieSetting

At 24 fps videos are full-frame with no cropping. Hurray! You can take full advantage of wide-angle lenses, great for auroras. At 30 fps, 4K videos are cropped with a 1.2x crop factor.

In Movie Mode ISO speeds go up to ISO 102,400, but are pretty noisy, if unusable at such speeds. 

But when shooting aurora videos I found, to my surprise, I could “drag” the shutter speeds as slow as 1/4-second, fully 4 stops better than the Nikon’s slowest shutter speed of 1/60 second in Full HD, and 3 stops better than the Canon’s slowest movie shutter of 1/30 second. 

Coupled with a fast f/1.4 to f/2 lens, the slow shutter speed allows real-time aurora shooting at “only” ISO 6400 to 12,800, for quite acceptable levels of noise. I am very impressed! 

Real-time video of auroras is not possible with anything like this quality with the Nikon (I’ve used it often), and absolutely not with the Canon. And neither are 4K. 

Is the a7III as good for low-light video as the Sony a7s models, with their larger 8.5-micron pixels? 

I would assume not, but not having an a7s (either Mark I or II) to test I can’t say for sure. But the a7III should do the job for bright auroras, the ones with rapid motion worth recording with video, plus offer 24 megapixels for high-quality stills of all sky subjects. 

I think it’s a great camera for both astrophoto stills and video.

12A-Aurora Video Screen Shot
AURORA VIDEO FRAME
This is a frame grab from a real-time 4K video of a “Steve” aurora.

An example is in a 4K video I shot on May 6, 2018 of an usual aurora known as “STEVE.”

Steve Aurora – May 6, 2018 (4K) from Alan Dyer on Vimeo.

For another example of using the Sony a7III for recording real-time video of the night sky see this video of the aurora shot from Norway in March 2019.

The Northern Lights At Sea from Alan Dyer on Vimeo.

Sony a7III - Buttons and Dials

Battery Life

I found the a7III would use up about about 40% of the battery capacity in a typical 400-frame time-lapse on mild spring nights, with 30-second exposures. This is with the EVF and rear LCD Display OFF, and the camera in Airplane mode to turn off wireless functions to further conserve battery power. I was using the wired Vello intervalometer. 

This is excellent performance on par with the DSLRs I use. At last, we have a mirrorless camera that not only doesn’t eat stars, it also does not eat batteries! 

One battery can get you through a night of shooting, though performance will inevitably decline in winter, as with all cameras. 

Planets Along the Ecliptic
MILKY WAY and PLANETS With the Sony a7III and Laowa 15mm lens at f/2 for a stack of 4 exposures for the ground to smooth noise and one exposure for the sky, all 30 seconds at ISO 3200.

Lens and Telescope Compatibility 

As versatile as a mirrorless camera is for lens choice, making use of that versatility requires buying the right lens adapter(s). They can cost anywhere from $100 to $400. The lowest cost units just adapt the lens mechanically; the more costly units also transfer lens data and allow auto focusing with varying degrees of compatibility. 

Sony a7III with MetaBones
WITH METABONES CANON ADAPTER
The MetaBones Canon EF-to-Sony E mount adapter transfers lens data and allows auto focus to function.

For use on telescopes, the simple adapters will be sufficient, and necessary as many telescope-to-camera adapters and field flatteners are optimized for the longer lens flange-to-sensor distance of a DSLR. Even if you could get a mirrorless camera to focus without a lens adapter to add the extra spacing, the image quality across the field might be compromised on many telescopes. 

I used the Metabones Canon-to-Sony adapter when attaching the Sony to my telescopes using my existing Canon telescope adapters. Image quality was just fine. 

Sony a7III with Telescope Adapter
ADAPTING TO A TELESCOPE
The MetaBones adapter, as will other brands, adds the correct lens flange to sensor distance for telescope field flatteners to work best.

Time-Lapse Controller Compatibility 

Due to limitations set by Sony, controlling one of their cameras with an external controller can be problematic. 

Devices that trigger only the shutter should be fine. That includes simple intervalometers like the Vello, the Syrp Genie Mini panning unit, and the Dynamic Perception and Rhino sliders, to name devices I use. However, all will need the right camera control cable, available from suppliers like B&H. 

And, as I found, the Sony might need to be placed into Continuous shooting mode to have the shutter fire with every trigger pulse from the motion controller. When used with the Genie Mini (below) the Sony fired at only every other pulse if it was in Single shot mode, an oddity of Sony’s firmware.

Some time-lapse controllers are able to connect to a camera through its USB port and then adjust the ISO and aperture as well, for ramped “holy grail” sunset-to-Milky Way sequences. 

For example, the TimeLapse+ View (see http://www.timelapseplus.com) works great for automated holy grails, but the developer recommends that with most Sonys the minimum allowed interval between shots is longer (8 to 14 seconds) than with Canons and Nikons. See http://docs.view.tl/#camera-specific-notes 

With the Alpine Laboratories Radian2, exposure ramping is not possible with a Sony, only basic shutter triggering. See https://alpinelaboratories.com/pages/radian-2-support-get-started_s 

Sony a7III on Genie Mini
SONY WITH THE SYRP GENIE MINI
The Sony A7III worked well with the Syrp Genie Mini motion controller with the right shutter cable but only when placed in Continuous mode.

Recommendations 

In conclusion, here’s my summary recommendations for the three competitive cameras, rating them from Poor, to Fair, to Good, to Excellent. 

Sony a7III - Angled Front

SONY: I deducted marks from the Sony a7III for deep-sky imaging for its lack of a light frame buffer, poor red sensitivity, odd LENR performance, and purple amp glow not seen on the other cameras and that dark frames did not eliminate. 

However, I did not consider “star eating” to be a negative factor, as the Sony showed just as many stars and as well-resolved as did the competitors, and what more could you ask for?

I rate the Sony excellent for nightscape imaging and for real-time aurora videos. I list it as just “good” for time-lapse work only because it will not be fully compatible with some motion controllers and rampers. So beware!

Nikon D750 Angled Front

NIKON: I deducted points for real-time video of auroras – the D750 can do them but is pretty noisy with the high ISOs needed. Its red sensitivity is not bad, but its lack of a light frame buffer results a less productive imaging cycle when using LENR on deep-sky shooting. 

I know … people shoot dark frames separately for subtracting later in processing. However, I’ve found these post-shoot darks rarely work well, as the dark frames are not at the same temperature as the light frames, and often add noise or dark holes. 

Canon 6D MkII Angled Front

CANON: The 6D MkII’s lack of an ISO invariant sensor rears its ugly head in underexposed shadows in dark-sky nightscapes. I like its image stacking options, which can help alleviate the noise and artifacts in still images, but aren’t practical for time-lapses. Thus my Good rating for nightscapes but Fair rating for time-lapses. (See my test at https://amazingsky.net/2017/08/09/testing-the-canon-6d-mark-ii-for-nightscapes/)

While the 6D MkII has HD video, it is incapable of any low-light video work.

But … when well exposed, such as in tracked deep-sky images, the 6D MkII performs well. (See my test at https://amazingsky.net/2017/09/07/testing-the-canon-6d-mkii-for-deep-sky/)

And its light-frame buffer is great for minimizing shooting time for a series of deep-sky images with in-camera LENR dark frames, which I find are the best for minimizing thermal noise. Give me a Canon full-frame any day for prime-focus deep-sky shooting. 

It’s just a pity the 6D MkII has only a 3-frame buffer when using LENR. Really Canon? The 2008-vintage 5D MkII had a 5-frame buffer! Your cameras are getting worse for astrophotography while Sony’s are getting better. 

SONY a7III NIKON D750 CANON 6D Mk II
Nightscapes

Excellent 

 Excellent  Good
Time-Lapse Good  Excellent  Fair
Real-Time Video (Auroras) Excellent  Fair  Poor
Wide-field Deep Sky Good  Good  Excellent 
Telescopic Deep Sky Fair  Good  Excellent 

I trust you’ll find the review of value. Thanks for reading!

ADDENDUM as of JUNE 6, 2018

Since publishing the first results a number of people commented with suggestions for further testing, to check claims that:

  1. The Sony would perform better for noise under dark sky conditions, at high ISOs, rather than the moonlit scene above. OK, let’s try that.
  2. The Sony would perform better in an ISO Invariancy “face-off” if its ISOs were kept above 640, to keep all the images within the Sony’s upper ISO range of its dual-gain sensor design, with two ranges (100 to 400, and 640 on up). Fair enough.
  3. What little “star-eater” effect I saw might be mitigated by shooting on Continuous drive mode or by firing the shutter with an external timer. That’s worth a check, too.

For the additional tests, I shot all images within a 3-hour span on the night of June 5/6, using the Sony a7III, Nikon D750, and Canon 6D MkII, with the respective lenses: the Laowa 15mm lens at f/2, the Sigma 14mm Art at f/2, and the Rokinon 14mm SP at f/2.5.

The cameras were on a Star Adventurer Mini tracker to keep stars pinpoints, though the ground blurred in the longer exposures.

DARK SKY NOISE TEST

I show only the Sony and Nikon compared here, shot at the common range of ISOs used for nightscape shooting, 800 to 12800. All images are equally well exposed. The inset image at right in Photoshop shows the scene, the Milky Way above dark trees in my backyard!

To the eye, the Sony and Nikon look very similar for noise levels, just as in the moonlit scene. Both are very good – indeed, among the best performing cameras for high-ISO noise levels. But the Sony, being four years newer than the Nikon, is not better.

BUT … what the Sony did exhibit was better details in the shadows than the Nikon.

And this was with equal processing and no application of Shadow Recovery. This is where the Sony’s Backside Illuminated sensor with presumably higher quantum efficiency in gathering photons might be providing the advantage. With its good shadow details, you have to apply less shadow recovery in post-processing, which does keep noise down. So points to Sony here.

Sony vs Nikon High ISO Noise (Dark Sky)
SONY vs NIKON HIGH ISO under DARK SKIES
Noise levels appeared visually similar but the Sony showed more shadow details. Excellent!

I did put all the high ISO images through the classic noise reduction program Noise Ninja to measure total Luminance and Chrominance noise, and included the Canon 6D MkII’s images.

The resulting values and graph show the Sony actually measured worse for noise than the Nikon at each high ISO speed, 3200 to 12800, though with both performing much better than the Canon.

The higher noise of the Canon is visually obvious, but I’d say the Sony a7III and Nikon D750 are pretty equal visually for noise, despite the numbers.

Noise Ninja Value Graph
COMPARING NOISE WITH NOISE NINJA

DARK SKY ISO INVARIANCY

Again, here I show only the Sony and Nikon, the two “ISO invariant” cameras. The correct exposure for the scene was 30 seconds at ISO 6400 and f/2. The images shown here were shot at lower ISOs to underexposure the dark scene by 2 to 4 stops or EV. Those underexposed images were then boosted later in processing (in Adobe Camera Raw) by the required Exposure Value to equalize the image brightness.

Contrary to expectations, the Sony did not show any great loss in image quality as it crossed the ISO 640 boundary into its lower ISO range. But the Nikon did show more image artifacts in the “odd-numbered” ISOs of 640 and 500. In this test, the Nikon did not perform as well as the Sony for ISO invariancy. Go figure!

Again, the differences are in images vastly underexposed. And both cameras performed much better than the ISO “variant” Canon in this test.

Sony vs Nikon ISO Invariancy (Dark Sky)
DARK SKY ISO INVARIANCY
Here the Sony a7III performed well and better than the Nikon D750.

STAR EATER REVISITED

I shot images over a wide-range of exposures, from 2 seconds to 2 minutes, but show only the ones covering the 2-second to 4-second range, where the “star-eater” anti-aliasing or noise smoothing applied by Sony kicks in (above 3.2 seconds it seems).

I shot with the Sony a7III on Single shot drive mode, on Continuous Low drive mode (with the camera controlling the shutter speed in both cases), and a set with the Sony on Bulb and the shutter speed set by an external Vello intervalometer.

This is really pixel peeping at 400%. In Single drive mode, stars and noise soften ever so slightly at 4 seconds and higher. In Continuous mode, I think the effect is still there but maybe a little less. In shots on Bulb controlled by the External Timer, maybe the stars at 4 seconds are a little sharper still. But this is a tough call. To me, the star eater effect on the Sony a7III is a non-issue. It may be more serious on other Sony alphas.

Sony Star Eater-Shutter Control Series
STAR EATING vs DRIVE MODE
This series shows star sharpness in images taken in Single and Continuous drive modes, and in Externally Timed exposures.

DE-BAYERING STAR ARTIFACTS

An issue that, to me, has a more serious effect on star quality is the propensity of the Sony, and to some extent the Nikon, to render tiny stars as brightly colored points, unrealistically so. In particular, many stars look green, from the dominance of green-filtered photosites on Bayer-array sensors.

Here I compare all three cameras for this effect in two-minute tracked exposures taken with Long Exposure Noise Reduction (i.e. in-camera dark frame subtraction) off and on.

The Sony shows a lot of green stars with or without LENR. The Nikon seems to discolor stars only when LENR is applied. Why would that be? The Canon is free of any such issue – stars are naturally colored whether LENR dark frames are applied or not.

This is all with Raws developed with Adobe Camera Raw.

When opening the same Raws in other programs (ON1 Photo RAW, Affinity Photo, DxO PhotoLab, and Raw Therapee) the results can be quite different, with stars often rendered with fringes of hot, colored pixels. Or rendered with little or no color at all. Raw Therapee offers a choice of de-Bayering, or “de-mosaic,” routines, and each produces different looking stars, and none look great! Certainly not as good as the Canon rendered with Camera Raw.

What’s going on here is a mystery – it’s a combination of the cameras’ unique Raw file formats, anti-alias filter in front of the sensor (or lack thereof in the Sony), and the de-Bayering routines of all the many Raw developers wrestling with the task of rendering stars that occupy only a few pixels. It’s unfair to blame just the hardware or the software.

But this test re-emphasized my thoughts that Canon DSLRs remain the best for long-exposure deep-sky imaging where you can give images as much exposure time as they need, while the ISO invariant Sony and Nikons exceed at nightscape shooting where exposures are often limited and plagued by dark shadows and noise.

Sony vs Nikon vs Canon-LENR Off and On
COLORED STARS COMPARISON
The Sony shows a propensity to render small stars in many vivid and unreal colors. The Nikon can do so after LENR is applied. The Canon is more neutral and natural.

So the pixel-peeping continues!

I hope you found these latest tests of interest.

— Alan, May 31, 2018 / Revised June 6, 2018, March 27, 2019 and March 27, 2021 / © 2018 Alan Dyer / AmazingSky.com

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Testing the Canon 6D Mark II for Nightscapes


Canon 6DMkII vs 6D Front

In a technical blog I compare the new Canon 6D Mark II camera with its predecessor, the Canon 6D, with the focus on performance for nightscape astrophotography.

No pretty pictures in this blog I’m afraid! This is a blog for gear geeks.

The long-awaited Canon 6D Mark II camera is out, replacing the original 6D after that camera’s popular 5-year reign as a prime choice among astrophotographers for all kinds of sky images, including nightscapes and time-lapses.

As all new cameras do, the 6D Mark II is currently fetching a full list price of $2000 U.S. Eventually it will sell for less. The original 6D, introduced in 2012 at that same list price, might still be available from many outlets, but for less, likely below $1500 US.

Shown on the left, above, the 6D Mark II is similar in size and weight to the original 6D.

However, the new Mark II offers 6240 x 4160 pixels for 26 megapixels, a bump up in resolution over the 5472 x 3648 20-megapixel 6D. The pixel pitch of the Mark II sensor is 5.7 microns vs. 6.6 microns for the 6D. 

One difference is that the port for a remote release is now on the front, but using the same solid 3-pin N3 connector as the 6D and other full-frame Canons. That makes it compatible with all external controllers for time-lapse shooting.

TESTING FOR THE NIGHT

My interest is in a camera’s performance for long-exposure astrophotography, with images taken at high ISO settings. I have no interest in auto-focus performance (we shoot at night with focus set manually), nor how well a camera works for high-speed sports shooting.

To test the Mark II against the original 6D I took test shots at the same time of a high-contrast moonlit scene in the backyard, using a range of ISO speeds typical of nightscape scenes.

The comparisons show close-ups of a scene shown in full in the smaller inset screen.

COMPARING NOISE

The key characteristic of interest for night work is noise. How well does the camera suppress the noise inherent in digital images when the signal is boosted to the high ISO settings we typically use?

6D MkII Noise at 5 ISOs 6D Mark II noise at 5 ISO speeds

This set shows the 6D MkII at five ISOs, from ISO 1600 all the way up to the seldom-used ISO 25,600, all shot in Raw, not JPG. In all cases, no noise reduction was applied in later processing, so the results do look worse than what processed images would.

Click or tap on all images to expand each image to full screen for closer inspection. 

6D Noise at 5 ISOs 6D noise at 5 ISO speeds

This set shows the same range of ISOs with the original 6D. All were taken at the same aperture, f/2.8, with a 35mm lens. Exposures were halved for each successive bump up in ISO speed, to ensure equally exposed images.

Comparing the sets, the 6D MkII shows a much greater tendency to exhibit a magenta cast in the shadows at very high ISOs, plus a lower contrast in the shadows at increasing ISOs, and slightly more luminance noise than the 6D. 

How much more noise the 6D MkII exhibits is demonstrated here.

6D MkII Noise at ISO 3200 6D MkII noise at ISO 3200 compared to 6D

To me, visually, the MkII presents about 1/2 stop, or EV, worse noise than the 6D. 

In this example, the MkII exhibits a noise level at ISO 3200 (a common nightscape setting) similar to what the 6D does if set between ISO 4000 and 5000 – about 1/2 stop worse noise.

Frankly, this is surprising. 

Yes, the MkII has a higher pixel count and therefore smaller pixels (5.7 microns in this case) that are always more prone to noise. But in the past, advances to the in-camera signal processing has prevented noise from becoming worse, despite increasing pixel count, or has even produced an improvement in noise.

For example, the 2012-vintage 6D is better for noise than Canon’s earlier 2008-era 5D MkII model by about half a stop, or EV.

After five years of camera development I would have expected a similar improvement in the 6D MkII. After all, the 6D MkII has Canon’s latest DIGIC 7 processor, vs. the older 6D’s DIGIC 5+.

Instead, not only is there no noise improvement, the performance is worse. 

That said, noise performance in the 6D MkII is still very good, and better than you’ll get with today’s 24 megapixel cropped-frame cameras with their even smaller 4 micron pixels. But the full frame 6D MkII doesn’t offer quite as much an improvement over cropped-frame cameras as does the five-year-old 6D.

ISO INVARIANCY

In the previous sets all the images were well-exposed, as best they could be for such a contrasty scene captured with a single exposure.

What happens when Raw images are underexposed, then boosted later in exposure value in processing? 

This is not an academic question, as that’s often the reality for nightscape images where the foreground remains dark. Bringing out detail in the shadows later requires a lot of Shadow Recovery or increasing the Exposure. How well will the image withstand that work on the shadows?

To test this, I shot a set of images at the same shutter speed, but at successively slower ISOs, from a well-exposed ISO 3200, to a severely underexposed ISO 100. I then boosted the Exposure setting later in Raw processing by an amount that compensated for the level of underexposure in the camera, from a setting of 0 EV at ISO 3200, to a +5 EV boost for the dark ISO 100 shots.

This tests for a camera’s “ISO Invariancy.” If a camera has a sensor and signal processing design that is ISO invariant, a boosted underexposed image at a slow ISO should look similar to a normally exposed image at a high ISO.

You’re just doing later in processing what a camera does on its own in-camera when bumping up the ISO.

But cameras that use ISO “variant” designs suffer from increased noise and artifacts when severely underexposed images are boosted later in Raw processing.

The Canon 6D and 6D MkII are such cameras.

6D MkII ISO Variancy 6D Mark II ISO Invariancy

This set above shows the results from the 6D Mark II. Boosting underexposed shadows reveals a lot of noise and a severe magenta cast.

These are all processed with Adobe Camera Raw, identical to the development engine in Adobe Lightroom.

6D ISO Variancy 6D ISO Invariancy

This set above shows the results from the 6D. The older camera, which was never great for its lack of ISO Invariancy performance, is still much better than the new Mark II. 

Underexposed shadows show less noise and discolouration in the 6D. For a comparison of the Canon 6D with the ISO Invariant Nikon D750, see my earlier Nikon vs. Canon blog from 2015. The Nikon performs much better than the 6D.

Effectively, this is the lack of dynamic range that others are reporting when testing the 6D MkII on more normal daytime images. It really rears its ugly head in nightscapes.

The lesson here is that the Mark II needs to be properly exposed as much as possible.

Don’t depend on being able to extract details later from the shadows. The adage “Expose to the Right,” which I explain at length in my Nightscapes eBook, applies in spades to the 6D MkII. 

DARK FRAME BUFFER

All the above images were taken with Long Exposure Noise Reduction (LENR) off. This is the function that, when turned on, forces the camera to take and internally subtract a dark frame – an image of just the noise – reducing thermal noise and discolouration in the shadows.

A unique feature of Canon full-frame cameras is that when LENR is on you can take several exposures in quick succession before the dark frame kicks in and locks up the camera. This is extremely useful for deep-sky shooting.

The single dark frame then gets applied to the buffered “light frames.”

The 6D Mark II, when in either Raw or in Raw+JPG can take 3 shots in succession. This is a downgrade from the 6D which can take 4 shots when in Raw+JPG. Pity.

ADOBE CAMERA RAW vs. DIGITAL PHOTO PROFESSIONAL

My next thought was that Adobe Camera Raw, while it was reading the Mark II files fine, might not have been de-Bayering or developing them properly. So I developed the same image with both Raw developers, Adobe’s and Canon’s latest version of their own Digital Photo Professional (DPP).

ACR vs DPP-withNR ACR vs. DPP

Here I did apply a modest and approximately similar level of noise reduction to both images:

In ACR: Color at 25, Luminosity at 40, with Sharpness at 25

In DPP: Chrominance at 8, Luminosity at 8, with Sharpness at 2

Yes, DPP did do a better job at eliminating the ugly magenta cast, but did a much worse job at reducing overall noise. DPP shows a lot of blockiness, detail loss, and artifacts left by the noise reduction.

Adobe Camera Raw and/or Lightroom remain among the best of many Raw developers.

IMAGE AVERAGING

A new feature the 6D Mark II offers is the ability to shoot and stack images in-camera. It can either “Add” the exposure values, or, most usefully, “Average” them, as shown here.

Multiple Exposure Menu 6D Mark II Multiple Exposure screen

Other newer Canon DSLRs also offer this feature, notably the 7D MkII, the 5D MkIV, the 5Ds, and even the entry-level 80D. So the 6D MkII is not unique. But the feature was not on the 6D.

Here’s the benefit.

6D MkII Averaging 6D Mark II Averaging results

The left image is a single exposure; the middle is an average stack of 4 exposures stacked in camera; the right image an average stack of 9 exposures, the maximum allowed.

Noise smooths out a lot, with less noise the more images you stack. The result is a single Raw file, not a JPG. Excellent! 

While this kind of stacking can be done later in processing in Photoshop, or in any layer-based program, many people might find this in-camera function handy.

Except, as you can see, the sky will exhibit star trails, and not as well defined as you would get from stacking them with a “Lighten” blend mode, as all star trail stacking routines use.

So this averaging method is NOT the way to do star trails. The Mark II does not offer the Brighten mode some other new Canons have that does allow for in-camera star trail stacking. Again, a pity in a camera many will choose for astrophotography.

Nevertheless, the Average mode is a handy way to create foreground landscapes with less noise, which then have to be composited later with a sky image or images.

OTHER FEATURES

On the left, below, the Mark II has a nearly identical layout of buttons and controls to the 6D on the right. So owners of the older model will feel right at home with the Mark II. That’s handy, as we astrophotographers work in the dark by feel!

Canon 6DMkII vs 6D Rear 6D Mark II (left) and 6D rear views

Of course the big new feature, a first for Canon in a full-frame camera, is the Mark II’s fully articulated screen. It flips out, tilts, and even flips around to face forward. This is super-great for all astrophotography, especially when conducted by aging photographers with aching backs!

And the screen, as with the entry-level cropped-frame Canons, is a touch screen. For someone who hasn’t used one before – me! – that’ll take some getting used to, if only in just remembering to use it.

And it remains to be seen how well it will work in the cold. But it’s great to have.

INTERVAL TIMER

Like other late-model Canon DSLRs, the 6D MkII has a built-in intervalometer. It works fine but is useable only on exposures with internally set shutter speeds up to 30 seconds.

Interval Timer Menu 6D Mark II Interval Timer screen

However, setting the Interval so it fires the shutter with a minimal gap of 1 second between shots (our usual requirement for night time-lapses) is tricky: You have to set the interval to a value not 1 second, but 2 to 3 seconds longer than the shutter speed. i.e. an exposure of 30 seconds requires an interval of 33 seconds, as shown above. Anything less and the camera misses exposures.

Why? Well, when set to 30 seconds the camera actually takes a 32-second exposure. Surprise!

Other cameras I’ve used and tested with internal intervalometers (Nikon and Pentax) behave the same way. It’s confusing, but once you are used to it, the intervalometer works fine.

Except … the manual suggests the only way to turn it off and stop a sequence is to turn off the camera. That’s crude. A reader pointed out that it is also possible to stop a time-lapse sequence by hitting the Live View Start/Stop button. However, that trick doesn’t work on sequences programmed with only a second between frames, as described above. So stopping a night time-lapse is inelegant to say the least. With Nikons you can hold down the OK button to stop a sequence, with the option then of restarting it if desired. 

Also, the internal Intervalometer cannot be used for exposures longer than 30 seconds. Again, that’s the case with all in-camera intervalometers in other models and brands.

BULB TIMER

As with many other new Canons, the Mark II has a Bulb Timer function.

Bulb Timer Menu 6D Mark II Bulb Timer screen

When on Bulb you can program in exposure times of any length. That’s a nice feature that, again, might mean an external intervalometer is not needed for many situations.

PLAYBACK SCREEN

A new feature I like is the greatly expanded information when reviewing an image.

Playback Menu-LENR Status 6D Mark II Playback screen

One of the several screens you can scroll to shows whether you have shot that image with Long Exposure Noise Reduction on or not.

Excellent! I have long wanted to see that information recorded in the metadata. Digital Photo Professional also displays that status, but not Adobe Camera Raw/Lightroom.

CONCLUSION

While this has been a long report, this is an important camera for us astrophotographers.

I wish the news were better, but the 6D Mark II is somewhat of a disappointment for its image quality. It isn’t bad. It’s just that it isn’t any better than than the older 6D, and in some aspects is worse.

Eclipse Rig The 6D Mark II as part of the rig for shooting the total solar eclipse. The articulated screen will be very nice!

Canon has clearly made certain compromise decisions in their sensor design. Perhaps adding in the Dual-Pixel Autofocus for rapid focusing in Movie Mode has compromised the signal-to-noise ratio. That’s something only Canon can explain.

But the bottom-line recommendations I can offer are:

  • If you are a Canon user looking to upgrade to your first full-frame camera, the 6D Mark II will provide a noticeable and welcome improvement in noise and performance over a cropped-frame model. But an old 6D, bought new while they last in stock, or bought used, will be much cheaper and offer slightly less noise. But the Mark II’s flip-out screen is very nice!

 

  • If you are a current 6D owner, upgrading to a Mark II will not get you better image quality, apart from the slightly better resolution. Noise is actually worse. But it does get you the flip-out screen. I do like that!

 

  • If you are not wedded to Canon, but want a full-frame camera for the benefits of its lower noise, I would recommend the Nikon D750. I have one and love it. I have coupled it with the Sigma Art series lenses. I have not used any of the Sony a7-series Mirrorless cameras, so cannot comment on their performance, but they are popular to be sure.

 

You can find a thorough review of the Mark II’s performance for normal photography at DPReview at https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canon-eos-6d-mark-ii-review

However, I hope this review aimed specifically at nightscape shooters will be of value. I have yet to test the 6D Mark II for very long-exposure tracked deep-sky images.

— Alan, August 9, 2017 / © 2017 Alan Dyer / AmazingSky.com  

 

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Published! My New and Improved eBook


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After a year of work, the new edition of my Nightscapes and Time-Lapse ebook is on the e-shelves at the Apple iBooks Store. 

In the two years since I first published this ebook, the field of nightscape shooting has enjoyed many changes, to equipment, software and techniques. Not to mention I’ve learned a lot!

All those changes are reflected in this new and expanded edition. It is 100 pages bigger – 500 pages now – than the first edition. It contains:

• 60 step-by-step image processing tutorials, all with current late-2016 software

• a dozen galleries of comparison “before-and-after” images

• 40 HD videos of time-lapse examples

• reviews of current equipment

• reviews of software, some very new – like this week! – to use in place of Adobe

• information on Nikon and Pentax cameras, as well as Canons

• In addition, many images can be tapped on to zoom up. And most text can now be enlarged in a Scrolling View for use on small-screen devices.

The previous 2014 edition garnered rave reviews, with readers calling it:

“Incredibly well put together and visually stunning.”

“Simply amazing! From hardware to software, it’s all covered. Alan Dyer got it right!”

and “It is a must-have resource for anyone doing nightscape and time-lapse photography.”

As with the first edition, I’ve designed the ebook to appeal to both amateur astronomers and landscape photographers by providing what I feel is the most comprehensive information available in any ebook on the hugely popular field of nightscape and time-lapse photography.

This isn’t a simple 50-page PDF pamphlet, as so many ebooks are. This is an extensive and detailed tutorial, with loads of interactive and multi-media content.

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There’s loads of information on cameras and lenses

 

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I’ve included information on setting Nikons and Pentaxes. Sony mirrorless camera will wait for the next edition!

 

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I’ve added many new images, with lots of information on how to set cameras for many sky subjects.

 

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The ever popular Milky Way gets its own chapter, with information on how to – and how NOT to – process the Milky Way.

 

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I’ve included lots of information about new time-lapse gear, including some units, like the TimeLapse+ View bramping intervalometer that aren’t even available for general sale yet.

 

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Lots of embedded HD videos illustrate time-lapse techniques. A book about shooting time-lapse movies ought to have time-lapse movies in it. Most don’t!

 

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Step-by-step tutorials show you how to process with Lightroom, Camera Raw, Photoshop, and LRTimelapse (shown here), an essential tool for time-lapse work.

 

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Tutorials cover still image processing, from the basics to advanced techniques such as masking and compositing. Stacking meteor showers and star trails? It’s all covered!

 

The size and media content of the ebook make it impossible to publish on Kindle/Amazon or Google Play/Android.

How to Photograph & Process Nightscapes and Time-Lapses is available worldwide exclusively through the Apple iBooks Store, for the iBooks app on Apple Macs, iPads and iPhones.

Check it out at my website or at the iTunes sales page. 

Owners of the original edition get the update for FREE! Just open iBooks on your Mac or iOS device and check Purchased and Updates.

For new buyers, the price remains unchanged: $24.99 US (prices vary with country due to exchange rates and local GST). The book is sold in every one of the 51 countries Apple sells into.

Enjoy! And do leave a review or star rating for the new edition at iTunes/iBooks Store.

Thanks! And happy holidays to all! 

— Alan, December 21, 2016 / © 2016 Alan Dyer / www.amazingsky.com

 

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Astrophotography Video Tutorials – Free!


 

Video Tutorial FB PR ImageLearn the basics of shooting nightscape and time-lapse images with my three new video tutorials.

In these comprehensive and free tutorials I take you from “field to final,” to illustrate tips and techniques for shooting the sky at night.

At sites in southern Alberta I first explain how to shoot the images. Then back at the computer I step you through how to process non-destructively, using images I shot that night in the field.

 

Tutorial #1 – The Northern Lights

This 24-minute tutorial takes you from a shoot at a lakeside site in southern Alberta on a night with a fine aurora display, through to the steps to processing a still image and assembling a time-lapse movie.

 

Tutorial #2 – Moonlit Nightscapes

This 28-minute tutorial takes you from a shoot at Waterton Lakes National Park on a bright moonlit night, to the steps for processing nightscapes using Camera Raw and Photoshop, with smart filters, adjustment layers and masks.

 

Tutorial #3 – Star Trails

This 35-minute tutorial takes you from a shoot at summer solstice at Dinosaur Provincial Park, then through the steps for stacking star trail stills and assembling star trail time-lapse movies, using specialized programs such as StarStaX and the Advanced Stacker Plus actions for Photoshop.

 

As always, enlarge to full screen for the HD versions. These are also viewable at my Vimeo channel.  

Or they can be viewed on my YouTube channel. 

Thanks for watching!

And for much more information about shooting and processing nightscapes and time-lapse movies, check out my 400-page multimedia eBook, linked below.

— Alan, November 21, 2015 / © 2015 Alan Dyer / www.amazingsky.com/tutorials.html

 

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Moonlight on the Prairie


The rising almost-Full Moon, a “Blue Moon” of July 30, 2015, rising behind a rustic old farmhouse near Bow Island, Alberta. The Moon sits in the pibk Belt of Venus with the blue shadow of the Earth below. This is a single frame from a 600-frame time-lapse sequence, taken with the Canon 6D and 16-35mm lens.

I present a short time-lapse vignette of scenes shot under moonlight on the Alberta prairie.

The movie linked below features sequences shot July 29 and 30, 2015 on beautifully clear moonlit nights at locations south of Bow Island, Alberta, on the wide open prairie. The three-minute video features two photogenic pioneer sites.

Circumpolar star trails over the historic but sadly neglected St. Anthony’s Church between Bow Island and Etzikom, Alberta. The Big Dipper is at left, Polaris at top. The Roman Catholic church was built in 1911 by English, Russian German immigrants. It served a dwindling congregation until 1991 when it closed. At that time workers found a time capsule from 1915 with names of the priest and parisioners of the day. In summer of 2014 the Church suffered its latest indignity when the iron cross on its steeple tower was stolen. It was there when I stopped at this Church on a site scouting trip in May 2014. I planned to return on a moonlit night and did on July 29, 2015. A nearby house had been torn down and the cross was now gone. This is a stack of 300 6-second exposures with the Canon 6D at ISO 1600 and 16-35mm lens at f/2.8. Bright light from a 13-day Moon lights the scene, making for very short exposures. The ground comes from one exposure to keep shadows sharp. The final stars also come from another single exppsure taken two minutes after the last trail image. I used the Advanced Stacker Actions to stack the trails.

The church is the now derelict St. Anthony’s Church, a former Roman Catholic church built in 1911 by English and Russian-German immigrants. It served a dwindling congregation until as late as 1991 when it closed. At that time workers found a time capsule from 1915 with names of the priest and parisioners of the day.

The wood church seems to have been largely neglected since.

In the summer of 2014 the Church suffered its latest indignity when the iron cross on its steeple tower was stolen. I also shot in the pioneer cemetery of the Church.

Circumpolar star trails circling above an old rustic and abandoned house near Bow Island, Alberta, with illumination from the nearly Full Moon. Cassiopeia is near centre. Polaris is at top left. This is a stack of 140 frames from a time-lapse sequence with additional frames added for the first and last stars, and the ground coming from a mean combine stack of 8 frames to reduce noise. Each frame is 10 seconds at f/4 with the 16-35mm lens and ISO 1600 with the Canon 6D. Stacked with Advanced Stacker Actions, using the Ultrastreaks effect, from within Photoshop.

The other site is a nearby farmhouse with photogenic textures and accompanied by rustic out buildings that are barely managing to stand.

Illumination was from a waxing gibbous Moon, just 1 to 2 days before the infamous “Blue Moon” of July 31. Its bright light turned the sky blue, and lit the landscape with the same quality as sunlight, because it is sunlight!

Enlarge the video to full screen for the full HD version.

For the technically inclined:

I shot the scenes with three cameras – a Canon 60Da, Canon 6D, and Nikon D750.

The Nikon, with a 24mm lens, was on the Dynamic Perception Stage Zero Dolly and Stage R panning unit, while the 60Da, with a 14mm lens, was on the compact Radian panning unit. The third camera, the 6D, with a 16-35mm lens, was on a fixed tripod for the star trail sequences and stills.

The music is by Adi Goldstein (AGSoundtrax.com), whose music I often use in my sequences. It just seems to work so well, and is wonderfully melodic and powerful. Thank you, Adi!

To process the several thousand frames that went into the final movie, I used Adobe Bridge and Adobe Camera Raw, supplemented by the latest Version 4.2 of LRTimelapse (lrtimelapse.com). Its new “Visual Deflicker” workflow does a beautiful job smoothing out frame-to-frame flickering in sequences shot in twilight under darkening lighting conditions. Thank you Gunther!

For the star trail sequences and the still images above I used the Advanced Stacker Actions from StarCircleAcademy.com. Unlike most other stacking programs, the Stacker Actions work from within Adobe Bridge and Photoshop directly, using the processed Raw images, with no need to create intermediate sets of JPGs. Thank you Steven!

— Alan, August 3, 2015 / © 2015 Alan Dyer / www.amazingsky.com 

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Under an Endless Open Sky


Circumpolar star trails at dawn over the historic Butala homestead at the Old Man on His Back Prairie and Heritage Conservation Area in southwest Saskatchewan, taken May 2015. This is a stack of 70 frames from a larger time-lapse sequence, from the end of the sequence in the dawn twilight. Each exposure is 40 seconds with the 14mm lens at f/2.8 and Canon 60Da at ISO 1600. Stacked with Advanced Stacker Actions. The foreground comes from a stack of 8 of the final exposures, mean combined, to smooth noise.

The skies were spectacular at a pioneer homestead on the Saskatchewan prairie.

Canada’a province of Saskatchewan bills itself as the “Land of Living Skies,” and that was certainly true last week when I spent three perfect nights under some of the darkest skies in the country.

The location was the Old Man on His Back Prairie & Heritage Conservation Area, deep in dry southwest Saskatchewan, between Grasslands National Park and Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park, two favourite places of mine for nightscape photography and astronomy.

The Conservation Area reclaims and preserves original short grass prairie habitat. It is named for the formation to the west that is said to resemble the profile of Napi, the creator being of Siksika legends, who after creating the world, lay back here to rest.

The land was once a working ranch first settled by the Butala family. The white pioneer house in my photos dates from that time. It was built in Montana and moved here in the 1920s.

The waxing crescent Moon and Venus (above) over the old farm house at the Visitor Centre at the Old Man on His Back Natural and Historical Conservation Area in southwest Saskatchewan, May 20, 2015, on a very clear night. The old house was the original house lived in by the Butala family who settled the area in the 1920s. This is a single exposure taken as part of an 850-frame time-lapse sequence with the 14mm Rokinon lens and Canon 60Da camera.

In the mid-1990s Peter and Sharon Butala transferred their land to the Nature Conservancy of Canada, to create an island of original prairie amid the heavily grazed land around it.

A 360° panorama of the night sky and prairie landscape from the Visitor Centre and farmyard at the Old Man on His Back Prairie & Heritage Conservation Area in southwest Saskatchewan. The Milky Way arches across the eastern sky from north to south, while an aurora display (faint to the naked eye) glows in an arch of green and magenta across the northern horizon. The pioneer house was built in the 1920s and this was a working ranch until the 1990s when the land was turned over to the Nature Conservancy of Canada to turn into a natural area to preserve the short grass prairie habitat. This a stitch of 8 segments, each a 1 minute untracked exposure at f/3.5 with the 15mm lens and ISO 4000 with the Canon 6D. Stitched with PTGui software. I shot these May 18, 2015.

For astronomers, the Area serves also as an island of darkness amid intruding light pollution. The region is very dark, with few lights and manmade sky-glows on the horizon.

My 360° panorama above shows that the greatest glows come from the arc of the aurora to the north and the arch of the Milky Way stretching across the sky. This is a stargazer’s paradise.

My 2-minute compilation of time-lapse videos and still images taken over three crystal clear nights attempts to capture the wonder of the night sky from such a dark site. Be sure to enlarge the video to full screen to view it.

It was in the little white house that Sharon Butala wrote some of her best-selling books retelling stories of her life on the prairie, notably The Perfection of the Morning, and Wild Stone Heart.

In the latter book, Sharon writes:

“At night the Milky Way glittered and gleamed above us, fathomlessly deep and numberless, the constellations wheeled slowly across the sky with the seasons, and the moon came and went, sometimes white as a maiden’s face, sometimes a looming orange sphere … under such an endless, open sky.”

– Sharon Butala, Wild Stone Heart (Harper Collins, 2000)<