Winter Widefield Wonders

[Whistlin Bob]

A few years back I upgraded to a dedicated astro camera for my imaging, but instead of abandoning the DSLR altogether I decided to have a little sideline mucking about with cheap vintage lenses off of ebay. This has been good fun- a few hits and misses without breaking the bank or over worrying about  star shapes in the corners and that sort of thing. Of the half dozen or so lenses I've played with, one of the best has been a Soviet made 1970s f4 135mm. It has a little chromatic aberration, which is dealt with easily enough in post processing, but otherwise seemed good and sharp on the DSLR, and I got round to wondering how it would perform on my asi1600mm. The answer, IMHO, is pretty well (once you get past the slight daftness of pairing a £25 lens with £1.5k of camera and filters). As a result, I've had it set up in my obsy for most of the last couple of months.

Here's what it has given me this past month:

Auriga in HaRGB (definitely want to go and get the Oiii and Sii for this):

Here's a bit of Monoceros- I grabbed some Oiii for this one, and processed it with an HHO pallette:

 

Here's Orion's Belt and Sword- back to HaRGB this time:

I really like just the Ha channel on this too:

And finally- here's a bit of Cassiopeia- with Pacman and the Ghost. plus a bit of dive bombing from the Owl cluster:

Feedback welcomed- thanks for looking  

 

[glafnazur]

That's a very nice set of images 😄

[Ratlet]

These are fantastic!  Perhaps I was a bit too quick to retire the canon when I got the Hypercam! 

As a vintage glass obsessed chap, I feel affronted that you haven't told me the model of lens!

*EDIT*  I suspect it was the Jupter 11.  Nice price for a lens and I don't have such a wide lens.  I've managed to get a mintish looking 135mm takumar SMC for £15.  Hopefully will perform.  I need to stop coming on this forum or my wallet will combust

Edited January 30, 2023 by Ratlet

[Whistlin Bob]

14 hours ago, Ratlet said:

I suspect it was the Jupter 11. 

Well deduced! Here it is: 1976's finest👍 Takumars have a good reputation, so as long a the condition is as promised, you should be good. The coatings should help with CA too.

 

 

[Ratlet]

Very nice.

I've made the mistake of buying a lens where the description said clear optics but there were no images of said optics...  That said, once I cleaned it up and put it together (the correct way round) it performed well.

Part of the reason I bought the tak was because they had good images of the optics.

These old lenses are wonderfully versatile and I'm not sure why they don't get recommended more.

Are these all with mono only or have you mixed the mono and DSLR data?

[Whistlin Bob]

These are all mono only, there's a definite step up from my DSLR, which is a comparatively geriatric 600d. I agree about old lenses: you need to try a few, but this one has been great, and I've got a plastic canon nifty fifty which performs excellently.

The others I've tried (Chinon 200mm, Paragon 28mm, Tair Photosniper 300mm) have all been a little more flawed, but none have been outright bad.

[Ratlet]

1 hour ago, Whistlin Bob said:

These are all mono only, there's a definite step up from my DSLR, which is a comparatively geriatric 600d. I agree about old lenses: you need to try a few, but this one has been great, and I've got a plastic canon nifty fifty which performs excellently.

The others I've tried (Chinon 200mm, Paragon 28mm, Tair Photosniper 300mm) have all been a little more flawed, but none have been outright bad.

The Tair 3 has a fair amount of variation.  I've got one that does well and one that had some awful astigmatism.  I'm hoping it is pinched optics due to the rear element being too tight, but getting to it is a nightmare.  One of these days...

My takumar 200mm is great though.   One of the reasons I went for one again at a different focal length.

The beauty for me of course is that my processing is awful so the aberrations would need to be even worse to stand out from it