I have stated in a previous article that I probably will sell all my DSLR gear eventually, so rarely does it ever get used. Virtually all my work now is done with mirrorless m4/3 (Olympus EM-5). But I must admit to being glad that I brought my DSLR along with me to a recent trip to The Lake District and Scotland. And while I used my EM-5 for virtually the entire trip, canoeing on lakes and hiking up hills with it in a small camera bag, I knew the DSLR would be more effective at capturing the night sky. I was hoping at some point the skies would be clear enough for me to capture some stars, possibly even the Milky Way, and since I had my car bringing along extra gear was not an issue.
(Nikon D600, Tokina 11-16mm F/2.8)
One limitation I have found with my EM-5 is that it struggles with long exposures of the night sky, especially at higher ISOs. I have used it for this purpose but with disappointing results. Perhaps other users have had better success, but I haven’t mastered it on m4/3 yet. The sensor does seem to get a little hot on longer exposures at higher ISOs, such that are needed for decent night sky shots:
(Olympus EM-5, Panasonic 14mm F/2.5 – since sold)
Now this is not reason enough for me to disparage it or starting trolling with comments about DSLRs vs micro 4/3. Sorry to say there are infinitely more bad photographers than bad cameras. My EM-5 has taken some very pleasing long exposures in dusk light (at low ISOs):
(Olympus EM-5 and 12-40mm F/2.8)
I had just been canoeing on Lake Windermere and watched (and photographed) the sunset from a small island in its middle. Back on shore, I took some more long exposures of the lake with the EM-5.
(Both images: Olympus EM-5 and 12-40mm F/2.8)
Later on, driving back to my lodging, I noticed the clear night above me. This was now after 2am, and the trajectory of the Milky Way was visible to the naked eye. There were some nearby man-made light sources, but they didn’t seem to affect my perception. So, out of the boot comes the full frame DSLR (in my case the Nikon D600) and the Tokina 11-16mm F/2.8 used as a 16mm prime. And unsurprisingly, it had no problems capturing the night sky at ISOs of 1600-3200. I set my tripod overlooking Lake Killington, over which the Milky Way was arching. I manually focused to infinity and after 30 seconds at F/2.8 and ISO 1600, I got this result below (same settings as top photo).
Composition isn’t great, owing to my location relative to the lake and not being able to really see anything in the dark. But at 2.30am, my brain thinks little of details and was simply happy to capture the Milky Way. I would have preferred to shoot it from a small island in the lake, but you can dream on if you think I’m going to re-inflate the canoe and go for a paddle at that time of the morning. This next one looking straight up at ISO 3200.
(Some of the surrounding light sources leeched into the shot at the bottom.)
While I have often extolled the virtues of my mirrorless/micro 4/3 gear, I have never claimed that one system was superior to another. Each of you finds merit and advantage in your choice of gear. And while many people prefer to waste their lives comparing and debating every little camera specification or brand rather than going out to shoot, I prefer to think of my gear simply as tools to achieve a result. I would say that I personally don’t like having more than one system, so I do envisage selling off the DSLR gear at some point. Hopefully when the m4/3 sensors will improve enough to allow me to take these kind of shots, or I’ll simply invest in a small mirrorless full frame sensor and wide-angle lens just for night sky shots. Either way, it’s all about the right tool for the right job.
Is the Tokina 11-16mm a full frame lens? I was confused by the DX in the full name of the model
It’s a DX lens, Grish. But it will fit any Nikon DSLR, and on full frame cameras you can really only use it at 16mm. Anything less and you’ll get vignetting/black circle.
I love the Milky Way over the lake. DId you paint the fence with light?
I’ve really been shooting a lot at night—stars and the moonlit landscape—and for now, the dSLR is the way for the high ISO abilities and resolution. BUT—focusing in the dark is a PAIN in the youknowwhat! An EVF would be great, like the Sony A7 has; best of all worlds?
I’d love a smaller kit like the Oly or the X, but I’m afraid I’d be too tempted to take it all the time instead of the Nikons :)
Hi Patrick, thank you.
No the lighting on the fence came from a light source, a road lamp, behind. There were a few of them, and you can see how the colour from them leeched into the larger Milky Way shot below. It was just a ridiculous time for me to search for somewhere else completely dark after a full day of hiking and canoeing, and I had a 3 hour drive to Scotland a few hours later :)
I agree, for high ISO shots at night the DSLR/FX sensors are superior to m4/3. I didn’t really bother trying to focus. I just set the lens to manual focus and moved the ring to around infinity.
Cheers.
Patrick Downs,
For focusing, try using a very bright star and turning on live view to put the star very roughly centered on the image frame. Then zoom in on the star and manually adjust focus on the lens, carefully looking at the stellar image on the back LCD (some lenses require you to put them on MF for that). You’ll see when you are in focus. Note that the focus position changes, as you know, as you change the lens focal length – focus when you’re not changing the lens’ f.l. any more. Then, zoom back out to 1x. (Alpha Whiskey is right in that the focus doesn’t change that much on a wide lens. If you decide to combine frames though, it might be critical.)
That’s what I do with my Canon 40D and Tokina 11-16/2.8. It works fine. Good luck.
Thanks. Stars are no problem, and the landscape @ infinity too. I know where infinity is on my lens (many lenses have overtravel beyond infinity … the Zeiss lenses don’t, which I like). The problem is shooting landscapes and items closer than infinity, even under a full moon, especially if they’re moving. I was on a mountaintop photographing people watching the supermoon the other night, and can’t use LiveView and a flashlight (which I’ll do with objects) to determine focus. An EVF would have been great for these and others in this gallery:
patrickdowns.photoshelter.com/galle…hER2HhWJL8
Great photos, Mr. Whiskey!
To all those who are ranting and raving here (yet again) about the pointless debate between micro 4/3 and DSLRS, look closely at these pretty pictures. If you were to see these photos at a gallery and not know anything about how they were taken, you would not know whether Mr. Whiskey had used an FX, DX, or micro 4/3 camera, or some combination thereof. But, if Mr. Whiskey had used a medium format or large format camera with a mix of the former digital cameras to take these pictures, the differences in quality and rendition would be starkly *obvious*. Did any of you read Romanas’ piece on Zack Arias’ video recently? Mr. Arias clearly pointed this out in the video! Did you see the sizes of the MF and LF image areas? The size of 645 by itself swallows the image areas of FX, DX, and micro 4/3 combined! FX, DX (even micro 4/3) are in the same bag. Good grief, people!
Probably in the future only Pros and Serious Non Pros will be using DSLR cameras and mirror less cameras,,,everyone else will just be using a cell phone.
Until the mirror less sensor with the smaller lenses equals a full frame 35 sensor or medium format sensor, I will stick with a DSLR.
Beautiful pictures.
Sell your FF or DX system for 4/3 or mirrorless?…… Yeah, I’m not there yet. I purchased the very sexy Fuji X-T1 and gave it my best open minded field test. Despite the fact I love the camera’s looks and image quality, I could not get used to the EVF or controls. Also, with a zoom lens (18-135mm) it was not well balanced unless you use the battery grip which largely defeats the purpose of owning a smaller/lighter system. Mirrorless cameras with a pancake prime lens are really cool (and lightweight) but unfortunately not cool enough for me to sell off my DSLR. For now, I’ll spend my extra dollars on better glass and wait for the micro systems to mature.
I have the E-M5 too and love it. It’s actually my only camera, I’ve never used a DSLR, so I’ll base my statements here on research, not hands-on experience.
What you’re saying is not at all a knock against the mirrorless system cameras, but against a specific system – Micro Four Thirds.
Fuji has a larger sensor (APS-C), and some lenses worth using for this purpose: 14mm (21mm equiv.) f/2.8, 18mm (27mm equiv., not wide enough for the Milky Way) f/2, and a 16mm (24mm equiv.) f/1.4 coming in 2015 (that one should be awesome). And there’s a Zeiss 12mm (18mm equiv.) f/2.8, and a manual-focus Rokinon 12mm f/2, that should be pretty much perfect for these shots.
And there’s the Sony a7-series which, with Sony’s adapter, has a couple of great lenses for this – 16-35mm f/2.8 and 24mm f/2. 24mm isn’t quite wide enough for the Milky Way, but the 16-35 is great.
From hands-on experience, I can tell you that an APS-C sensor camera is okay for astrophotography but a FF sensor (assuming equal technology) is better.
Something I’m not quite clear about is aperture equivalency between various systems. It seems like I’ve read that the same aperture number in disparate systems does not equate to the same light gathering capabilities. So, while a 24mm f/1.4 is the optimal lens for FF, I don’t know if a 16mm f/1.4, on an APS-C sensor camera, would give the same performance (not taking into account the low-light capabilities of the different sensors.
Yes, the bigger sensor area means more light is gathered. But really, it comes down to the difference in noise at high ISO that makes the practical difference – comparing a 35mm full frame sensor and an APS-C sensor that are otherwise identical, the former will echieve roughly the same noise levels at ISOs one stop higher. So by using the same shutter speed, f-number and ISO, the image from the APS-C sensor has more noise, and that’s simply because it’s not getting as much light – so a smaller f-number is needed and a lower ISO to compensate.
I’ve recently read Erez Marom’s latest article on DPReview www.dpreview.com/artic…-the-north. In the article, he mentions that the image was shot with a Sony a7R and a Rokinon 14mm f/2.8 via an adapter. So really, that proves the point I tried to get across previously – I didn’t intend on going further with the differences in sensor size. I simply wanted to enlighten you to the fact that what you’re saying is not a DSLR vs. mirrorless argument whatsoever – it has nothing to do with the differences between them. If you had a Sony a7 and used that instead of the D600 there, the result would’ve been identical.
I didn’t mean to infer the difference was dSLR vs Mirrorless and, again, it’s just something I’d read in various venues. I mistyped when I wrote “systems.” They were referring to various sensor sizes and, it seemed to me, the differences were more pronounced when you got into the m4/3, CX, and smaller sensors.
Lovely photos! I am in the same position for slightly different reasons. I love my E-M5 for almost everything, especially since I recently bought the 25mm f1.8 prime. But I do a lot of bird photography, and for that I have not found it as good as my D7100, 300 f4 and 1.4TC, except for large birds that don’t move (pretty rare in these parts). So these days I’m generally lugging the Nikon kit for birds and my E-M5 kit for everything else. Perhaps one day there will be a M43 system with all the advantages of a DSLR system including 51 point PDAF continuous auto – focusing and the ability to use auto ISO in manual mode but at a third of the size and weight. I have also found that for portraits and close ups the bokeh and background separation of the E-M5 with the 25/1.8 is a good as that for birds with the D7100 and 300+1.4TC, but for the E-M5 and panny 100-300 it’s significantly worse, and I suppose that may be a function of sensor size.
Beautiful pictures. Articles such as this will no doubt convince many to ditch their SLR kit and go mirrorless as the author already has. Very soon it will be cool to be seen with a DSLR and I intend to enjoy the attention I will get. There have been way too many articles all over the internet urging people to switch without saying in as many words. Comparing dimension and weight of the two systems, the difference doesn’t work out to that much. As most of us reading blogs such as these are enthusiasts who do prioritize the cost factor, I can’t help but wonder if skimming off a few hundred grams off the overall payload is worth selling our existing DSlR gear at Half price or less, and make that switch. Its hard to imagine everyone serious about photography ditch their gear and join the mirror less band wagon, giving up years of familiarity with the gear they owned and loved. Not to speak of the comfort one would have knowing they could just pick up the camera they have used over the years and get the settings they want in a matter of seconds. It’s actually sad to see a collection of such splendid images to be accompanied by another rant about how wonderful the smaller camera is. Please keep the images coming, and perhaps share some knowledge about the subject if there is nothing else left to rave about losing the mirror and a few grams of dead weight. Apologies for the typos and grammar errors; unlike their claim, typing on iphone sucks too.
You might want to consider the fact that more and more people are ditching their mirrorless and moving back to DSLRs with a sour taste left in their mouth for selling their old gear. While others don’t make a switch back simply because they’re not ready to admit that their decision about selling DSLR was a huge mistake and they don’t want to loose money again on moving back, so they shoot with an inferior gear.
Selling DSLR for mirrorless is very tough decision, if I were you I would get a large sensor compact and use that for these moments when DSLR is not feasible. Things like Fuji X100 or Sony RX100 are truly an outstanding cameras without all of the troubles interchangeable lenses bring.
I don’t understand the point of the post. The title is “Keeping the DSLR Handy” and extolls the benefits of a dSLR over m4/3 for astrophotography but you reiterate that you’re going to sell all your dSLR gear.
Also, I’m impressed with your photography. Done. I’m tired of hearing about m4/3 being better for you than a dSLR. I would get equally tired of hearing, ad nauseam, how someone’s dSLR was better for them. Make your point and move on…
Alexander Dela Cruz Jr – The best lens for astrophotography on a FF camera (aside from varying focal length needs) is a 24mm f/1.4. It gives the best balance of light capturing and minimizing star trails unless, of course, you like star trails. ;-)
O’Connor, we’re getting equally tired and nauseated of reading your inane comments , gripes, and pouting . After all of your fruitless typing, haven’t you yet concluded you’re talking to an empty room?
Mighty presumptuous, Amir?
Love your handle by the way, wonderful shots, great advice, something I need to be reminded of every once in a while. I would love to visit your country some day
Thank you catfish252 :)
It really is a stunning country.