Tokina RMC 400mm f5.6 - Moon Shot - new pic added 22/01/17

[MarkS]

Hi

I have decided it is time to start contributing to thi forum

Here is a sample shot from a great cheap lens in picked up from eBay - click for full size

[Antoine]

excellent!

[Eddie46]

Wow! That smacked me in the eyes when I opened it! Is it really that big?

[Lloydy]

very good, I like that.

[kds315*]

[Gerald]

[Lightshow]

Put your pictures where your mouth is... so to speak.

[Lightshow]

Welcome to the site Mark, hope you enjoy your time here, nice shot, I haven't seen much from this lens

[Antoine]

Well, it depends where the moon is in the sky. When it is at the horizon it is much bigger as the atmosphere plays as a magnifier while when it is high in the sky, you lose the magnifying hence it is smaller (e.g.normal)

[fwcetus]

[fwcetus]

[Gerald]

As I said before, it is possible to take good pictures of the moon with a 135mm lens. The main problem of using a lens with such relatively short focal length is that the image of the moon is small for the size of the pixels of a 24MP FF sensor. However, the problem can be circumvented, for example, by using one or two teleconverters. This was justly the solution adopted here.

The two teleconverters convert the 135mm lens into a 540mm lens. But make no mistake, teleconverters do no miracle. They cannot, for example, increase the intrinsic resolution of the original 135mm lens. If the lens does not have adequate resolution to begin with, the fine details will not appear in the "converted" image.

An intersting way to understand the work of the teleconverters is noting that they transform the 6μm pixels of the Sony A99 into equivalent 1.5μm pixels.



SMC Takumar 135mm F2.5 plus two 2x Komura Telemore MC-7 teleconverters on Sony A99:



I dare say that the level of detail is more or less equal to the moon picture that Lighshow obtained with a Canon EF L 400mm lens, but better than the OP image.

[MarkS]

After the 1st post of the moon I thought I would dig through my previous folders of pictures using this lens for a second picture which I knew I had that does the lens much better justice

[fwcetus]

[Teemō]

That image is really nice MarkS. Here's the best I've achieved with my Minolta MC-I 300mm F4.5 on my Panasonic GM1:


Cropped and edited to oblivion but it's really at its limit. I am so disappointed that a seller wouldn't domestically post me his MD 500mm F8 - he only wanted $120 for the "lens for Pentax"... Despite my offer of double that.

[marcusBMG]

Love that second shot Mark. What camera were you using - is that a full sized 1:1 crop or did you resize?
Also can you confirm this is your lens:

http://www.pentaxforums.com/userreviews/tokina-rmc-tokina-400mm-f5-6.html

I have a tokina 400mm in Vivitar guise - not that impressed actually, I doubt it would take a pic as sharp as yours.

We can discuss the resolution Gerald, whats not in doubt is that stacked vintage TC's have shot the contrast to hell, as I would expect. Did you take that pic wide open - already at ~f14 if so?
I have often tried my "good" 2x tc's - tamron SP, Vivitar macro (probably very similar optically to your komura MC7's), adaptall 01F, without really ever being convinced that the results were worth the multiplied focal length.
"Mush" comes to mind looking at yours Teemō- sorry!

[MarkS]

Hi Marcus

This was shot on a Nikon D7100 and has been cropped

I can confirm it is the same lens



I have stopped using TCs as I found that the quality deteriorates

[Teemō]

[Gerald]

[Olivier]

Interesting, Mark.
I like your second shot better.

If interested, I shot the moon with different combos on an Olympus Pen E-P2 : Canon EF 4/200 L + extender x1.4 ; Tamron SP500 F8 + doubler ; Tamron SP500 F8 alone.
Here are the results : http://forum.mflenses.com/moon-shots-with-different-combos-tamron-sp-500-f8-t64913,highlight,%2Bmoon.html

[dr.volkan]