January 2020 Q&A Forum (Patreon)

Happy New Year to all Patreon Members.

Please add any questions you have during the month of January to this forum.

I am now able to provide information on the image used for the banner of this month's Q&A forum. It was captured with NiSi's new 15mm Full-Frame Wide-Angle Manual-Focus  E Mount lens. The lens does not provide metadata as to the aperture used to the camera but I would imagine I would have stopped down to f/11 and used the hyperlocal distance and Focus Magnify to check the focus point.

If I was being honest I prefer the 18mm Batis for ease of focus (it has an LED distance readout on the lens) and the 15mm Voigtlander for weight and size with the A7C. What the NiSi does have going for it is excellent sharp focus in the corners (better than the Voigtlander) and it has a removable lens hood which makes the use of filters as easy as with the Batis 2.8/18 and Sony 20mm F/1.8 G. The 10 straight blades of the NiSi makes Sun Stars possible even with the aperture wide open rather than providing better bokeh which is never really the strong point for ultra wide-angle focal lengths anyway. The NiSi's f/4 aperture won't appeal to Astro photographers but I suspect NiSi wanted to keep the weight down for landscape photographers.

I think it is only a matter of time before Sony release a full-frame ultra wide-angle prime (wider than 20mm) and I hope it will be smaller and lighter than the NiSi 15mm F/4. To keep it small I would be happy with an f/2.8 aperture rather than a 1.8 aperture and this will make it suitable for Astro and landscape.

A full resolution image that can be downloaded can be accessed here: https://flic.kr/p/2kmHTBr

It is slightly smaller than 6K as I would have straightened and fine-tuned the keystoning (rendering the verticals parallel to the sides of the image) in Lightroom.