Redrocks wrote:
Before COVID, I used to love to do Milky Way photography. I used a (at that time new) Sony A7RII and had a couple good lenses for the purpose. I ended up with long COVID the left me unable to walk well. I sold my Sony and lenses and bought an Olympus OM-M5 Mark III realizing I probably wouldn't be doing any Milky Way photography any more. But, I am wondering if anyone has been doing Milky Photography with Olympus cameras, what lenses do you find best and want are your typical settings?
I do (or at least did) astrophotography quite a bit. I like to do it as part of a group or workshop. That's partly for the increased safety that comes from being with others when out at night and partly because I like to see what others are doing, how they are doing it, and what they are using to do it with. By far, most of the folks who do this sort of photography use full frame cameras and wide, fast lenses. But one friend had a great outing with his D500 and Nikkor 10-20mm AF-P zoom. (I should note that he is a great photographer who I have never seen or heard blame his equipment for any shortcoming in an image.) My personal choice is a D850 with the Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8 zoom. I started out with a D810 and that same lens. It was fine, but even the fairly small improvements provided by the D850 make the photography noticeably easier.
It really boils down to three things. Unless you are using a tracker (which is actually the current "rage"), the first requirement is that you are going to need a camera that comfortably work at an ISO of 4000-5000. While it is true that noise can be removed later in post processing, the nature of the subject is such that if too much processing is required to get rid of noise, it is inevitable that some of the stars are going to be sacrificed with it. So the cleaner the starting point, the better the finished product.
Historically, the "Rule of 500," as explained above, has been used to determine maximum exposure duration with any given focal length lens. With new high-resolution cameras, using a Rule of 300 is better. Please note that this rule is based on the physical relationship between the focal length of the lens and the density of the sensel locations. This rule DOES NOT get adjusted for sensor size. End result is that most of the time, you are going to be working with exposure times of 20-45 seconds if exposing at f/2.8. In practice, shutter times of 25-35 seconds become the practical working range for lenses around 14mm. Think about this when you choose your tripod. And if it makes you feel better, get a remote shutter release or set a shutter delay. In reality, disturbance of a quarter second or so against a 30 second exposure is not going to result in anything visible in your image. I've shot with and without a remote release. You will never see any effects, primarily because of the very limited dynamic range of your camera at the working ISOs.
The final requirement is that your camera's sensor has enough resolution to capture and record the point images of as many as possible of the several thousand stars that will be in the visual field. A corollary to this requirement is that your lens must have enough resolving power to separate those points of light into separate images. The big hangup against using smaller sensors for the night sky is that they just don't hve enough sensor points to resolve enough individual stars. This is complicated by the general shortage of lenses for those cameras that are fast enough and have enough resolving power to do the job well.
Personally, I have never set up my D500 and experimented to see what I could accomplish with it in a night session. It is a pretty big deal for me to be able to go out and shoot, so I've always used the best and most suitable of what I have so that I'd have the best chance at success. My confidence is pretty high that I could come away with something, just not something as good as the proper tools will let me produce.
A lot depends on your standards and expectations. Is it worth trying? Certainly. Just use what you know and think through how it will be different with your new equipment and what adjustments you need to make.