John Howard Loc: SW Florida and Blue Ridge Mountains of NC.

Right. Was thinking that but did not write it. Getting two better lenses could get expensive.

Kmgw9v Loc: Miami, Florida

I bought the 105mm 1.4 to use as a portrait lens. Now, it will be a pano landscape lens as well

DStone Loc: Outside Winston-Salem, NC

Thanks for the detailed response. I just looked at you Flickr pages. I bow before thee.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Oh please! I am not THAT good - but thanks for the props nonetheless! Glad you found stuff you could enjoy . . .

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

In that case, the there is no substitute for the 14mm. Either the prime or the 14-24. But you got me thinking. You can stack into a smart object to reduce noise, so why not a pano at night. Something to try next time I am in a place where there is an exceptional night sky.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Not critical for landscape, as long as you have focus confirmation. Do the Zeiss lenses in Nikon mount offer that?

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Thanks!

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Thanks again, Heather!

John Howard Loc: SW Florida and Blue Ridge Mountains of NC.

Yes, the green dot appears but not that helpful unless you know exactly where you are focused. And with the Sony A7, you get the highlighted focus assist indication. I am not worried about AF.

John Howard Loc: SW Florida and Blue Ridge Mountains of NC.

I just stopped in on the DxOMark site and got totally confused. I cannot tell at what F stop they are measuring sharpness and CA. Could not find this on the page that shows the lens comparisons, tho it might be in the actual test report. It looks like they test wide open, which is probably irrelevant for landscape. No?

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

If you take a look at my Flickr site, I have some shots I took in 2015 in and around Dublin, Kilcoole, and other nearby places, btw.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/gene_lugo/albums/72157663611393645

https://www.flickr.com/photos/gene_lugo/albums/72157675178394400

There may be others.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

This may or may not help:

https://www.dxomark.com/About/Lens-scores

They look at optimal focal length and aperture (best case), and weight that for an overall score. It is not intended to give you detailed quantitative metrics like Imatest, MTF and other measurements. But it does tell you if the particular lens has less, the same or more acuity for a particular camera body - and they basically look at pixel density. They will downsample high MP camera images down to 9 or 12 mp I think, unless they changed recently. It is a source of confusion for many - especially when they see an amazing lens like the 105 F1.4 score a 43 on a D810, a 39 on a D750, a 32 on a D500 and even less -27 - on a 12 mp D3S. Some uninformed people will take that to mean that you shouldn't use that lens on a crop sensor or low mp full frame camera because it is less sharp. What DXO really means is that in order to take full advantage of that outstanding lens your best bet is a high MP full frame camera. Put another way, you could save some money and not get the sharpest most expensive lenses out there if all you have is a 24mp full frame or 20mp crop camera or a 12mp full frame, since the sensor lacks the resolution to fully leverage the sharpness of the lens. DXOMark's rating system can relevant, though very unconventional.

TheDman Loc: USA

Because the stars will be in different places, whether you stack or not. You have to get your entire scene at the same time.

John Howard Loc: SW Florida and Blue Ridge Mountains of NC.

The second page on "metric scores" really helped. The way they average scores over F stops and focal lengths (later not relevant to compare primes) it is a bit inconclusive. Ie, just because lens A has a better CA score, than lens B, does not mean at F8 or F16, A will still beat B. I will go through this some more as I did not at first see anything about Coma, which is relevant for night sky work.

cjc2 Loc: Hellertown PA

Sorry Gene, but you ARE famous, at least on here. Lot's of folks, including me, are always interested in what you have to say and also think that your work is above excellent. You have given me many ideas since I've been reading your posts which have encouraged me to add to my overall skills. Although I would consider myself an above-average action sports shooter and I have been at this for just shy of 50 years, I find there is always something new to learn or try. Recently, I have been adding portrait mode, handheld panos to my repertoire based on something of yours I read a while back. Last week, shooting a dress rehearsal at a local theater, I used that technique, spontaneously, to obtain an all-cast photo. Not the best attempt in the world, but both useable (online) and very printable. One final question, were some of those shots in Central Park?