OK, I messed up - but I think the result was still kinda cool. With the help of Father Adrian Sisnaros, I took this image of the San Francisco de Asis church in Golden, NM a couple nights ago. Father Sisnaros not only gave me permission to stay out there in this gated church/ cemetery, but he was nice enough to come out during the early stages of my shoot and help me (and he had his camera and got some cool Milky Way shots too). He turned off a distracting outside light and open the doors turning on some low level interior lights which really added to the picture. (The light you see in the bell tower is Father S in the back shining a flashlight up there).

I then spent the night there (ever spend the night alone in the dark in a cemetery?) to get some star trail images behind the church (actually it's around 1000 separate exposures all blended together to form the trails). I was really bummed when I got home and discovered all the star images were badly out of focus. Somehow, after I set sharp focus on the stars, the focus ring must have gotten bumped because the stars in all the images were out of focus. Nevertheless, I blended the star images to give this result of "fat" star trails. I'm going to go out and try a re-do to get properly focused stars, but I thought the end result of my mistake was still kinda cool.

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The only Sigma lens I have is the 150-600 contemporary. I use it on my R5 with an adapter. It’s a great lens for the money.

Thanks all for the feedback. I think I'll take advantage of the sale and get this reasonably priced Lexar v60 at B&H (512GB for $149)

For any Canon R5 shooters: If I shoot only stills to the SD card in my R5 (video to the CFExpress), would it cause any issues to not buy v90 cards, but instead SDXC II V60 cards? For shooting stills, how much impact would that have on shooting bursts for example? I'm sure some, but is it with the extra $$ for a V90 vs V60 cards if you mostly shoot individual shots and only occassionaly shoot burts? How much if any difference? (Trying to decide whether to jump on a Veterans' day sale on high capacity Lexar cards that are SDXC II v60. I know there are differences in what a V90 will support for video, but would I really notice any big difference if I used V60 just for stills? Anyone have experience shooting with both? (I currently have 128GB SDXC II v90 (300MB/s) card in my SD slot, but tempted to bay another card that's a good price but v60, not V90. Will I notice much difference for stills, burst shots, etc)? (I shoot RAW mostly)

I respect your opinion. I simply disagree with you. Peace out.

Ok, maybe I misunderstood your meaning when you replied to jaymatt, who said "I am so sick of PC that I could toss my cookies. I shoot photos!" And the first line of your reply was "Sounds like a perfectly red-necky thing to do." If I misconstrued that first line of your reply to his comment, then my bad.

Aside from my own 24 years in the service, my Dad was a WWII combat medic who went ashore on Utah beach and later fought in the Battle of the Bulge, (and later, after a 16 year break in service, rejoined and served two tours in Vietnam") He suffered what we later understood to be severe PTSD for the remainder of his life. So I'm well aware of PTSD, not just from my Dad's experience, but from having volunteered myself with the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) for 17 years. It is still my opinion that trying to change language that is almost universally accepted would be unproductive. We have different opinions. I'm fine with that.

By calling people one disagrees with "red neck?" Respectfully, I disagree with the notion of changing how people must talk because some people are bothered by a word that has many meanings. It is the context in which a word is used that matters. My dictionary, in the definition of the word in question, says:

" 4. [with object] film or photograph (a scene, film, etc.): she has just been commissioned to shoot a video | [no object] : point the camera and just shoot—nothing could be easier. "

Search "Point and shoot" on any photographic store web site and you will get results for "point and shoot" cameras (not point and click cameras). I just saw an article on Facebook by some Hollywood magazine with a headline about Taylor Swift returning to some location where she had done some photo shoot.

Look, I respect your opinion, and would defend your right to it, but I'm not going to change how I talk because you have an opinion about a certain word. When I use that word in the context of photography, most rational people are going to understand what I mean. I just had a conversation a few days ago with a Priest about wanting to photograph his church at night to do a star trails image. I literally said to him, "I'd like permission to shoot your church at night to get an image with star trails." If you don't want to use that word, then don't, but because I'm not going along with your change of language, that doesn't make me a red neck or not compassionate, it just means I disagree with your premise.

Peace.

Yes, I read your post. I'm sorry for those impacted. But "shoot" as just a word and can have lots of meanings and lots of applications. I'm sorry if that bothers you, but I'm not changing my language because of what some evil person does. I shoot pictures with my camera and I shoot targets with my gun. It's just a word and not using that word isn't going to change the evil in people's hearts.

Ditto!

I don't know if he's talking about the same tool. But the tool I'm talking about is this one that is pretty new and right below the Transform panel. Note that they call it Early Access meaning it is actually still in Beta.

I've only started using it. I suspect one can get better, more realistic results with practice.

Likely will. LOL. For me, I’m not interested in making a very sharp background blurry, rather I like the idea of being able to take a picture with f/4 amount of blur and making it look more like 2.8 or 2.0….without spending $3000!

So far these are the only ones I’ve played with

With most camera manufacturers, the difference in the cost of a lens that yields 1 extra stop of aperture, means a significantly increased cost. For example, the lens I bought with my Canon R5 is the RF 24-105 f/4.0, which retails currently for $1300.00. Canon has just released a new lens that is a 24-105 f/2.8, which is 1 stop brighter. The cost: $3000.00 (I rounded up $1 in both cases). So you could buy two of the f/4 versions for the price of the new f/2.8 and still have $400 left over!

So what does that new f/2.8 lens get you (besides more cost, larger size and more weight (2.9lbs vs 1.54lbs)? Well, of course you get that extra stop of light that would help in low light situations, and of course you get more bokeh (background blur).

So, why am I not chomping at the bit to purchase this new f/2.8? Well, it's because of a couple of new capabilities in Lightroom: Denoise and Lens Blur tools.

Noise: The fact is, I am already able to shoot at higher ISO with my R5 mirrorless than I could with my old 5D Mark IV DSLR. The R5 handles noise very well in darker situations, and when there is a little more noise than I'd like, Lightroom does an amazing job of handling the noise. In the two sets of shots below, the Polar Bear was shot at ISO 100 so noise wasn't an issue, but the statuette was shot in a lower light situation and the ISO was 6400. Even at 6400 you had to pixel peep to see the noise, but I applied the Lightroom Denoise tool anyway, which really made it look pretty good. So, as far as dealing with low light situations, the need for an extra stop of light on the lens becomes less important. (Both were shot with the RF24-105 f/4)

Lens blur: A new tool in Lightroom is "Lens Blur" which, as the name implies, allow you to increase the amount of bokeh in the background. It uses AI technology to determine what your depth of field is and allows you a lot of latitude in adjusting how much blur there is and also what any "bokeh balls" look like. In the two sets on images below, the first image of each set has an f-stop of f/4 with no additional blur applied in Lightroom. However, the second image in each set has had additional lens blur applied with this new tool. There is a lot of adjustment you can make to refine this blur and what the bokeh balls look like. It's friggin' magic! My one minor complain is, as you add more blur, it doesn't really tell you what equivalent f-stop would be, so you just kind of have to eyeball it to taste. The point is, with these new tools, the need for a $3000 lens to deal with low light and give better background separation is greatly reduced (in my opinion). As an amateur who doesn't earn a living with photography, I'm quite happy to keep my f/4 lenses and apply additional noise reduction and lens blur in LR when/if needed.

R5, 105mm ISO100 F/4 no extra blur applied

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R5, 105mm ISO100 F/4 extra blur applied in LR

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R5, 24mm ISO6400 F/4 no extra blur applied

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R5, 24mm ISO6400 F/4 extra blur applied in LR

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Wonderful!