JimH123 Loc: Morgan Hill, CA

I did some playing around tonight using Sony's Imaging Edge Software running on my Windows Laptop. Not all Sony Cameras are supported and of those that are supported, even fewer support Live View. I like Live View a lot.

See: https://support.d-imaging.sony.co.jp/app/imagingedge/en/devices/#emount
https://support.d-imaging.sony.co.jp/app/imagingedge/en/devices/#amount

It was easy to connect via USB and it worked flawlessly with my A6600. Live view was nice and it updated rapidly enough to be able to zoom in the 11.7x and manually focus on stars. Much easier focusing on the laptop screen than the small LCD screen. Also since the A6600 supports battery charging over the USB cable, the battery level stayed at 100% over the couple hours I played with this.

The control panel to the side had all the controls I needed to control the camera. I set it up to save the images to my laptop and it will save RAW and/or JPEG as desired.

After each image was captured, it automatically appeared on a View Screen (not the Live View Screen).

The previous night I spent time with the Olympus Capture Software which does mostly the same things. But the Live View refresh rate is considerably slower and it was a real pain to do precise focusing. I much prefer the Sony Imaging Edge on that point. One thing I wish Sony would allow though would be to allow adjustment of refresh time so that it could be slowed down once critical focus is made so that the screen would be brighter with a longer capture time.

Here is an image of Deneb and the constellation Cygnus taken tonight. I was experimenting with a legacy Minolta Rokkor 28mm f2.5 lens. Found with this old lens that focus was very easy, but I didn't get nice round stars until I stopped down to f5.6. So decided to stay at that aperture. Didn't track tonight and held shutter time to 10 sec to prevent star trails and set ISO to 5000. If I were tracking, I would have reduced the ISO and extended the shutter time. The camera is a bit weak at the HA wavelength and the red from all the nebulae is not so visible. The North American Nebula can be seen on its side beneath Deneb. And I can see some red CA on some of the stars from this lens. I have plenty of other lenses to try this with.

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Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Nice image for no tracking.

SonnyE Loc: Communist California, USA

Looks great Jim!
I'm particularly intrigued by the 6 point of Deneb.
Nice sharp image!
That old Rokkor still delivers the goods great!

Really glad to see you are getting out there to play.

I'm abstaining this weekend as we have the Daughter, Grand Daughter and her boyfriend here for a long weekend from Washington State.
But I should be back out playing Monday night. (I hope)
Sore back. Put together a new BBQ yesterday and over did it with bending, reaching, and lifting. Sometimes I am my own worst enemy.

JimH123 Loc: Morgan Hill, CA

Yes, the aperture blades are responsible for the spikes. I did have to stop it down to f5.6 to get decent looking stars. Decided I am going to try out other lenses and put it into a spreadsheet as to how well they work with stars. Stars happen to be quite the test of a lens in capturing the point source of light. I had only 30 min to try one last night and tried my Olympus EM1ii camera with the 60mm f2.8 macro lens, and there was no need to stop down that lens. Perfect stars even into the corners at f2.8. No coma, no astigmatism, no CA. I was liking that.

But I have many more lenses to try. I am an old lens hoarder from years back and have a collection of Asahi Pentax Takumars, old Minolta Rokkors and others. Soon, I will take the tracking mounts out of mothballs and fire them up again. I haven't done any tracking in quite a long time.

Attaching a sample with Deneb from last night done with a stack of 18. But since I wasn't tracking, I was limited to 2.5 sec images at ISO 3200 and f2.8 since the 60mm acts like 120mm if it were a full frame camera. Had to do a lot of stretching and the colors are sort of ugly. But stars looked good.

The previous night, the seeing conditions weren't so good, but I did try out a m42 lens, the old, legendary Vivitar (made by Komine) 55mm f2.8 macro. Stopping down to f4 gave me perfect stars.

I do have enough old lenses to keep me busy for quite a while.

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DickC Loc: NE Washington state

Nice photos!!

SonnyE Loc: Communist California, USA

I see no blade marks in this one. Nice

JimH123 Loc: Morgan Hill, CA

That's because the lens was wide open at f2.8. Had it been stopped down, then the edges between blades become more apparent. Small blade marks if stopped down just a little and bigger blade marks as stopped down even more.
But this lens was sharp enough when wide open to use for stars and did not exhibit coma and astigmatism.
I wish all lenses worked as good as this one.