Astigmatism

Hello All, I am returning to photography after a decades-long hiatus that was prompted by my loss of access to a darkroom. Digital rendered that excuse moot, so I now return with a recently purchased XT5. I am from the Hudson River Valley in New York where I have spent the past five decades engaged in environmental work, mostly on the Hudson. I teach at Pace University where I direct the Gale Epstein Center for Technology, Policy and the Environment. My project ahead is documenting the unseen Hudson, a combination of the obscure, under-appreciated, and invisible - a street-style approach to people, places and things that make the river what it is. There will be little landscape, if any. The "Mighty Hudson" is well-documented. If nothing else, it will be a mission-driven project to bring me back to photography while learning my camera. I look forward to everything this amazing site can teach me. Cronin

Hi everyone. Just bought my retirement gift to myself - an XT-5 with 16-50 and 70-300 lenses and cant wait to get started.
 
Used to be a keen photographer before life got in the way and have continued, albeit with phone, but despite it taking decent photos, I want to move on to the next level.
Really excited about to getting to grips with this beast and realise what a steep learning curve I'm on and will be looking for plenty of advice and tips.

This brings back memories! You started a dozen years before me, but tri-x was still my state of the art (along with plus-x and pan-x). That was a lot of fun. But now I sure do like setting my "film" speed to suit every shot, and letting the camera focus, and the faster sharper lenses. And I love how much less a desktop computer smells, compared to the wet darkroom.
Welcome!

As BobJ notes, it probvably easier and better to stich multiple shots when you process the photos.
Lightroom is easy and provides very good results. I'm sure there are other photo editors that can do it too.
You'll get a bigger and better file from stitching multiple raw files.

I find that I can get it right with a little practice. However, you wil get a superior and more reliable result using stitching

Any chance light could be leaking around your lens cap? What if you repeat this test, but holding your camera under dark towels or coats or something, and maybe with the room light off?
Not sure your sensor isn't damaged, but I'm having a hard time imagining sensor damage that would look like THAT.

Years ago I carried my Canon film cameras hyperfocused, but now with Fuji X equipment the autofocus works so well hyperfocusing is a thing of the past. I have a Fuji XF 14 mm f/2.8, one of the older lenses in the line, and it has depth of field and focus distance marks (and an unusual clutch to put the lens into manual versus automatic focusing mode). But I've never even tried hyperfocusing it. None of my other lenses have the markings for this.
Could this be a non-issue?

I never followed up on this. I did get one. It's pretty amazing. Every shot I've taken with it is sharp, handheld or on a tripod, at least somewhere in the photo. I have experimented with it at home, but I live in woods and don't have very long sight lines; if there are trees in the photo, some will be sharp, but depth of field limits this.
Handheld, it's a little hard for me to aim accurately (I'm pretty shaky). Just now it's occurring to me I should have tried Continuous autofocus, but I only tried Single shot. I can't control what point will autofocus as a result. This is all the more true with the 2X extender.
On a tripod all of this is perfectly fine. I need to try a better environment, where perhaps handheld will work well. I live near the Conowingo Dam on the Susquehanna River, famous for its bald eagles, which make for great targets.
One unusual feature: the lens can be programmed for a focus distance. You get it focused on something and press a button on the lens to set that distance. Then, whenever you want to return to that distance, you press one of the four buttons arranged around the barrel a little behind the front of the lens. I haven't done much with it.
Attached is a photo of a little monster figurine, 5" tall. Picture was taken with the 2X from 104 feet away with tripod. ISO 6400, f/11, 1/2000 s. I had to shrink the file size to upload; there's better detail in the photo I actually got. 

Those coloured streaks appear to be some sort of lens flare.

f/8 and Don't Be Late!

Hi everyone,
Nice to meet you, I'm new to the forum and love Fuji. I live in France near Paris. I'd like to share a moon shoot dated march 2023 made with X-T5 with XF 150-600. Enjoy the mineral moon !

I vote for the X-T30ii also. I agree with the points Sleeping Dog makes.
I also really appreciate the manual controls for setting shutter speed and (on the "R" lenses) the lens aperture. You can leave these on "A" for automatic, or just set another lever for "AUTO", if you like. But I'm a big believer in understanding the settings and putting them to work, at least much of the time. That's probably a minority opinion, so your mileage may vary. And, in some circumstances -- like a news story rapidly unfolding right in front of me, where I want decent pictures without any time spent on thinking about settings -- I'll go with automatic anyhow.

There's a "cable channel cover for DC coupler" along one short edge of the battery chamber cover. It's item 36 in the Parts of the Camera illustration on page 3 of the manual. I bought a CP-W126 DC coupler, which has an end that looks like the battery and slides into its place. But how do you remove the cable channel cover?
It is obviously a separate part. It's a lighter color than the battery chamber cover, and it's not quite as hard.
I studied it under a magnifier and it seems to have little tabs and ledges that would prevent moving it in any direction. Do you force it? In which direction?
Thanks!

Hey, great answer! It took a little more force than I expected but seeing your photos and reading your description gave me the confidence to go ahead with it. I really appreciate you taking the trouble jerryy!

The two items I ordered aren't compatible. The threads on the camera side are coarser than the threads on the telescope side. I still haven't found (on my own) a camera part and a telescope part that both specify thread size (including pitch) and match.
So I think I'd like to try the first thing you mention in your last post, jerryy, the "Fuji X Mount 2" UltraWide Prime Focus Telescope Adapter" at Telescopeadapters.com. But I have a question about it. The photos seem to show that the barrel has two slightly different diameters. The barrel is narrower close to the camera and wider further from it. There's definitely a small shoulder visible in the photo. If the wider part fits into the tube, the narrower part will be under the clamping mechanism (three screws bearing on a split brass ring). That seems wrong. If the narrower part fits, the wider part won't go in in the first place.
Can you tell me what's up with that?
 
Thanks!!

Wow, jerryy, you knocked this right out of the park! Thank you! This would be great as some permanent sticky!
I think I have ordered something that will work. It's M42, not M48 -- I couldn't find both parts in M48 on Amazon or B&H Photo. However I bet this will not cause any vignetting. I've had tools for predicting vignetting, but don't know where working ones are, so I'm gambling a little. What I ordered:
Astromania 2" T-2 Focal Camera Adapter for SLR Cameras Fotodiox Lens Mount Adapter Compatible with M42 Screw Mount SLR Lens on Fuji X-Mount Cameras I already have one of the Fotodiox adapters which I built into an adapter for mounting a microscope objective 160 mm from my camera sensor. It can be trusted. However it doesn't minimize the length added to the optical path, and I didn't find any others that were shorter.
The scope is an "Orion SkyQuest XT10 IntelliScope Dobsonian Reflector Telescope" (this name is almost as long as the optical tube). My manual doesn't list the back focus distance, but I am hopeful, because using 2" eyepieces requires a special adapter that extends the focusing tube outward, as if the back focus is surprisingly large.
Thank you for a very thorough useful answer!!

The shorter M48 to X-mount adapters are usually the ones that work.
The trick with Newtonians is that the focus spot is almost inside the focuser.
Edit: I am updating this portion, the older stuff that was here is still valid, but 'a picture and a thousand words and all of that'.
If you look at the focuser closely, you see it has the outer part and the inner part sitting inside. Loosen the screws on the outer part, take the inner part out of the focuser and slide in the adapter with the camera attached. Tighten the screws and adjust the focuser as needed.
The overall “trick” is to find the scope specs listing for what is called back focus (for many refractor scopes it will be 55mm, but for reflector scopes it will be very different depending on what kind of scope it is, rc scopes have very different back focus distances than do Newtonians than do …) Okay, Fujifilm X-mount cameras have what is called the flange distance (the distance from the mount spot to the sensor in the body) of 17.7mm. If your scope or accessory has a back focus of 55mm, subtract 17.7 from 55 to get 37.3mm that you need extension tubes to cover.
Most Newtonians have very short back focus distances, so you almost need to have the camera inside the focuser. Other bodies, Canon, Sony, Nikon, etc. with deeper flange distances are more troublesome when trying to use them with standard Newtonian scopes.
Edit: It occurs to me that I could hopefully make this a bit clearer by demonstrating with one of my scopes, so in a bit, I will post that and not rely on looking at other sites for visuals. I will try to do so quickly and come back and edit this posting.
HTH.

The M48 to X-Mount adapter with lens cap.

The focuser. Loosen the three (screws / bolts) and remove the inner part.

Inner part removed and some M48 extension tubes are added to the adapter. Just use long enough extensions for the focuser to hold onto the combination but not so long that when you put them into the focuser, it hits the secondary mirror. That will cause a lot of bad juju. (The small mirror at the top of your Newtonian is called the secondary).

Adapter combination attached to my trusty X-T10.

Slide the tube into the focuser, tighten the (screws / bolts) and you are good to go.

Because the sensor assembly is moved electrmagnetically. When there is no power it is essentially free moving.

Switch the shutter to ES to prevent any possibility of the mechanical shutter going off while cleaning.
Turn on the camera and leave it on
Set IS mode to off.
Clean.

What is most ironic about this is that there must be many of us here that would be interested in significant ads about the products we're discussing. I would be. I normally hate ads, but relevant ones here would actually be somewhat welcome.
What are the recent new Fuji product announcements? Is anybody offering a sale? How about 3rd party products? I mean, I actually want to spend money, more or less.

What is most ironic about this is that there must be many of us here that would be interested in significant ads about the products we're discussing. I would be. I normally hate ads, but relevant ones here would actually be somewhat welcome.
What are the recent new Fuji product announcements? Is anybody offering a sale? How about 3rd party products? I mean, I actually want to spend money, more or less.

I understand the site has a need to bring in revenue but the "Advertisement" and "Ad" replies to every forum post are useless and annoying - seeing a possible response to your post and instead being sent to Amazon is just irritating - perhaps the site could switch back to normal ads.

I tried a series of photos to show how vignetting works as the lens aperture is varied, for the Laowa fisheye. I took outdoor shots low to the ground on a tripod, as I adjusted the aperture ring through each labeled f/ stop detent. Shutter speed was automatic. I pasted a middle slice through the circular image for each aperture into a single slide, then labeled and marked that to post here. The aperture is indicated off the right end of each slice. A red line marks the horizontal center. The slices all contain the same pixel locations from the photos and were treated identically. The photos themselves were all done identically except for the manual aperture settings and the automatic shutter speeds compensating for them.
You can see the ends of the slices are darkened for larger apertures but it improves as aperture is reduced.
I kind of figure that at f/8 and narrower I'm unlikely to notice the vignetting in most pictures. Of course, fisheyes are easy to get enough light into, even handheld in dim conditions.

Yup, catadioptric lenses wipe out CA from your images, they have a few drawbacks; the design means they start off at telephoto focal lengths with fixed apertures and there is a teeny tiny “hole” in the image middle (this is not a big issue, it is usually never noticeable, but it is there). They also tend to be a little heavy and occasionally need adjusting to keep the mirror part collimated. They give you pretty good images.
As I recall, Minolta made a catadioptric lens that could auto focus, this was taken over by Sony who still makes the lens for one of their bodies, but no one else makes one. There are several manual focus ones for Fujilfilm’s X-mount bodies.
Achromatic lenses do remove red-blue fringing, you can often find these types in those screw on macro-diopter lenses or in old box landscape cameras. But they have a problem with green fringing as it is not corrected at all.
To get all three fringings, red-blue-green, folks have shifted over to Apochromatic designs. These are found in high end telephoto camera lenses and more often in refractor telescopes — the triplet design. They currently tend to be expensive.