So I own a few telephoto lenses and I decided to do a quick test (its been cloudy and finally a clear night and the Full moon is all I have to image). I devised this quick test as I wanted to see which lens could produce the most detailed photo (a combination of sharpness, contrast, and detail).
So this ended up being a comparison test between the RedCat51 which is toted to be extremely sharp against other lenses and telescopes I owned. Specifically I wanted to see how it preformed against the EgdeHD 8″ and various Nikkor Telephoto Lenses in the 200-300mm.
I tossed a few other fun lenses in there like the plastic Lomo 120mm lens, a compact 500mm Mirror Lens and a Nifty Fifty – I didn’t expect great things form these lenses but I had them handy.
Optics Used:
- Nikon 50mm
- Lomo 120mm Plastic Lens
- Nikkor 70-200mm f2.8
- Soligor 200mm f2.8
- Nikkor 300mm
- Tokina 500mm Mirror Lens
- William Optics RedCat 51
- Celestron EdgeHD8
The test is not designed to be scientific end all be all, rather 10-15 photos with each lens and PIPP used to determined the best quality (highest contrast) image from each run. I then scaled them so they all matched the RedCat51 @ 250mm and balanced the overall exposure to match as closely as I could. The gallery below has the results.
While testing the center sharpness of a lens with Lunar or Planetary imagery is not the most ideal solution for testing edge to edge overall sharpness, it is a quick and dirty method that can show which lenses in one’s arsenal should be considered for a side by side test on a more expansive astronomical target, which is the next step in this lens testing regiment.
