About Lonely Speck

On Photographing the Milky Way on Vimeo

Hello and welcome to Lonely Speck!

We are Ian Norman and Diana Southern, a married couple with a passion for photography and travel.

Ian Norman and Diana Southern

Lonely Speck is the home of our night photography and astrophotography adventures. It’s a project to help us learn as much as we can about photographing the Milky Way and sharing those experiences with others so that they can learn how to do it, too.

Here you will find our best efforts to impart our own knowledge of dark sky photography to you. We pride ourselves on the hundreds of images all of you have created and shared with us using the tutorials and articles on Lonely Speck. We hope that you will find as much satisfaction using the tools here as we have had creating them.

We hope that you will join our small community and share your experiences with us. Subscribe to our email list, share your images on our Flickr group, follow us on Facebook, and read about our travel adventures on our travel blog.

Check out our meet-ups and workshops page for more opportunities to connect with us!

Wishing you clear dark skies and happy photographing.

–Ian & Diana

57 Replies to “About Lonely Speck”

  1. Hi Ian & Diana,

    You list the Sigma 50mm f1.4 Art lens in your list of lenses for Astrophotography. Have you done any review of the lens that is available or any insight on it? Rather than cropping a 24mm image, I am wondering about using a 50mm to reduce cropping. Any insight or comments would be appreciated.

    Thanks and hope to hear from you.

    1. Hi Tim,
      Diana and I have not used the Sigma 50mm f/1.4 personally. That said, a few of the photographers that I know, including Paul Wilson, have used that lens to great success. It seems that it’s probably one of the sharpest 50mm lenses for the money. Lens Tip’s review of the lens also indicates relatively good coma aberration performance when stopped down to at least f/2. I personally love using a standard prime like a 50mm for panorama stitching high resolution nightscapes. Cheers! –Ian

    1. Hi Carol,

      We’ve stopped the production of 67mm filters since most of our customers prefer the 85mm and 100mm systems.

  2. Ian,

    Just wanted to take a minute to thank you for the Sharpstar filter. I had many failed milkyway nights due to poor focus and tape coming loose from the focus ring of my lenses. Now using Sharpstar I am good to go. I always do a fresh focus and ring tape-up just before I start shooting. All my pics are so much sharper and I can change focus to include foreground without worrying about not being able to dial the focus back in. Thank you, thank you, thank you! Using the Sharpstar is so much better than any other method for focusing on stars at night.

    Respectfully,
    -Scot Thomas

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