A Practical Guide to Lens Aberrations and the Lonely Speck Aberration Test

In this article I review one of the most common problems that affects the design of our camera lenses: aberrations.

I hope to give you practical knowledge about the common technical problems of lens design and how they actually affect your photos. Most of all, this article is here to help you understand one aspect of why one lens will produce a better, more accurate photo than another. It’s an especially nice bit of knowledge to have when choosing equipment for use in even basic astrophotography.

This is sort of a pixel peepers’ article: you could go through your entire photography career and never learn about lens aberrations and be just fine. But if you like the idea of understanding the fine details behind lens performance — and how it affects your photos — this article is for you.

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Voigtländer 15mm f/4.5 Heliar III Astrophotography Review

I recently had the opportunity to shoot some astrophotography with an interesting lens: the Voigtlander 15mm f/4.5 Heliar III. With its rather modest/slow/dark f/4.5 aperture, the 15mm Heliar III isn’t the most obvious choice for shooting the night sky, but in reality it actually performed well, especially when paired with the Sony a7II. This review is as much a test of the lens as it is an experiment shooting the Milky Way with a slow lens. Read on for more about my experience shooting the night sky with the Voigtländer 15mm f/4.5 Heliar III.

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