Taking a break from my intermediate wide field work with my small WO scope, I decided that I should add a prime SLR lens to my quiver.  I have seen a lot of outstanding work done with the Rokinon 135 f/2 using full-frame and C-sized sensors.  I like the concept of getting the most of the field.  That would mean me getting a full-sized camera.  I don't relish the move to that much extra computing effort to get my images at this time, so started looking at a shorter lens as a means to gain the FOV with my customary computer work load.  That is my QHY268C.  I noted that moving to a 105mm length, gets me nearly the same FOV with a C-sensor.  My eye gravitated to the well respected Sigma 105 f/1.4 lens.  A beast.  17 glass elements, 2ED.  75mm objective.  Very pricey.  3X the 135.  So I took advantage of a local rental unit to give it a try.  This image is a result of working with the lens for 3 nights in September.  This is the only subject that seemed worth processing.  Maybe one more of the 4 I shot.  Lots of problems, as you will see upon closer inspection.  But what you cannot see is the difficulty of making much of the image usable.  Not wanting to fault the lens, I rented the same lens a week ago and took shots from my Nikon SLR.  I have to admit that the stars looked much better.  But not as good as I really want.  Yes I did test how stopping down the lens can improve the stars, but do I really want to spend that much money for what ends up being a 45 or 50mm diameter lens?  So I now own the makings of a Rokinon 135 setup, only waiting on a focus motor and a lens!  For some of the targets I wish to attack with this setup, I will just have to get good at mosaicing.

Except for the challenges noted above, it is really nice shooting at f1.7.  Yes, I did stop this lens down and it is amazing how much glass exposure is lost just going from f1.4 to f1.7.  The lens wants to go deep!  30 sec exposures.  I can only guess at how useful this would be in a real dark site.  Not much to say about the primary subjects in this field.  I have done both of these individually.  And the double cluster, looks nice at full frame but suffers from the star defects.  I find the DC to be fine in imaging, but it truely excels better as a visual target.  Finally, there are a couple rather large reflection nebula VdB14 and 15 along with a few other smaller ones listed on the plate solve.  The mouseover with a starless image makes it easier to see these smaller RN.  That kills the plate solve for the top page, but the plate solve is easier to read on the second page anyway.