Lens Guide and Recommendation To Use Stars Trail and Astrophotography

let's talk about lenses unlike a lot of photographic genres in astrophotography the image quality of your photos will be dependent mostly on the lens that you use there are two basic traits of a lens that will affect how to take your astrophotos focal length and aperture size if you don't know what focal length or aperture.

but what focal lens should you use in the focal length I recommend for Milkyway photography is anything less than 35 millimeters that means that on an aps-c camera you will need a 24 millimeter lens and on a micro four-thirds camera a 16 millimeter lens for your maximum focal length you could use longer focal lengths like 50 millimeters but wide-angle lenses offer some key advantages when shooting Milky Way images one advantage is the larger field of view as you decrease focal length the amount of scene your camera.

can capture increases and because the milky way fills the sky from Horizon to horizon wide-angle lenses can capture more content the different wide-angle focal lengths will reveal different amounts of the Milky Way so if your preference is a more substantial crop on the galactic core you might want to pick up a 35 millimeter or if you like.

capturing as much content as you can maybe a 14 millimeter the second advantage which I mentioned earlier is the longer available shutter speeds which will let you take in more light and won't cause your stars to trail how about aperture as you increase the size of your lens's aperture you are physically letting in more light into the camera body for any night photography and f-number of 2.8 or less is almost required focal length and aperture are not the entire story.

however different lenses come with different degrees of aberrations the aberration that makes the biggest impact in AstrotogRafi our chromatic aberrations spherical aberrations ChroMatic aberrations and astigmatism x' chromatic aberration is a term you've probably heard before also known as color fringing or purple fringing it is a common optical problem

that can cause blurry or noticeable colored edges in high contrast situations and in astrophotography each star plastered against a black sky is a high contrast situation white stars can gain a purple halo which can be very distracting in astro photos in lightroom there is a button to eliminate chromatic aberrations but it's best to have none in the first place

spiracle aberrations are less common in the case that your lens suffers from spherical aberration stars will appear with halos surrounding them this aberration isn't as detrimental to your astrophotos as others and stopping down the lens often corrects it chromatic aberration or coma caused point sources

such as stars to appear distorted often having a tail like a comet these coma tails are most apparent near the edges of a photo the good news is that coma disappears after stopping down most lenses one or two stops astigmatism is probably the least well-known of the four aberrations and is often confused

for coma sometimes astigmatism may even be referenced as coma in reviews which can be confusing astigmatism usually spreads light along an axis that is rotated along the center of the image astigmatism is common even in expensive lenses and can be reduced by decreasing your aperture size coma and astigmatism

can even be found together in some lenses with all these considerations I have some specific lenses that I recommend before I start however check if the lens that came with your camera can capture the stars find a dark sky and take some test shots of the milky way and if you're happy with the results

you might not have to spend any money at all even so you may want another lens because besides Astro photography all of the lenses I recommend double as great landscape lenses for a great budget
Astrophotography lens I recommend the lenses from the Rokinon lineup all of these lenses are reasonably sharp at F 2.8 and control chromatic and chromatic aberrations very well they come in lots of varieties to fit your camera's lens amount and are cheap

compared to others on this list the only downside of these lenses is that they have no autofocus so if you rely on that then maybe consider other lenses if you need autofocus the Tokina 11 to 16 f 2.8 is a good option and it is also a zoom lens albeit with a short range so you have more freedom with framing and such Sigma's art lineup of lenses are fantastic astrophotography lenses they are some of the sharpest lenses on the market even wide open and have virtually

no climatic or chromatic aberrations once they are stopped down to F 2.8 they also have autofocus and are available for many lens mounts but you pay a premium for this quality and these lenses do not come cheap another great lens is the Tamron 15 to 30 which is also sharp and controls aberrations well it is the lens I use personally and because of its large zoom range I only need one lens instead of
one or two primes it is expensive though and because of its integrated lens hood

using filters requires the purchase of special mounts which are expensive I didn't include any lenses from Canon or Nikon because frankly I don't know about their performance and the lenses on my list can be purchased for almost any type of interchangeable lens camera

while Canon and Nikon lenses can only be used with their own cameras unless you buy adapters I recommend reading reviews from different sources before buying any lens and my list is by far not all the good astrophotography lenses just the ones I know perform well with a good lens for astrophotography the entire process is much easier and a good lens

will vastly improve the quality of your photos and really bring them to a professional level if you have questions about a specific lens ask in the comments and I will try to help stay