canon 135mm f2 astrophotography canon 135mm f2 astrophotography

The 135mm f/2.0 ED UMC Lens from Samyang is a manual focus telephoto prime lens useful for portraiture and most telephoto applications. Lenses with extreme sharpness and bokeh tend to be heavy. Canon EOS 60Da with the Rokinon 135mm F/2 lens. And only the cat photo has something OK (but it is a cat shot You easily get them look good). I need fast auto-focus, predictable focus lock and natural, vibrant color rendition. The few occasions I use a 135 FL usually are landscape shots (where I have no use for f2) and childrens playing (where I need zoom and fast af). (purchased for $860), reviewed March 9th, 2017 The duck and cat are really the only good shots. Interesting that ancient, low-tech (no ED glass, no special coatings) non-apo telephotos could produce decent results compared to something modern. Amazing colours, contrast, bokeh, everything! That's a cheap, fun date for AP. Photography is art and technology, the latter serving the first.Photography is not something arty with a lot of gadgetry. Also Nikon DC 135mm f/2 is a great lens, a little better than 135mm Canon Aperture ring. I heard it's very sharp and well corrected. Fit and finish are first-rate as well, with very smooth manual focus operation, and very fast autofocus on the camera. The first telephoto lens of choice, especially recommended for beginners, is the 135mm F2.5 SMC Pentax. I prefer this lens than the 70-200/2.8. What you need to know is the author is a hobbyist and hands his images over to px500, the bottom of the barrel so of course he is impressed, he doesnt use top flight gear day in, day out to earn his pay. My 24-70L needs to be stopped down to f5.6 to begin to match the sharpness of my 135L at f2.0 (the test shots were of the portrait of Andrew Jackson on a $20 bill). I know this is a very old article but I was re reading as I mulled over this very point (85/1.4 vs 135/1.8) and I've gotta point out this math is all wrong First off 85->135 is a 1.6x crop and a 1.6x crop will yield 16MP on 42MP bodies (42 / (1.6x1.6) ), ~20MP on the A1, and ~24MP on the A7R IV. I do not see much difference in background blur or bokeh. The California Nebula. IQ will rival any other lens. Big F-value.Light. At f/32, it's pretty soft, but less so than a lot of lenses at that aperture. Canon 300/4 ED IF AF (non-IS) The criterion I used in evaluating lenses was optical perfection with no reservations. Of my last 3500 shots only 62 were made with the 135 f/2. Bottom line, this is just an outstanding lens by any measure, one that makes clear why you'd want to pay the freight for expensive prime glass. Nevertheless, it performs excellently on most star fields, and is too cheap not to acquire. I'm enjoying the Sigma Art 135mm - it's notably sharper than the Canon (which I owned at the same time), and it's f/1.8 instead of f/2. Especially for beginning astrophotographers, who should first invest most of their finances into a good telescope mount, telephoto lenses are an excellent and affordable solution. Aside from being much more affordable, telephoto lenses are easier to transport, easier to mount and easier to guide, and are much more likely to produce encouraging results to a beginner. The first example is good to show that you can take photos of persons in front of an ugly background without completely ruining the shot (important for people shooting events), the last one is the only one I really like (because of the color) but you could shoot this with any lens with short MFD. Since i am totally new in this field, i would like to start with astrophotography but using my existing camera (Fuji XT-30). Contrasty, saturated, nice colours. Whos Afraid of a Phantom: Istar Phantom 140mm F/6.5, that is? I bought my lens in mint condition for $350 from Japan, but I see that some retailers are asking significantly more. Comment * document.getElementById("comment").setAttribute( "id", "a0721c0ca7d0974fd27b5d0ceb81918a" );document.getElementById("cfd2c22fe2").setAttribute( "id", "comment" ); Your email address will not be published. etc.. Ron. Perhaps I missed it, but did you use a clip-in light pollution filter with your 60D and this lens? You can't really ask them to stand still while you move around. Canon CR-N700 4K PTZ Camera with 15x Zoom. Below, are a few examples of astrophotography images Ive taken with lenses of varying focal lengths. I thought I had to sell my 100/F2.8 macro L but thanks for letting me know I can keep it. These lenses go about as close as you could get without a dedicated macro lens. The F/2.0 maximum aperture of the Rokinon 135mm lens offers a chance to collect a serious amount of signal in a single shot. The extent of this influence lies mainly in photographer's perception and creativity.As all arts photography may serve given needs due to numerous reasons with the resulting integrity of the work not necessarily suggesting art.The photographic gear (from lens cleaning tissues up to s/w) is just the tool(s) of a photographer in order to produce its work. Litepanels Studio X2 Bi-Color LED Fresnel Light. The RedCat is deeper at 250mm, and after that, youre into 300-400mm territory which pulls galaxies and nebulae even closer. If You can not, buy Canon EF 85/1.8, which delivers quite similar results. While they provide a very large flat field we noticed some CA. I hear great things about the Canon 200/2.8 L but do not have one. What I see is a photographer who should maybe instead stick to the kit lens, and learn composition first. Focal length: 135mm Maximum aperture: f/2.0 Lens construction: 10 elements in 8 groups Angle of view: 18 degrees Closest focusing distance: 3 feet Focus adjustment: Rear focusing system with USM Mount: Canon Filter size: 72mm Dimensions: 3.2 inches in diameter and 4.4 inches long Weight: 1.7 pounds Warranty: 1 year See more Add To Cart. Build quality: excellent. It's March, and in America that means it's time to start arguing over which college athletics team is the best at basketball. I love the lens for my modified Sony a6000! i too use the 135mm nikkor[ with a MB speed booster on fuji x for outstanding separation], also a samyang 85 mm 1.4 nikon mt with speedbooster also gives excellent separation, yes, I think I have read that the old Nikkor 135mm f3.5 was even sharper than the f2.8. The 135mm f2.8 in particular can take amazing photos of the brighter deep sky objects with about 1 second time . At around $900 US very good price for quality no IS. Exterem apertures are extrems (wether it's full open or closed) that should be reserved for extrem cases. When attached to a DSLR camera with a full frame sensor, the lens offers a massive 15.5 x 10.6 field of view, or 18.8 across the diagonal. Its nice to have the F/2. never mind.. confirmed from others that F19 is indeed the one that is excluded on this lens! Ive captured a lot of deep-sky astrophotography targets from the northern hemisphere, but Im usually in too deep to capture an entire region of space at once. Please ride off on the same horse you rode in on. Not only does it let you travel light, but impressive wide field projects are often more successful when captured under a dark sky. One of Canon's best lenses for a reasonable price. This is one of my all time favourites. There is some controversy about the use of UV filters, but I found that a good UV filter significantly improves contrast, sharpens small star images, and reduces chromatic aberration. One of my very best lenses! Of the old teles I've had, Nikon's 400mm f/3.5 was decent, Olympus's 300mm f/4.5 was good (it had a precursor to ED glass) Pentax's 300mm Takumar was TERRIBLE, Pentax's 500mm was terrible, Nikon's 135 f/2.8 Q was ok, and Sigma's 400mm f/5.6 "apo" was satisfactory. The lens hood is removable (and reversible), which makes packing the Rokinon 135mm away into the included lens pouch possible. (And cost less too). A series of such images can be digitally stacked to produce excellent results. If you aren't completely set on the 135mm, the 200mm f/2.8L is a fantastic lens and i think its less expensive than the 135mm f/2L. AHAB. The Best Telephoto Lenses for Astrophotography. This creates an effective focal length of roughly 200mm, a useful magnification for a wide variety of astro-imaging scenarios. I just love the lightning fast & accurate focus of this lens. The OP admits he limited experience with lenses other than what he has. We take OM System's new 90mm prime F3.5 macro lens out and about around Seattle, in search of sunlight, people and very tiny things to get up close and personal with. I would be careful with the Nikon 135 f/2 DC (I have one). f1.4 was a necessisty rather than a creative luxury. Will this ever get old? The 135 is lighter, but that's its only advantage. A higher-res Blackmagic Studio Camera just dropped. Exposure uniformity (vignetting) is also really excellent, reaching a maximum of 1/4 EV (on a camera with an APS-C size sensor) at f/2, and dropping to well under 1/10 EV at f/2.8 and above. Did anybody use this lens for DSLR astrophoto? I understand the optical design is quite old. Fast. They're heavy, and expensive, but you can carry one lens instead of three, and can vary the compression and field of view to a significant degree - from nearly normal, to long portrait focal lengths. thank you for that great review and also the explanations. You may need to stop down to control star bloat, and thats exactly what Ive done with this 135. OM System's latest lens is a whopper of a macro, featuring optical stabilization, full weather sealing, up to 2x magnification and a whole lot more. Given the spot on DPR front page, lots of 'what-lens-should-I-buy' newbies will be spending their money on this one. My questions, for deep sky pics, should I get the 135mm lens or the RedCat 51 APO 250mm f/4.9 which you mentioned here as well? don't get me wrong; this lens will take great photos, but the 'flatness' i was getting in my photos nearly had me give up 25 years of hobby photography. In the past, Ive covered a number of different lenses, from the Sigma 24mm F/1.4 to the Canon EF 300mm F/4L. Just plain black plastic (no interior felt as in newer lens hoods). From my experience, the toughest test on a lense is its ability to function wide open. The combination of a wide aperture and very little light lost in transmission makes very high shutter speeds possible. Sure, if you scroll through his page there are quite a few lens tests on starshttps://www.flickr.chotos/ytoropin/, Community Forum Software by IP.BoardLicensed to: Cloudy Nights, Article: The Best Telephoto Lenses for Astrophotography, This is not recommended for shared computers, Review of Explore Scientific First Light 8, COUNTING SUNSPOTS WITH A $10 OPTICAL TUBE ASSEMBLY, Hubble Optics 14 inch Dobsonian - Part 2: The SiTech GoTo system, iStar Opticals Phantom FCL 140-6.5 review. Let's the games begin! Shoot shiny metal at a wide aperture and you'll see some very extreme purple fringing. There have been a lot of Tele-Tessars over the years. Here's what I see from the photographs:#1: Woman in traffic. Lens hood - when I bought this lens years ago the included hood was rather cheap (perhaps Canon has updated the hood) by comparison with other hoods. Contrasty but not harsh. It's an ideal portrait lens. You're right, but a headshot is exactly where I want to see all those megapixels I bought put to use! In fact, in my test shots, I noticed that the red channel was a little softer than green and blue. It requires the Contax-EOS adapter for attachment to the camera. When you buy a lens with fantastic sharpness and image quality at all apertures, you typically expect it to cost $1,200 on up. To remedy this, I reduced the star size in post, and I started shooting at F/4 to really tighten things up. I have just acquired my astrophotography set up thanks to all your videos and doing some research. Great looking lens, if you ever saw it from the front. This lens flares easily and the flare can be especially ugly if a sun or flash are in the frame. Some of the primes have a special look to them, but only the 70-200 is indispensable. I just got the Samyang version of this lens and used it with my Canon 3ti on a Skywatcher Star Adventurer. A con is that it really makes you rethink the use of your zoom lenses. If you are a Nikon user, of course have a look at the Nikon AF Nikkor 135mm f/2D DC and compare it to the other lenses mentioned in this article. The aperture ring is marked with each f-stop, and you need to manually click through F/2 F/22 and watch the blades do their work. This thing is a beast in comparison. Its fast f/2.0 maximum aperture is effective in low light and enables shallow depth of field control. Above $2500 cameras tend to become increasingly specialized, making it difficult to select a 'best' option. Rokinon 135mm F/2 Lens for ASTROPHOTOGRAPHY. You may need to refocus your subject as the temperature changes throughout the night. All of them are extremely sharp and produce mouth-watering bokeh, and all of them are reasonably priced for what you get. But you are talking more than 2x crop (cut half by width and height) and that leaves you to twice smaller resolution == quarter of the Mpix count.So now your 42Mpix A7rII is only a 10.5Mpix. Backwards compatible (film). The logic of this article can be applied to a 200/2.8 as well. Several days ago another member posted a stunning telephoto image of the Snake Nebula, Barnard 72, taken with a Canon lens which costs $12,000. I'll take photo of Orion as soon as possible. The one and only 300mm lens I tested is the Zeiss Tele-Tessar 300mm F4. I really like how they augment my longer focal length scopes. Technical Specifications Looking for specific info? Light falloff (vignetting) gets pretty high (0.73 EV wide open, but drops to 0.3 EV at f/2.8, and only 0.17 EV at f/4. By far the best one is the Tiffen Haze 2 filter. The latter are designed for crop sensor cameras and the back of the lens sticks too far into the body of the camera and would hit the EOS-clip filter. Yeah I agree that the sentiment that they were designed to be used stopped down is wrong as they were designed to be used wide open because they had to be for speed (my point above). The presentation and hands-on look and feel of the 135mm F/2 lens is impressive considering the reasonable price of this lens. But will live with it as it provides good protection of the front element. It's kinda curious how topsy turvy things have gotten since this article, just 4 years later, I think 135mm is possibly more niche than ever yet Samyang finally delivered an AF version of this concept at a lighter weight for E mount, but also at a higher price. I just wish this lens had IS for low light and portraits with flash. After weeks with a production Fujifilm X-T5, Chris and Jordan have some final thoughts. Some people do not like this and consider Bokeh to refer only to the rendering of out of focus points of light. Canon 60Da DSLR and Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 L2 lens at 135mm, f/3.2. The screws should be set sufficiently tightly to prevent shift, yet not so tightly as to interfere with fine focusing. With this lens you don't need to do much if any post processing. The images were collected using a Canon EOS Rebel T3i camera riding on a Fornax Mounts LighTrack II. - posted in Beginning Deep Sky Imaging: I have recently received my star adventurer and as of now only have the star adventurer, benro tripod (super stable), and a unmodded canon t2i with only a 18-55mm lens. First of all, the background separation and the bokeh: I had photographed lots of animals in bushes before, but never before had I seen the bush melt away in the way it did with the 135mm lens. Olympus 4x Optical Zoom f/2 Lens; 25-100mm (35mm Equivalent) Show More. My goal for this article was to show some great example photos and share some ideas for projects this lens is a good fit for. The 135mm Rokinon with the Canon Rebel seems like a pretty good setup. Your first serious portrait lens should be a modern stabilized 70-200 f/2.8. Lior, I have done a lot of reading on modern zoom lenses. Off topic, You can barely tell it's a pond.#3: Duck.Birds with bokeh are fine. (purchased for $970), reviewed March 17th, 2011 Any good ones apart from the Big Boys. I guess thats where practice will come in handy. It is the lens I use as a reference point to compare all new lens acquisitions to after purchase to determine if they need to be returned for repair or replacement. Weight. I would never shell out hundreds of euros for a 135 prime let alone one with manual focus. Fantastic IQ & Bokeh. This criticism refers to rare cases when your main subject matter is flat and completely inside the limited DOF range while the rest of the image is outside. BTW, the 300-mm Tele-Tessar you describe -- what camera was it made for? For example, the legendary Canon 85mm F1.2L weighs in at 1025g, and the Sigma 85mm F1.4 Art isn't too light either at 1130g. As it is it is earns a 9. Interesting. I do not use burst mode, but the lens would produce movie-like frames. Overall, spectacular lens. I have taken some of the coolest photos with this lens on a canon mark III which shoots ten frames per second. The image shown below covers 4.96 x 5.98 degrees in the constellation Cassiopeia. Light weight and robust. Seems like a great lens. Does this work well with any of the 1.4x / 1.7x / 2.0x Teleconverters (extenders / barlows)? I do not think telephoto lenses would be suitable for use with your modified camera. So I feel I'm being cheated. This is the EF-M series version. My work requires auto-focus. I dont mean to be rude, but I fail to see any photographic comparison or test to display the quality of this lens against others, concerning coma or anything else, except considerations on the manual focusing, its shape and ergonomic. Here is a short list of great astrophotography targets to shoot at 135mm with this lens: Below, is an incredible example of the types of projects possible with the Rokinon 135mm F/2.0 lens. Deep-sky astrophotography is often associated with a camera and telescope, but the truth is there are a lot of great camera lenses for astrophotography out there. Fast focus, Super sharp, Well built, Awesome for low light. Magical images, great AF, great close focusing abilities. There are, of course, outlierssuch as the legendary unicorn lens Canon EF 200mm F2but that one isn't a great alternative unless you are cool with spending $5,700 and carrying around something about as wieldy as a fire hydrant. There are a lot of photo/video cameras that have found a role as B-cameras on professional film productions or even A-cameras for amateur and independent productions. 8MP is plenty for the usual 8x10 or 16x20 portrait print. " Also, we ought never question or diminish the joy of others. However, all the reviews were made by nature and sports photographers, and I would like to find out more about their performance in astrophotography. (purchased for $890), reviewed October 21st, 2005 Photos posted are pleasing but I'd be into seeing something new. (purchased for $1,000), reviewed January 1st, 2007 $399 00. Selecting between it and the 200mm Takumar was not an easy choice but, in the end, I chose the Takumar because it seemed to have slightly better contrast. A camera tracker (or star tracker) is necessary for long exposure deep-sky astrophotography, but a compact model such as the iOptron SkyTracker or Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer will do just fine. Tamron has announced its 11-20mm F2.8 Di III-A RXD ultra-wide angle zoom will be made available for Fujifilm X-mount. However, as I have no actual experience with the Baader filter, I would suggest that you consult other members on the particular APO - Baader filter combination you have in mind. Geometric distortion is lower than one would expect, at 0.15% pincushion maximum, with an average of 0.07%. (purchased for $900), reviewed August 22nd, 2008 You are entitled to your opinions, and I respect that! Sometimes though, we stumble upon a great lens design which is strong in all three.