Most of us have felt very limited in our photography of late, unable to get out and about to the kind of places that we love to visit. An upside is that you can shoot millions of miles into the distance from your very own back yard, just by setting your sights on the night sky. Even so, light is arguably the most important raw material for photography, so things get a bit tricky when there’s very little to play with. Naturally, shooting outdoors in the middle of the night is particularly challenging, even when the subject in question is the Milky Way on a clear, star-studded evening.
To make matters worse, the night sky is not only very dimly lit, but it’s also large and constantly moving. For good results, you need a wide-angle lens with a fast aperture rating. Here are the best Samyang lenses for astro photography.
Samyang 10mm f/2.8 ED AS NCS CS
A fast prime for crop-sensors
Manual focusing is precise, with the focus ring operating smoothly and with long rotational travel. It comes complete with a focus distance scale and depth of fi eld markings.
Performance
Nano-structure coatings help to keep ghosting and fl are to a minimum. Performance is good in terms of coma, spherical aberration and vignetting, helping stars to retain their natural shape, even shooting wide-open at f/2.8. Sharpness isn’t great, however, and lateral chromatic aberration is a little worse than average.
Sharpness Centre-sharpness is mediocre, but it doesn’t much towards the edges and corners.
Fringing Colour fringing can be noticeable towards image corners, when uncorrected.
Distortion There’s a fairly typical amount of barrel distortion for this type of wide-angle prime.
Digital Camera verdict This lens works well for Micro Four Thirds and APS-C astro photography, where the lack of autofocus isn’t really a drawback. It’s well-made and great value.
Samyang MF 14mm f/2.8
Go fully manual on mirrorless
Performance
Sharpness is very good across the image frame, even shooting wide-open at f/2.8, along with minimal coma and astigmatism, so pinpoint light sources of stars are faithfully reproduced. Barrel distortion can look pronounced when shooting architectural subjects, but it’s less of a problem for star shots.
Sharpness Sharpness is impressive between f/4 and f/11, and remains very good wide-open.
Fringing There’s very little fringing, even towards the extreme corners of the frame.
Distortion Barrel distortion can be visible at close focus distances – not an issue for astro shots.
Digital Camera verdict There’s a certain retro charm to this fully manual lens for mirrorless models. It’s nicely made, works well for astro photography, and is a bargain at the price.
Samyang XP 14mm f/2.4
A premium-quality manual prime
Performance
Image quality at the widest aperture is markedly better than from the Irix 15mm and Sigma 14mm prime lenses on test. Spherical and lateral chromatic aberrations are negligible, while coma and astigmatism are very minimal indeed. Vignetting is also reasonably low, and there’s plenty of sharpness towards the corners of the frame. All-round image quality is highly impressive, even shooting wide-open.