Which Camera lenses for Astro photography

[Gina]

No, not me.

[DaveS]

Ok, sorry.

[davew]

Be interesting to find out. I've several, bought for cinematography, the two I might try are the 90 f/2 Summicron-R and the 180 f/3.4 Apo-Telyte-R.

I think another member here (Gina?) has a 180 Apo.

Just have to make sure they focus to infinity.

The 180 lenses were developed for the Canadian Navy and are quite sharp and have a very flat field. Being APO they don't mess your colours up either. Stars into the corners are very sharp with an 8300 chip at F4 and good enough for most at F3.4 ( Me included and I'm fussy ). I haven't seen any RAWs from a DSLR but have worked on FITs from a QSI 8300. Oh yes, someone on this site does use one.

90mm is about the widest you can go to without awful aberrations. F4 should be good enough.

They will work perfectly on a Canon with the correct adapter.

Dave.

[Dangerous-Dave]

I use the Leica Telyt 180/f3.4 on my Astrotrac and it's a great lens, goes for about 500 quid on ebay. Benefits from being stopped down with a mask to about f4. The Summicron 50/f2.0 is also a good lens - sharp and free of CA - but has a fair amount of coma at the outside of the field of view. This sells for about £300 on ebay.

For widefield I can highly recommend the Samyang 8mm and 14/f2.8, both very sharp and reasonably priced (£200-300 brand new) - 100% manual though. Good aurora bagging lenses. Samyang also make a 24mm/f1.4 which is supposed to be the danglies for full frame DSLRs.

There are a range of shots with these lenses on my Flickr page.

Personally I wouldn't waste your money on a Canon L-series lens unless you plan to use it for daytime use. You are paying for autofocus, image stabilisation etc on top of the glass and you are not going to need that for astro.

[Psychobilly]

Personally I wouldn't waste your money on a Canon L-series lens unless you plan to use it for daytime use. You are paying for autofocus, image stabilisation etc on top of the glass and you are not going to need that for astro.

Good advice...

FWHM AF is nice with the lenses on a DSLR using APT or BYEOS and seeing I do use the camera and lenses just about every day - far more than I ever used my scopes - I will continue to get more L's... Swapped rarely usec astro kit for a nice L and L series TC a few hours earlier...

Peter...

[billhinge]

great images, I've got the old 50mm DR summicron, great lens