Yongnuo YN 50mm F/1.8 EF Mount for Canon

[Marky1973]

I don't do much widefield work but I do still have my modified EOS 100d so was keen to have a play around and see what I could do now I have a CCD for DSO stuff. Sounded like I need a 50mm lens for some all-round widefield goodness and something with an EF mount to ensure it would fit my Canon with the clip filter in place.

After searching for a little while I found this Yongnuo 50mm lens

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Yongnuo-Large-Aperture-Focus-Canon/dp/B00VHFMIO8/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1474270639&sr=1-1&keywords=yongnuo+50mm

At less than half the price of the Canon equivalent, and some half-decent reviews, I thought I would give it a go. 

The lens itself is very light and feels a little "plasticky" but, for the price, I wasn't expecting solid gold, so that wasn't surprising. It doesn't feel like it would stand up to much punishment either, but the lens and camera tend to stay in one place when they are not on a mount/tripod, so I can't imagine this should be a problem.

The Autofocus was considered a little poor in some of the reviews, but seemed to work okay for me. However, I'm not planning to use autofocus on the stars, so that is not a problem. Switched to manual focus and adjusted carefully until I got what looked like good focus and then taped the focus ring down. This did take a while, adjusting back and forth and there felt like there was a little play in the focus ring, so tricky to do by hand, but certainly not impossible - certainly might be easier with a dedicated DSLR micro-focuser thingy.

Anyway, not had much time to play around with it, but did take a few JPGs to try out a star trail picture a little while back and came up with the following which seems to have come out quite nicely.

 

Next, when the moon has gone away again, I think I might try to get some Milky-Way images and widefield constellations - Orion will be a tempting target soonish!

So, all in all, for the price (especially compared to the Canon) it looks to be a fairly decent deal if you are on the look out for a budget 50mm lens that will work with an installed clip filter.

[D4N]

Nice, I like playing with older lenses if I find them second hand since I don't need it to talk to the camera.

These can be bought up cheap sometimes as they don't have the functionality of modern lenses and in some cases won't even come to focus on a modern DSLR.

I'm even using a nifty fifty as a guide scope now 

[Marky1973]

Yeah, I scout around the second hand shops from time to time as well, looking for lenses....only ones I have found recently though have been in those dodgy cash generator type places and seem to have been tied to a wet dog for a few years before being put on display....