Best Wide Angle Camera Lens for Aurora?

[Kryff]

Hi, I am going on holiday later this year to Northern Norway and hope to image Aurora. I have a Canon 70D and am looking to purchase a new wide angle lens for the trip. 
Any suggestions as to the best one for the job would be welcome. I would also like to use it for wide field Astro images in general (Milky Way etc.)

[Alien 13]

Samyang 14mm f/2.8, manual lens but one of the best or the 28mm version.

Alan

[Shimrod]

6 hours ago, Kryff said:

Hi, I am going on holiday later this year to Northern Norway and hope to image Aurora. I have a Canon 70D and am looking to purchase a new wide angle lens for the trip. 
Any suggestions as to the best one for the job would be welcome. I would also like to use it for wide field Astro images in general (Milky Way etc.)

Not quite as wide as the Samyang, but I use a Sigma 18-35mm F1.8. Both the Canon 10-18mm and 10-22mm (the 10-18mm is lighter, cheaper but a bit slower than the 10-22mm) lenses are good alternatives if you want to go wider. I own all three but the Sigma is my go to for aurora and night sky.

[900SL]

Another Samyang, 14mm f2.4. it's less likely to have QC issues than the f2.8, being more 'proline'

[Kryff]

I’ll have a look at all those lenses. Thanks!

[Shimrod]

2 hours ago, Kryff said:

I’ll have a look at all those lenses. Thanks!

Here's a quick side by side comparison of the three lenses I mentioned to give you an idea of size - left to right the Canon 10-18mm, Canon 10-22mm and the Sigma 18-35mm. The Sigma is significantly heavier, and probably weighs as much as the other two together. One other possible niggle for the Sigma - the zoom ring goes the opposite way to Canon for zooming in. Both the 10-22mm and Sigma are internal zooms, the 10-18mm does extend when zooming but only by about 0.5cm.

 

edit: as always with these things, when taking photos of of camera equipment is it customary to share a slightly out of focus photograph taken with a phone!

Edited February 6, 2023 by Shimrod

[Kryff]

I actually have the canon 10-18 but was wondering if there was anything a bit faster and wider angle. Thanks for the pic it puts some scale to the various lenses!👍

[Shimrod]

17 minutes ago, Kryff said:

I actually have the canon 10-18 but was wondering if there was anything a bit faster and wider angle. Thanks for the pic it puts some scale to the various lenses!👍

You won't go any wider than 10mm unless you get a fisheye lens. I've always found 10mm to be a bit too wide for landscape however it can be good for the sky! My avatar is an aurora shot taken at 10mm with the 10-22mm. I will see if I have some comparison shots with different lenses taken on the same night. A faster lens is helpful when the aurora is faint or moving fast - allowing you to capture some structure will a shorter exposure.

[Craney]

Another thing of note with very short focal lengths ( fish-eye types)  is that they can tend to wrap the horizon, or tree-lines or cloud banks into unnatural curves.

OK if you are just trying to capture something on the large scale but difficult to crop out and correct  if you want to use it as a straight forward, 'normal-looking' print.

This type of thing.   Image kindly donated by  I.N. Ternet.

The zoom lenses mentioned above can remedy this to some extent with narrower FOV as a consequence.

[Mandy D]

7 hours ago, Kryff said:

I actually have the canon 10-18 but was wondering if there was anything a bit faster and wider angle. Thanks for the pic it puts some scale to the various lenses!👍

There are a couple of ways to get wider without going to Fisheye lenses, but being a Canon owner, you may not like the idea. Switch to Nikon where the crop sensor is 24 x 16 instead of 22.5 x 15 and you will get results with a 10 mm lens that you would need to use a 9.4 mm lens on the Canon for. The other option (which may be possible with Canon, but I don't know) is to go full frame and use a 14 mm lens, which will be wider still and equivalent to an 8.7 mm lens on your Canon. If you are uber-uber rich, you could always go for a 13 mm Nikon ultra-ultra-wide angle lens for about £50k second-hand!!! But, you will be getting equivalent to 8.1 mm focal length and no fisheye distortion.

Edited February 7, 2023 by Mandy D

[ollypenrice]

1 hour ago, Mandy D said:

If you are uber-uber rich, you could always go for a 13 mm Nikon ultra-ultra-wide angle lens for about £50k second-hand!!! 

That's one to bear in mind!

lly

[Shimrod]

14 hours ago, Mandy D said:

There are a couple of ways to get wider without going to Fisheye lenses, but being a Canon owner, you may not like the idea. Switch to Nikon where the crop sensor is 24 x 16 instead of 22.5 x 15 and you will get results with a 10 mm lens that you would need to use a 9.4 mm lens on the Canon for. The other option (which may be possible with Canon, but I don't know) is to go full frame and use a 14 mm lens, which will be wider still and equivalent to an 8.7 mm lens on your Canon. If you are uber-uber rich, you could always go for a 13 mm Nikon ultra-ultra-wide angle lens for about £50k second-hand!!! But, you will be getting equivalent to 8.1 mm focal length and no fisheye distortion.

It's an upgrade that has suddenly gone from a few hundred pounds to a few thousand for a slightly wider field of view (around £1200 for  the cheapest Canon full frame body new and £2000 for the lens)!  To get wider, Canon also offer an 11mm f4 lens for full frame at £3000. Of course you probably wouldn't buy any of these new, as Canon is phasing out the EF range so you'd be looking for the equivalents in the 'R' range. For those who stick with EF into the future, I expect some second hard bargains will start appearing as the EF mount becomes less attractive.