Lens Help...

Muzzy00uk

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Hi everyone, hope you're all well!!!

I'm in need of a little help. i want to get a new lens but want to get one for Landscapes, Astrophotography and maybe some night or even day street shots. I understand all of them might not be possible.

I've sort of narrowed it down to several but need advise about whether these are good choices and which would best suit what i would like to do.

The Canon EF 16-35mm f2.8 L MKII and Canon EF 16-35mm f4 L IS both seem to be the closest matches for what i want but i don't know which would be better...

Ive also seen the Samyang 14mm f2.8 ED AS IF which could be a cheaper alternative.

Any advise would be appreciated.

Thanks
Steven
 
The Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 is a pretty popular choice for astrophotography and there are a couple of people who use that lens on this forum. I've not used it but that would be in the mix for me. Personally I picked a Canon 10-22mm f4.5-5.6 for myself and love it as a landscape lens though that's largley because I don't do a lot of astrophotography.

But I've a crop sensor camera and you've not said what body you'll be using it on. I've used the Canon 16-35mm f4 L on a 1Dx and it is a superb lens though for astrophotography I'd pick the f2.8 L if money is not an issue and you shoot full frame.

I do find the extra 6mm on the ultrawide end very useful though and find it can make a big difference than being limited to 16mm with a crop, especially for those big shots with lots of foreground.
 
Thanks Weepete. Good point sorry... i have the 6D.

I will probably be proven wrong for saying this but there seems to be more wide angle lenses for APS-C then FF so im struggling to find many options that fit. Might be more that im not looking hard enough....

Not come across that Tokina before. ill have a look. it might be a contender!! ;)
 
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Thanks Weepete. Good point sorry... i have the 6D.

I will probably be proven wrong for saying this but there seems to be more wide angle lenses for APS-C then FF so im struggling to find many options that fit. Might be more that im not looking hard enough....

Not come across that Tokina before. ill have a look. it might be a contender!! ;)
The Tokina is an incredible lens. I loved mine........I'm assuming so does the person who stole it. :blue:
 
If you want to use a lens for astrophotography on your full-frame 6D body then you'll want to know about the "Rule of 600".

When taking an image of the sky on a non-tracking tripod you can divide 600 by the focal length of your lens. The result is the number of seconds you can safely expose without the stars become elongated and growing "tails" due to the rotation of the Earth. BTW, this "600" value only works for full-frame cameras. If you use a crop-frame camera (APS-C size) camera then you have to divide 600 by the crop factor (APS-C crop-factor is 1.6) to get the new value (600 ÷ 1.6 = 375).

Example:

If you have a 16mm lens, then: 600 ÷ 16 = 37.5

That means you can take a 37 second exposure. If you go longer (e.g. 60 seconds) then you'd see the stars elongating (you won't have "round" stars) due to the rotation of the Earth. Some imagers will decrease the time to be conservative (some use 500 as their baseline instead of 600).

If your camera is mounted to a sky tracking head, like a Losmandy StarLapse or the AstroTrac, AND if that tracking head was properly polar-aligned (the rotation axis points at Polaris (the north star - technically the north-star is about 2/3º away from the pole, but that's close enough unless you're using a very long focal length) then you can take exposures that are as long as you want.

You can piggy-back the camera onto a telescope that tracks the sky IF the telescope is using an "equatorial" mount (or if it is normally an alt/az go-to telescope then the telescope has to be mounted on an equatorial wedge). Alt/az mounted scopes experience "field rotation" in which the image appears to "twist" over time. While very very high-end observatory scopes use alt/az mounts to do their imaging, they also employ a device called a "field de-rotator" which slowly rotates the camera at the same rate at which the field would normally appear to "twist" to cancel out the effects of the field rotation.
 
If you can afford the EF 16-35mm f2.8 L MKI go for it.

I also have a Canon 6D and bought the Canon 17-40mm f/4 . Pretty happy with it! I did some night photography with it and it's pretty good!

Before my Canon 6D I had a Canon T3i and I had the Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 which was really good too. I had to sell it because you will have vignetting on the Canon 6D at 11mm.

Here are some of my night photos with the Canon 6D + Canon 17-40mm f/4:

5_BILLION_STAR-X2.jpg


Trip_Sul_wtrmk-18-XL.jpg


Trip_Sul_wtrmk-10-X2.jpg


Moho_river_duarte-12-X2.jpg
 
Great pics, duarted (here and your website). Makes me want to book a flight to Belize.
 
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