What is the best lens for Milky Way photography?
Well here we are with the second most asked question that I get:
“What is the best lens for Milky Way Photography?”
And I would argue that people should be asking me this more than what is the best camera. Because if you want to do one thing to get better Milky Way photos, it should be to upgrade your lens.
Heck my camera came out in 2013! That’s a looong time ago in camera years.
I’m still using it and creating *ahem* amazing Milky Way images. New cameras are great, and upgrading from an intro camera will absolutely make your images better- but I would take an awesome lens on a crappy camera, over a crappy lens on an awesome camera, y’know?
So, here’s the short answer for what lens to buy:
A wide focal length with a fast aperture.
Ok, we’re done. Go ahead!
But, really, that is the jist of what I am about to say.
When you are first photographing the Milky Way a wide and fast lens is going to be your best friend. It is where almost everyone starts, and the reason for that is because you can get longer shutter speeds (more light) without star trailing.
(P.S. Want to know more about this? I go in depth in my free training Your First Milky Way Photo- check this link to get on the waitlist for the next time I run it)
A very popular lens is the Rokinon/Samyang/Bower 14mm f 2.8 (brand name changes depending on where you live). It has very low coma and aberrations, is very wide, fast aperture, and is relatively cheap.
Yes it is manual focus only- but in night photography we are only ever manual focusing.
I do recommend this lens only for night photography- I don’t know about you but I find manual focus during the day on any subject that moves to be a serious pain in the a**.
Yes, the lens I just mentioned is likely the one you will buy to start. But this doesn’t tell the whole story and I would be misleading you if I stopped here. And I don’t want to do that.
However, here are a few other things to think about:
What else do you want to use the lens for? Is it STRICTLY night photography, or do you need it to do double duty. If the answer is that it does, then you need to think about features that are useful for the type of photography you want to do.
And next, we need to think about how our focal length renders the overall scene. Shooting the Milky Way at 14mm means the Milky Way will actually look really small in your frame.
Let’s look at some examples:
14mm
14mm
Cranberry Cove, NS
14mm
Burntcoat Head, NS
24mm
24mm
Joshua Tree NP, CA
24mm
Backroads, NS
35mm
35mm
Oceancrisp Farm, NS
50mm
50mm
BLT Trail, NS
70mm
70mm
Peggy’s Cove, NS
You can see how the presence of the Milky Way changes as you change your focal length.
Want to see even more examples? Check out this post on instagram.
Lastly, when you are looking to buy a new lens one thing you should pay attention to that is more important for night photography than almost any other genre is lens aberrations.
You want to make sure that a pinprick of light is represented as such, aberrations such as coma or chromatic aberration are actually very common in fast prime lenses (such as the 50mm f1.4).
You can google reviews for the lens you are interested in and add +aberration to see what comes up.
(Ok, Ok, If you want specific lenses you can check out this link to see some. They are Nikon specific, but you can find the equivalent for your camera brand, and I have third party brands listed as well)
