Samyang 12mm f2 advice

[maximum]

Hello Community!

 

I bought a Samyang 12mm f2 lens for my A6000 for landscape photography some months ago.

I've been pretty satisfied so far but now as i want to get into star/milkyway photography i need your advice.

 

made my first tries near my hometown. i know that there is some light pollution, but i want to get some experience before i go farther away.

Can you tell me why the lights on the bottom of the photo are so distorted? Is this (normal) coma? do i have a bad copy or am i doin' something wrong?

 

Original Picture

https://flic.kr/p/BtrQWb

 

Crop

[Coast]

Hi I bought the Rokinon 12mm f:2 (same thing) for My a6000 this summer to shoot the Milky Way.I went up to the top of the Sierra Nevada's. 10,000ft to Sonora Pass in August. It was one of the most spectacular things I ever saw. Conditions happened to be ideal, clear, zero light pollution, no moon, calm @ midnight. The Milky Way reached from horizon to horizon. To get it from horizon to horizon you'll need to rent a fisheye. Here's the link to my flickr album

https://flic.kr/s/aHskifB9NU          

I was spellbound, the only reason I left, the moon started coming up. For people who live in cities and have never even seen the Milky Way, its worth it

The good news is the 12mm is spectacular. My sharpest lens. It's so good I'm going to buy the 21mm f:1.4 this year.

I dropped the 12mm on concrete and chipped the lip a little, but still worked perfect.

The bad news is the a6000 is very poor in low light. I had the camera set on aperture, everything else on auto. No image ever appeared on the LCD or EVF. the Milky Way was bright, but I never saw it in my camera. I had to point it where I thought it would be. Also forget about any auto focus. I have a hard time w that too.

I have the Zeiss 16 70mm. Really poor low light. When an a7000 comes out I'm probably going to sell the set and up grade. I still like the a6000 a lot

I think your best bet is to go out take lots of pics see what works what doesn't

anyway thats my experience      Good luck

[Austerror]

Have a look at this for calculating your exposure times:

http://petapixel.com/2015/01/06/avoid-star-trails-following-500-rule/

 

The sample you provided, looks to me, like motion blur.  You need a solid tripod for Astrophotography, If you don't have one, you might be able to hang something from the centre to weigh it down a little, like your camera bag.

 

A 12mm lens, 18mm APS-C equivalent it rather wide. So you should be able to expose for a long while before star trails start appearing.  So turn your ISO down to 100 or 200 and see what a long exposure looks like.

 

If you are not photographing stars, or DO want star trails, then you can expose for longer.  Previous night city photos I've taken sometimes have had exposures of  30 seconds or more. Mostly using ISO100 where possible.  The results are nice clean images.  Focus.... sometimes that is the more difficult task.

 

I practiced taking night photos of various subjects, to learn how this stuff works.  Bridges, statues, cars, street lights, even interiors, sofas, kitchen.  The basic techniques are the same: Some way of securing your camera so it does not move and exposing for a long time. I also shoot in RAW, it might be obvious, but worth mentioning.

 

Try some more practice and with different lenses to see how they work with long exposures.  Its probably not the lens.  Also don't shoot wide open unless you must. Stopping down a little will reduce coma, but also make it much easier to get correct focus.

[maximum]

thank you for your advice.

exposure time was 25 seconds which should be ok.

i have an old velbon vs-3 tripod. maybe i should check this one.

 

i made another shot (25s exposure again) stopped down to see how this turns out:

 

 

so even stopped down (i don't remember exactly, somewhere between f5,6 and f8) there is much green and purple fringing.

[Austerror]

Your sample is still very noisym what ISO are you using?  Try a different lens and see what happens.

 

Also write down what aperture you used.  Take several photos from F2 down to F8 and see what happens.

[wedge]

Are you shooting RAW or JPG?

 

Here's a few I took with A6000 + Rokinon 8mm F2.8

https://goo.gl/photos/KfRrrDhK8Y7E43Fs8

I only shot RAW and I notice when I open them in Capture One, there is a lot of visible purple, but it gets totally cleaned up when exporting to jpg.  Almost too cleaned up, it's taking away more of the saturation than I would like...

 

All shots were 30s, F2.8, and I experimented with ISO from 800 - 3200.  800 was too dark and 3200 was too noisy, but 1600 turned out pretty good.

[maximum]

I'm shooting RAW only, processing and exporting to jpg using DxO Optics Pro.

Those shots are straight exported to jpg without any correction applied.