Rokinon 16mm f/2 Lens Review for Astrophotography

[Jerry_Lodriguss]

Here’s my in-depth review of the Rokinon 16mm f/2.0 ED AS UMC CS Lens (http://www.astropix.com/HTML/I_ASTROP/EQ_TESTS/rokinon_16mm_lens_test.html) for astrophotography.

This is a great lens for ultra-wide angle shots of the Milky Way, starscapes and time-lapse animations.

I've also got a link to full-resolution APS-C frame shot of the Summer Triangle that you can download to pixel-peep the entire frame if you would like.

Jerry

[SteveInNZ]

That's not really too positive if your recommendation is to stop it down to f/5.6 to get round stars. Doesn't that make it as slow as the 18-55 kit lens for astrophotography ?
Do you have any other lens reviews to compare against ? The links at the top of the page go to this review and I'm sure you will have looked at other lenses since the "Catching the Light" summary.

Steve.

[Jerry_Lodriguss]

Actually, it's very positive. And I don't recommend that you stop it down. I use it wide open. The lens is very usable wide open at f/2. It is not perfect wide open, but few, if any, lenses are.

I said, if you want to make the trade-off between exposure time versus optical performance, then you can stop it down, if having the best stars are more important to you than signal-to-noise ratio at a given exposure time.

And if you want to shoot things like meteors, or fixed-tripod starscapes or time-lapses, then there is no substitute for aperture speed, and I don't know of another 16mm f/2 lens that performs better than the Rokinon at f/2.

It just depends on what your priorities are.

Like almost all lenses, it gets better when stopped down. That's not exactly news.

It's certainly better than the Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8 L USM AF Zoom at f/2.8 and the Canon EF-S 18-55mm IS AF Zoom at f/3.5.

And it's a stop faster than the 16-35, but it costs less than 1/5 as much.

The links to the reviews of those two lenses were broken in the Rokinon review (trying to convert everything over to HTML5 has been a nightmare).

Here is the link to the 16-35mm review, check out the stars in the corners:

http://www.astropix.com/HTML/I_ASTROP/EQ_TESTS/16-35.HTM

And here is the link to the 18-55mm review:

http://www.astropix.com/HTML/I_ASTROP/EQ_TESTS/18-55.HTM

Jerry

[Camelopardalis]

Nice one Jerry thanks for sharing :thumbsup:

I have the 12mm for use on my Fujifilm X and wide open at decent ISO the results are pretty outstanding for single shots.