Here's another image from my camping trip at Lake Moogerah last weekend. This one was taken a few minutes before the end of astronomical twilight, so I was able to catch the Milky Way as it emerged from the twilight glow.
Single 30 sec exposure with the Tokina 11-16 @f/2.8 and 3200 iso. Processed in LR3.
It's one of those images where the original RAW file looked like a complete failure, but after a bit of adjusting in Lightroom I was able to salvage this.
Awesome image
What do you think of your Tokina 11-16mm?
From the looks of this image, it looks like it goes well.
I am thinking of getting a widefield lens. It's a toss up between the Tokina 11-16mm, Samyang 14mm, Sigma equivalent etc.
I've only had the Tokina for a few weeks, but I'm impressed with it's performance so far. It's certainly great for Milky Way images like this.
The Samyang 14mm is a bit cheaper than the Tokina, but I think you'll find that it's not really wide enough on your 500D. The recently announced Samyang 10mm f/2.8 sounds interesting though (although it won't be released until the end of the year).