Starlight photography with sel16f28 a no go..

I wanted people's opinion about this 16mm f2.8 sony e mount lens.

Ive been shooting (for casual personal use) nighttime photography, starlight, Milky Way and time lapse photos of the same for a while now. I took some pretty nice shots of the Milky Way two nights ago using the 16-50 kit lens - clear / colourful and pretty well exposed. Last night I took my new 16mm lens with me to take some shots. Same spot, same environmental conditions (no moon, clouds, no lights)

The he pictures came out basically black with a hand full of stars and no foreground. I swapped back to the other lens and got amazing shots again - all using the same settings. I tried it again and also added the wide angle adapter for the 16mm and again, nothing.

Any ideas if that's a lens fault, normal for the lens or my fault. I have no pictures to share - still on camera. I've got a A6000 - settings were identical for each. I obviously tried a variety of different setting including exposure and ISO -

The question I have to ask is: what fluke of weather/time/lighting has to exist to render the Milky Way as "colorful" to a naked human eye?

I find it quite unfortunate that what was originally a post-processing-artifact-turned-stylization is now regarded as the default look of photography of this given subject, far removed from what it looks like in real life... ever.

It's like textured clown puke HD-arrrgggghhh became the default style of photogaphy.

[/rant]

Also, I'm highly skeptical that you would have gotten anything other than heavily-camera-cooked-something-of-a-night-sky out of any APS-C sensor with a kit lens the fastest aperture of which is only f/3.5.

There is the idea that the earth is spinning (hence limited exposure times of usually <20sec), the lighting is very dim to make a good exposure (together with the limited exposure times means hence either fast lenses and/or great high ISO performance). These aren't what you have at all.

If you are getting what you say you are getting, my guess is that you are using one of the multi-exposure blending modes in the camera. Or something (A? iA?) that resorted to it.

Show us more, and tell us more.

For your oppinion and rant I did not ask - just asking if the 16mm would have a flaw over the kit lens that would cause the 16mm to come out totally black. The pictures I take on my camera are satisfactory for my use so get over yourself and and hopefull some nice people on here can answer my question instead

This is a screen grab (not original) that's still on the camera as I have no pc handy. Was taken dark of night, the Orange hue is not visible to naked eye so not sure what it is - there is no post processing other then in camera jpg. So 2min before that I took the same photo with the 16mm and got black, nothing at all just a little bit of light on the left and a tinge of Orange on the horizon like In this picture. Same settings

I have taken decent (not great) starlight/Milky Way shots with the SEL1018 which is f4, and much better samples with the Rokinon 8mm f2.8, so I see no reason why it shouldn't work to some degree with the SEL16 f2.8.

I think I had the ISO around 3200 and the shutter at about 20 seconds for the 1018, and maybe ISO 1600/20 seconds for the 8mm, though I don't remember exactly.

Despite it not being highly-regarded, I can't think of any reason why it should fail with the 16mm.

dan801 said:

This is a screen grab (not original) that's still on the camera as I have no pc handy. Was taken dark of night, the Orange hue is not visible to naked eye so not sure what it is - there is no post processing other then in camera jpg. So 2min before that I took the same photo with the 16mm and got black, nothing at all just a little bit of light on the left and a tinge of Orange on the horizon like In this picture. Same settings

Click to expand...

That looks pretty good to me. Must be nice to be away from city lights.

You can pick up a LOT of things that aren't visible to the naked eye. This shot was taken in a very light polluted valley, but it was *very* dark (BV -9), and only a few stars could be seen with the naked eye, and none of the varying colors in the sky. The light on the graveyard is mostly from a half moon, but a green floodlight about 200 feet across the graveyard is responsible for the greenish tinge on some objects.









This was shot with the Rokinon 12.

Try shooting at ISO 6400, wide open, 20 seconds? 3200 might not be fast enough. I don't remember the web site but you can google "astrophotography lens settings" for a site that will give you recommended settings for most lenses that one might use for night skies; the 16f28 might be on there.

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yr. obt. svt.,
abdoozy
WSSA Member#160

dan801 said:

https://flic.kr/p/pH2T3m

This is a screen grab (not original) that's still on the camera as I have no pc handy. Was taken dark of night, the Orange hue is not visible to naked eye so not sure what it is - there is no post processing other then in camera jpg. So 2min before that I took the same photo with the 16mm and got black, nothing at all just a little bit of light on the left and a tinge of Orange on the horizon like In this picture. Same settings

Click to expand...

I am guessing that you are in A or S mode?

The camera remembers the mode that you were in, and re-applies this when you put the same lens back on. It appears that both lenses are in different modes, wide open for E1650 and stopped down for E16, and with the E16 you may be hitting the exposure time limit (and need to go to bulb mode).

Also, you may want to turn long-exposure-noise-removal to OFF. The camera takes a second image with the shutter closed and then subtract the 'dark' image from the first to remove the sensor noise.

There is no reason why the E16 would behave different from the E1650. Try setting the camera to iAuto mode and observe what happens?