200mm for Astrophotography

[ramanujan]

Hello,

i'm looking for a lens in the 200mm range that will be primariliy be used for Astrophotography. It should be fast (2,8), sharp and CA, PF-free. I heard the 200/2,8L fulfils all my requirements. But how about the zooms? 70-200 from Canon or sigma. How are they compared to the prime regarding sharpness and CA (at 200mm)?

No CA is top priority, because it's almost impossible to fix astrophotos with CA around each star

Greetings Jens

 

[RBarbera]

Hello ramanujan,

Recently (a week ago I purchased a 70-200L4 and tested it in astrophotography. Yes I know, is only f4, but what f4!. I have tested it last saturday. Here you can see the globular cluster M13 and the dim and small acompaning galaxy.



this image is a sum of two 120s exposures at ISO400. Is a 100% crop. The corner performance is the same that at center. I have posted some corner crops on the yahoo digital_astro group.

--
Saludos,
Rafa Barberá

 

[alli69]

I think the 200mm 2.8L would be great for piggyback photography.

Here's a good link from Canon about astrophotography.

http://www.canon.co.jp/Imaging/astro/index-e.html

Alli

 

[ramanujan]

Hi Rafa,

Your image looks really good Maybe i should put that F/4 on my list too. But otherwise i can get the 200mm prime for the same money too, and i heard that the image quality should even be better with the prime.

The zoom would be nice for daylight photography... Hmm i really don't know what i want...

Greetings Ramanujan

 

[Joe Jones]

Hi Jens. I went back and found one image that I took a few years ago with the 70-200 at 200mm and f/2.8 (see below) with the D60.



Note that I have yet to find a camera lens that did not introduce some level of CA on bright stars wide open, including the lenses you mentioned and the 200 1.8, 300 2.8 and 500f/4. So be ready to tolerate some CA.

Regards,

Joe Jones

Hello,

i'm looking for a lens in the 200mm range that will be primariliy
be used for Astrophotography. It should be fast (2,8), sharp and
CA, PF-free. I heard the 200/2,8L fulfils all my requirements. But
how about the zooms? 70-200 from Canon or sigma. How are they
compared to the prime regarding sharpness and CA (at 200mm)?
No CA is top priority, because it's almost impossible to fix
astrophotos with CA around each star

Greetings Jens

--
Joe Jones
Redland, Florida

For nature and astro photography see http://www.pbase.com/jayseejay