Wide Angle Lenses
For Landscape, Astro-photography and the Northern Lights, "wide" is a necessity in order to capture as much of the scene (or night sky, Northern Lights,…) as possible. While 35mm was once considered the standard "wide" landscape lens, 14mm is now common. Used correctly, 14mm does not produce the 'fisheye' image that was once associated with focal lengths shorter than 20mm.
Why go wide?
For astro-photography, the focal length of the lens determines how long you can leave the shutter open before the stars start blurring in the final image - see The 500 Rule. For 14mm lenses, you can leave the shutter open for 35 seconds which is essential for the standard 'nighttime' exposure of ISO 3200 @ F2.8 for 30 seconds.
Modern full-frame cameras produce images at 6k to 8k resolution. With a wide lens, you can record more usable information for the scene at very high quality.
For landscape photography, wide lenses allow you more freedom when composing your scene, including the ability to move closer to a critical element (a tree or rock) while still retaining your overall composition in the frame (The Night Sky!).
here are some of my favorite
wide angle lenses
Note: For Astro-Photography and Northern Lights, "Fast" F2.8 (or faster) lenses are required.
Note: When looking at products on Amazon, look for products which ratings of at least 4.5 or 5.
Note: All of these lenses are for Full-Frame cameras - unless otherwise noted.
fast/wide mirrorless lenses
nikon Z / Canon RF / Sony FE Lenses
Nikon has updated their classic 14-24 F2.8 with this modern marvel! Designed specifically for Nikon Z Series cameras!
Rokinon has been building fast / wide angles lenses for a long time - they keep getting better - and their price cannot be beat! This lens is available for all new mirrorless lens mounts. Manual and Auto-focus versions are available.
Canon’s update for the Classic 16-35 F2.8. It only gets better! This is one of the best lenses on the market!
This is classic Sony glass! Perfect for Landscape, Northern Lights and Astro-photogrpahy! Well designed and built!
SIgma makes some great fast/wide lenses. This lens is available for other mounts as well.
My Favorite! This is an amazing / super sharp lens for Landscape, Astro and Auroras! It is not 14mm, but it is still very wide - It’s a prime lens - and its sharpness and color saturation are outstanding!
classic wide/fast DLSR lenses
Nikon F / Canon EF Mount
This the premiere landscape and astro-photography lens. Indeed, you will even see it attached to Canon and Sony bodies. It is sharp edge-to-edge and the chromatic aberration is minimal. This lens is designed for full-frame cameras.
Rokinon has produced a stellar 14mm lens and they offer it at an affordable price. This is a manual focus, manual aperture lens, but you generally just keep it set to infinity - even at F2.8 (night-time photography), objects as close as 7 feet from the lens remain in sharp focus. This lens is designed for full frame cameras, but will work with smaller sensors. Rokinon produces versions of this lens for all major camera manufacturers - and offers auto-focus versions.
Tokina has produced a great 'wide' lens for non "full-frame" sensor cameras. The lens is very sharp, and the images are very clean. For a 1.6 crop factor - this lens is the equalivent of a 17-25mm lens.
This Canon lens (and version II as well) is a great all around lens for Astro, Northern Lights and Landscape Photography. It is sharp and clean. Version III brightens up vignetting in the corners and improves the overall optics. 16mm is plenty wide!
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