Reviews of the gear I use for photographing the Milky Way
Using one of my favorite techniques for astrophotography, I take a shot at shooting ultra high resolution urban nightscapes with the Fujifilm X-T2. In this user experience review, I test the X-T2’s low light shooting performance while exploring the cities of London, England and Edinburgh, Scotland at night.
In this review, we put the new full-frame Rokinon 20mm f/1.8 to the test in Joshua Tree National Park, California.
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In this review, we take a look at the ultra wide-angle Zeiss Batis 18mm f/2.8 for full-frame E-mount Sony cameras. This premium ultra wide-angle lens is one of the widest f/2.8 prime lenses available natively for the a7 series of cameras.
We love fast wide-angle primes for astrophotography, so the Batis 18mm quickly jumped to the top of our list of most desirable lenses to test. We push the low-light limits of the Batis 18mm to capture nightscapes around the world in California, New Zealand and Australia.
In this review we take a look at Sony’s Zeiss-branded full-frame 55mm f/1.8. It’s one of the more expensive 50mm-ish primes available for any camera system and is highly regarded for its sharpness. Let’s see how it handles astrophotography.
I don’t typically use filters for the type of astrophotography you see on Lonely Speck. Filtering for specific wavelengths of light is a common practice for astronomy and deep sky imaging. But most filters made specifically for astrophotography tend to be very specialized and very expensive. Luckily, there’s an option for those on a tight budget: the Hoya (Red) Intensifier Filter. In this short review, we test out the Hoya Intensifier while shooting the Milky Way from Trona Pinnacles, California.
Let’s take a look at Sony’s best selling interchangeable lens cameras ever made: the Sony a6000. In this review we test the a6000’s low light performance and try it out for Milky Way and aurora photography in California, Nevada and Alaska.
In this review, we push the low-light limits of Sony’s premium compact point and shoot. We love the idea of a truly pocketable camera that can also capture photos of the Milky Way, but how good is the Sony RX100 series really? Can it actually compete with a large sensor DSLR or interchangeable lens mirrorless camera?