Photographing life on Earth, our home on the outer rim of the Milky Way
Reviews of the gear we’ve used for photographing the Milky Way
Let’s try out four of the best smartphones in a low-light shooting battle. We compare urban nightscape photos from the ASUS ZenFone 4 Pro, HTC U11, LG V30 and Samsung Galaxy S8.
Continue reading “Smartphone Night Photography Shootout: ZenFone 4 Pro vs. U11 vs. V30 vs. S8”
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.
Continue reading “Review: Urban Night Photography with the Fujifilm X-T2”
In this review, we put the new full-frame Rokinon 20mm f/1.8 to the test in Joshua Tree National Park, California.
Continue reading “Rokinon 20mm f/1.8 Astrophotography Review: Joshua Tree National Park”
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.
Continue reading “Zeiss Batis 18mm f/2.8 Astrophotography Review”
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.
Continue reading “Sony Zeiss FE 55mm f/1.8 Sonnar T* Astrophotography Review”
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 (Red Enhancer RA54) 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.