Video: Best Sony-Fit Lenses for Astrophotography

If you use a Sony FE mirrorless camera, which lenses are best for astrophotography? In this video, award-winning astro, landscape and timelapse photographer Alyn Wallace shares his go-to Sony FE mirrorless lenses for astrophotography—the Samyang AF AF 14mm f/2.8 FE, Sony FE 24mm f/1.4 GM and Sony FE 50mm f/1.4 ZA T*. Watch the video below or read on to learn more.

The Samyang AF 14mm f/2.8, Sony FE 24mm f/1.4 GM and Sony FE 50mm f/1.4 ZA Zeiss Planar T* are what I’m calling the ‘holy trinity’ of lenses for landscape astrophotography. I shoot with Sony cameras, so the lenses I'm going to be talking about are Sony-mount lenses.

You might be thinking, “if I wanted minimalist, why didn't I just bring a zoom lens? Something like the Sony FE 16-35mm f/2.8 GM?” The issue I have with zoom lenses is the maximum aperture. Typically, full-frame zoom lenses are maxed out at f/2.8—with the exception of maybe the Canon RF 15-35mm f/2.8 L IS—but those lenses don't cover all the way up to 50mm. And f/2.8, for me, just isn't fast enough. I like to use prime lenses that open up to f/1.4 to f/1.8 because they can collect more light in a single exposure. That means you'll have a brighter image, you'll have less noise in your image and the image quality is going to be way better.

This comes into play especially with panorama. A panorama with a 24mm f/1.4 lens, as opposed to 24mm f/2.8 with a zoom lens, the quality difference is going to be huge. Having that wider aperture, more light and each exposure means more detail, less noise and just overall, much better image quality. So that's why I prefer to shoot with fast primes.

Samyang AF 14mm f/2.8

The Samyang AF 14mm f/2.8 is hugely popular in landscape astrophotography. It's really affordable, it performs really well for astrophotography. This, in my opinion, is the best ultra-wide lens for landscape astrophotography on the market right now.

The main superpower of this lens is being able to get up close and personal with the foreground. So just the other day I was in Joshua Tree. There was a small tree there and just using the 14mm to get close to the tree, I can make it nice and big in the frame and I was also nice and close to the foreground. So you can see amazing detail in the roots in the tree, the cracks in the rock, and even the texture of the rocks. It really helped me tell a story of the landscape.

Sony FE 24mm f/1.4 GM

This is my favourite lens of all time. It's small, lightweight, even at f/1.4, stars in the corner are nice and round, it's just an incredible all round lens. If I find that this is not wide enough, I'll shoot a panorama and you end up with really highly detailed, almost noise-free images. They just look incredible. So I do pretty much all of my panoramas with this lens at f/2.

The other unique thing about this lens is that it's the best lens to film yourself at night. So all of my astro vlogs are filmed pretty much with this lens. It just gathers so much light. And I find that it's the brightest lens for filming yourself at night. And 24mm is actually a really nice focal length to film. I absolutely love this lens.

Sony FE 50mm f/1.4 ZA Zeiss Planar T*

This allows you to get way more detail on the Milky Way and a lot more intimate with the landscape. Recently I was in Joshua Tree shooting a 24mm, I noticed that a lot of the frames didn't really serve a purpose. And the two main subjects, the Elephant Rock and the Milky Way core, were quite close together and only occupied a small part of the scene. So I pulled out the 50mm, put it on the tracker, got amazing detail in the Milky Way and then captured the foreground in a panorama. The detail is amazing, you got a lot more detail and it just removes a lot of the unnecessary stuff in the frame. So when your foreground subject is in the distance, this works really well.

At Joshua Tree, we had a morning where there was a beautiful gathering of a crescent moon with Venus and Jupiter shining incredibly bright. It was an absolute spectacle, gorgeous to see. Using the 50mm, I was able to make the moon big enough in the frame so that you can see the phase of the moon. And it just worked really well with the distant Joshua Tree.

The really cool thing about this three-lens setup is that if you find a composition that's interesting with a 40mm, you can switch to the 24mm and capture it as a panorama. You end up with the same frame, the same composition, but a much higher detailed image and less visible noise.