At the other end of the aperture range though, the 5D's larger pixels actually help matters, as the softening starts later (it's very sharp even at f/16), and is noticeably lower at f/32. Im so new to all of this so thank you for your insightful and educational posts. I was very happy for this reason to eventually get a full frame DSLR in 2007 and sell the 85mm lens and buy a 105mm one to replace it. This is huge for me, as it allows me to be much more nimble with getting the right composition and angle. Rokinon FE14M-C Lens. A coupe of stage shows, one very recent, and a random collection using this lens exclusively There's literally no story!#6: Purple Flower.The isolation works because it's the only color. But I sold it and went back to using a 70-200 (alongside a 24-70). The images were collected using a Canon EOS Rebel T3i camera riding on a Fornax Mounts LighTrack II. Digital camera types . Im a newbie at astro.. and photography in general really! Prime means that this lens is fixed at 135mm, it is not a zoom lens that allows for focal length adjustments. Or is there a use case for fitting the Samyang 135mm to a Panasonic gx85 (or Panasonic gh5) ?? In this configuration, the lens is still a very fast F3.4. Star parties or dark sky excursions are another great time to use a camera lens in place of the telescope. Is there a reason why a 135/2.8 or even 135/4 would provide significantly different images? The 135mm f/2.0 ED UMC Lens from Samyang is a manual focus telephoto prime lens useful for portraiture and most telephoto applications. As a complete beginner in Astrophotography should I buy Rokinon 135mm lens or Canon EF 75-300mm lens with Canon EF 50mm lens? Zoom lenses are entirely unsuitable for astrophotography due to prominent aberrations of every kind. These lenses go about as close as you could get without a dedicated macro lens. This includes everything from the rich star fields of Sagittarius, to a complete look at the Andromeda Galaxy. Whos Afraid of a Phantom: Istar Phantom 140mm F/6.5, that is? The lens shows a very slight pincushion distortion, but it's well under 0.1% of frame height, an excellent performance by any measure. A single, 90-second exposure using the Rokinon 135mm F/2.0 ED UMC at F/4. p.s. It's small, light, cheap and extremely wide but is it any good? I do not like this. Lagoon and Trifid wide field IC1396 nebula in Cepheus - wide field image. And yet this review is on front page of DPReview prompting me to go and buy this lens -- so surely it must be a professional , well grounded review, right? Focusing should be done on moderately bright stars using the 10x magnified Live View. That is why when SLRs came along the 200mm became the big seller and the 135 was largely forgotten. In this post, Ill explain why I think the Rokinon 135mm F/2 is the perfect addition to an arsenal of astrophotography lenses. Stage photography is another good use for the 135 L. Neutral yet very nice colours. http://www.idyll.com/laney2014 Many lenses lose their appeal after time, but not this one. At a local amateur soccer game using the 135 f/2 the action was almost always too close, or too far away. Olympus 4x Optical Zoom f/2 Lens; 25-100mm (35mm Equivalent) Show More. Now - THAT's a lens everyone should have ;). The Nikon D810A, however, is modified for astrophotography out of the box. 200mm Astrobin photos (not taken by me): https://www.astrobin.m USM F2.8 L II It's March, and in America that means it's time to start arguing over which college athletics team is the best at basketball. (purchased for $899), reviewed March 19th, 2012 Yes there's bokeh. Super Sharp.Super Fast AF. Available in other Styles, Configurations & Kits. In an effort to save money, Id like to start using a Canon 80D that we already own to start picking targets and imaging. this lens typifies modern design being confined to sharpness, colour & bokeh. Not another article that promotes portraits shot with wide open lens and out of focus highlights in the background. I think the readers would welcome contributions from other members' experiences. I do not presume to further decorate the universe, and perceive them for what they are: interference. Could use a few updates. My Nikon focus and aperture rings are a thing of highly finessed engineering beauty! Your Baader filter passes 420-680nm and, in theory, a good APO should be able to focus that part of the spectrum with no chromatic aberration. Canon EF 135mm f/2 L USM (72mm filters, 0.9m/3' close-focus, 25.0 oz./708g, about $1,035.) The 135mm f2 is by all accounts one of their better and more reliable lenses however I believe the chance of a defective lens is lower with the Canon. Begun in 1975, the Pentax K-mount legacy continues to this day. For that I would investigate alternatives just to make sure. I have been following your work both on YT and here from Japan for a while. The first telephoto lens of choice, especially recommended for beginners, is the 135mm F2.5 SMC Pentax. Extrapolating from this, minimum recommended guidescope power is 120x for the 300mm telephoto, 80x for the 200mm, and 55x for the 135mm. It is by far the fastest focusing, best bokeh, and lowest light lens you will ever find. Personally, I can't stand these circles, and I see them as VERY distracting.Lots of fads come and go, and this is just another one of these fads that some photographers are obsessed with. MCovington, my Zeiss 300/4 is the full thickness barrel version, made in West Germany, serial number 5990836. Super sharp from f2. I bought my lens in mint condition for $350 from Japan, but I see that some retailers are asking significantly more. Include the Carl Zeiss in your research though, it might be an interesting lens for you, even if it is a bit pricey for what you get. Now I wonder why people are never happy even on 3rd day of a new year :) Come on guys just think "Micael Widell" was working over holiday period to publish this free article ;). You can't really ask them to stand still while you move around. When you buy a lens with fantastic sharpness and image quality at all apertures, you typically expect it to cost $1,200 on up. Some lenses are incurable. But like a glitch in the matrix, an anomaly that shouldn't exist, you can get the Samyang/Rokinon 135mm for as little as $430 brand new. Again, there's no context. Colour and contrast is great. This is one of the sharpest lens i've ever owned. The image below highlights the creative freedom this lens provides. A lot of lenses today are better than anything money could buy in 1980. Here is a recent ones taken with the canon xs and a lens. Unfortunately it is not manufactured in a multicoated version, and produces prominent internal reflection artifacts on very bright stars. Several functions may not work. Above $2500 cameras tend to become increasingly specialized, making it difficult to select a 'best' option. The 50mm f/1.4 and f/1.2 is another story.While the 135mm f/2, in general, is a good lens, there are lots of lenses other than the 135 f/2 that will produce a very smoothly blurred background, including zoom lenses.It sounds like Micael is new to photography.Just my impression from this article. A Bargain, very competively priced The full name of this lens is the Rokinon 135mm F/2 ED UMC, with ED standing for extra-low dispersion, and UMC referring to the ultra multi-coated optics. You're right, but a headshot is exactly where I want to see all those megapixels I bought put to use! I haven't seen compassion with the excellent Zeiss lens you quote (That BTW costs at least 3.5-4 times, yet a good comparison as similar to Zeiss, Samyang believes in providing the exceptional Image Quality, with Manual focus) but compare with Canon's L 135mm F2.0, that by many reviews, is considered as one the best Canon lenses ever made (Not . The lenses I listed are certainly not the ONLY exceptional lenses made over the years. You will get perfectly round star images if you use an aperture stop in front of the lens made of a series of filter thread step-down rings. the lens is built strong, very strong. I found with the 70-200 made me lazy. Most of these APOs have F ratios around 6.5, and are unable to comprehend in their field of view large celestial objects such as the Andromeda galaxy, the North America nebula, and comets. Orion nebula shot with Canon T3i and Rokinon 135mm @ F2.0 150 shots with dark bias and flats stacked and edited. I have never had a bad experience buying used Canon lenses from eBay sellers with 99.5%+ positive feedback. This allows for less aggressive camera settings for night photography such as using a lower ISO setting and shorter exposure. I wanted to add my experience with some lenses that I thought worthy of being considered too, and some of the equipment that I have used. With an effective focal length of roughly 216mm when coupled with a Canon crop sensor body, the field of view is nearly identical to the one youd find on a full-frame camera with a 200mm telephoto lens. The Rho Ophiuchi Cloud Complex by Eric Cauble using the Samyang 135mm F/2 lens. Tamron has announced its 11-20mm F2.8 Di III-A RXD ultra-wide angle zoom will be made available for Fujifilm X-mount. The focuser adjustment ring on the Rokinon 135mm F/2 is excellent, but fine-tuning your critical focus on a bright star at F/2 will take some trial and error to get right. In the right hands this lens really does have "magic pixie dust", as a friend once described. Oh and it's stabilised. By far the best one is the Tiffen Haze 2 filter. Well, after lugging that lens around for years, I'm experimenting with adding the 135L back to my kit. It is so sharp it makes you rethink the use of your zoom lenses. I am still very proud of some of the photos I shoot with a Pentax O450 15 years ago - a good smartphone camera today is at least as capable. After a three-year hiatus, we've been at the return of the CP+ camera show in Yokohama, Japan. The inset picture is a magnified view of the bottom right corner of the frame. After several years off, the venerable magazine has held a public open call photo contest and selected nine finalists and one winning image for its 'Photos of the Year.'. Whats the best camera for around $2000? One of them is simplicity: A clear, simple subject that constitutes a shape, standing out and contrasting against a calm and simple background. I found this highly restrictive for shooting indoors where there was seldom enough distance between me with my camera and my subject(s). In photoshop I love to zoom 200, 300 and even 400% to see the extreme details it is an absolutely amazing lens, great backround blur, great for low light weddings with available light. Yes the Samyang is good and yes there are lenses with bad bokeh. Some real life images from my photoblog: http://hellabella.de, One of the best and sharpest lens around. By the way, I still enjoy using my very sharp Sears 135mm, PKA mount lens. The 135mm F2 lens design is truly special, and in this article (and the video I made), I want to try to convince you as well. A lot of us have been saying this for years. I really like how they augment my longer focal length scopes. I was blown away when I loaded the photos into my computer. FULL FRAME TELEPHOTO 135mm F2.0 For my purposes, this is a spectacular lens. Several functions may not work. Manual focus on wide angle lens, for landscapes, ok, if you have a reliable manual focus system, which Samyang, at least in my mount, does not have. The clip-in Astronomik 12nm Ha is one of their most popular filters ever and for good reason! Sure, the Nifty 50 is an incredible value (and a LOT cheaper), but the 135mm puts you within range of some of the best astrophotography targets in the night sky. $218.00 for 7 days. Don't know what the young man uses as his camera, and if he has tried to keep the noise under control, or even tried to focus on the eyes of the mallard, or the cat (their eyes are not truly in focus). I use the word design, because although the available 135mm F2 lenses aren't the exact same optical formula, they share many important traits. Why would I want a 135/2.0 lens when I have a 135/1.8? This lens is one of canons finest lenses i have ever used. I recommend the author change the title of his article from "The Best Telephoto Lenses." to "Some Inexpensive Telephoto Lenses I Have Tested" The original title generates a claim and expectation in the reader that his article can't support that leads to reader frustration and just more questions; why didn't you test this one or do this etc. Nothing else like it and the reason the two DC lenses have remained in production since they were introduced in 1993. https://www.dpreview.com/galleries/1180017085/photos/3721717/bokeh. thanks for the tiring patronising lecture and then agreeing with me. This is an amazing lens.Very sharp wide open and no improvement when stopped own. Andysea, those are great images on your website. I am telling them - don't! I have an old 135/2.5 Takumar that is not bad at all, for the price. I do not use burst mode, but the lens would produce movie-like frames. Will I be able to capture the heart nebula with the lens youre talking about or would I need to modify my camera as well? I would love to see his test images. tanie i dobre opinie 9 opatek lub Biznes HUMAN Sport Insect Architektura Specjalne Krajobrazy Martwa natura Podry People 2023 Obiektyw o staej ogniskowej Have you ever come across this phenomena? Also, when used as recommended, and properly guided at full camera resolution, they are all comparable to a field-corrected APO, producing perfect images from edge to edge which can be easily cropped 25% with no evidence of aberrations. These capable cameras should be solid and well-built, have both the speed and focus to capture fast action and offer professional-level image quality. We were surprised by just how much difference there was between these AI-powered image enlargers. It's tiny compared to almost everything else in the 85-135 range, and used properly, it can produce results that hold up to my DC (all other factors being equal such as subject distance, f-stop, lighting, etc.). Overall, spectacular lens. And now important part: This lens can be stopped down if desired effect is not required and no, with 85/1.8 you will never get this effect. (And cost less too). Most of the available 135mm F2 lenses have a very short minimum focusing distance in relation to the focal length, creating a magnification ratio of around 0.2 - 0.25. the EOS-clip filters are compatible with all EF lenses but not with the EF-s. I've owned a few L lenses and while their USM motors have always been quick to snap in focus, this 135mm is on a different level. Just like the above samples, most are just bad. At $900 US it a relative steal. And as this article clearly shows, no amount of blurr will make a poorly composed photo good. Yet the Jaegers becomes essentially color free when stopped down to 3in. 21P Giacobini Zinner NGC1499 California Barnard 8 Cr399 Coathanger North America and Pelican Veil nebula HORGB M11 cluster area All lenses mentioned below are adaptable to Canon EOS cameras with slim EOS adapters which allow the lenses to focus just slightly past infinity. Tack sharp even at wide open aperture. It would not surprise me if modern lenses were useable at full aperture. I wish every lens was this good!! This is a fully manual lens, meaning that it does not have autofocus, and you must manually select the f-stop . The focuser adjustment rotates roughly 270 degrees, meaning fine-tuning on a bright star is more precise. It always happens to me with Samyang, it makes good glasses, fast and sharp, I want to have them, but they are not comfortable to use, not in Sony E, their focus is not precise, and they are not "so" cheap. f/2! The reason the 135mm lens was that it was the longest lens that would focus with a Leica rangefinder. Valerio, I sold my Canon Lens because in Nikon Lens there is a Defocus control option, very usefull in a daylight photos, as portrait. Does the bright star reflection bother you? 135 mm. Please send your photos of the Andromeda galaxy. http://www.idyll.com/laneysat I don't know about other photographers but I do not have many applications for this focal length. I do not see much difference in background blur or bokeh. It turns out that this. Sigma 105/2.8 DG EX Macro (very sharp at infinity) If you are a Nikon user, of course have a look at the Nikon AF Nikkor 135mm f/2D DC and compare it to the other lenses mentioned in this article. It can isolate subject while being tack sharp with beautiful creamy bokeh when used at f2. Another article that I read only the headline and saw a couple of samples then jumped directly to comments. Same thing as people mistake "shallow DOF" to blurry background. 30-35% diameter reduction is usually necessary on "good" lenses. This leaves you with a buttery bokeh and an object in perfect focus. Smooth but contrasty. I prefer this lens than the 70-200/2.8. Lens hood - when I bought this lens years ago the included hood was rather cheap (perhaps Canon has updated the hood) by comparison with other hoods. My guidescope is a 5in F5 Jaeger's achromat with a 2.3x Barlow, and a 9mm illuminated reticle eyepiece. $399 00. @juksu - you're such a hypocrite. (purchased for $900), reviewed December 4th, 2006 There are a total of 8 stops actually written on the lens. I bought this lens after reading your great review for my Nikon D5300. If the title had been: "Testing My First Telephoto and LOVING IT!!!!!!!. At under 900USD, it's a steal. The 135L is half the weight of the 70-200 2.8IS. Ive spent a handful of nights testing this lens in my Bortle Scale Class 6/7 backyard, and my results live up to the hype it gets in terms of astrophotography performance. Interesting that ancient, low-tech (no ED glass, no special coatings) non-apo telephotos could produce decent results compared to something modern. The lens hood is not petal-shaped, which is great news for those using this lens for astrophotography. Some people do not like this and consider Bokeh to refer only to the rendering of out of focus points of light. Any good ones apart from the Big Boys. No rubber sealing against the camera body tend to give me the creeps when shooting in the wet. Also, accurate guiding is essential. I seems many people he are confused about the meaning of the word. But even better BOKEH is the SAL-135F2.8F4.5 STF (Smooth Trans Focus ) which has even better BOKEH, albeit a manual focus lens. Yeah I agree that the sentiment that they were designed to be used stopped down is wrong as they were designed to be used wide open because they had to be for speed (my point above). Standards have risen in recent years. In excellent condition, this lens retails for around $200. Holiday Savings $50 . From the moment I reviewed the first sub-exposure on the display screen of my camera, I feel in love with the mid-range magnification of a 135mm lens. I hear great things about the Canon 200/2.8 L but do not have one. Nice image, andysea. Adam007,"a headshot is exactly where I want to see all those megapixels"No thanks. If you must have autofocus, and care about weight, buy the Canon. To fit the Heart and Soul Nebulae in a single frame requires an extremely wide field of view (compared to the magnification of most telescopes). So, let's see where it falls short of perfection: If you want to preview the image field you can expect with a particular camera sensor and lens combination, Stellarium features a useful tool. Panasonic 35-100mm f2.8. Of course, when it comes to astrophotography, this can create some challenges as well. Also, we ought never question or diminish the joy of others. We sell a wide variety of digital cameras from all the top brands like Canon, Nikon, Sony, Panasonic, Olympus, Fujifilm, Pentax, Leica, Samsung, and more. If experience has taught me anything, its that the practical, pain-free equipment that gets the most use under the stars. AF ring feels loose compared to my other L lenses. My work requires auto-focus. Based on my handful of experiences with this lens in the backyard, I have found these traits to hold true. If you're using or are looking to buy the Samyang or Rokinon 135mm F/2, please let me know what you're imaging with it or any questions you may have in the comment section below. My only complaint about this lens is that the depth of the lens shade forces me to remove the shade in order to remove or replace the lens cap (my hands are fairly large). Thanks & Cheers Writer Anno Huidekoper takes a look at what this manual SLR can do and how it stacks up to its contemporaries. Second night out with mine right now and I am here in the comments looking for the part number or link! I use it to photograph highschool basketball in poor light. After weeks with a production Fujifilm X-T5, Chris and Jordan have some final thoughts. If you want the best value possible for your money, and can survive without autofocus, buy the Samyang. http://www.radiantlite.com/2009/01/canon-135mm-f2l-usm-mini-review.html I cant wait to try this lens out during the winter months on some wide-field targets in Orion. Thomas, I do have no experience with the Canon lens you mentioned but zoom lenses have limitations concerning aberrations while providing more flexibility.The Nikkor 70-200/4 that I like as a travel lens is a very good performer but the Zeiss 135/2 APO is in a different league. I got this lens because of portraiture. It could easily rival 'bokeh monsters lenses' at fraction of their price. I like fast lenses, and my Nikkor 105DC is my favourite. (37% is difference, so you get little more, about 15.5Mpix). I typically shoot with Canon lenses, but the potential for low light photography (whether thats astrophotography or the ability to film at dusk) caught my interest. The extent of this influence lies mainly in photographer's perception and creativity.As all arts photography may serve given needs due to numerous reasons with the resulting integrity of the work not necessarily suggesting art.The photographic gear (from lens cleaning tissues up to s/w) is just the tool(s) of a photographer in order to produce its work. In fact, it might be fun to try! The screws should be set sufficiently tightly to prevent shift, yet not so tightly as to interfere with fine focusing. The Canon EF 135mm f/2L USM Lens makes an excellent indoor sports lens. This way the focus will favor the red light which is more objectionable within a star image than a bit of blue. Would it at all be possible to at least make sure the people you publish know a little bit about photography? The 70-200 f2.8 L2 and he 400f5.6 will however set you back way more than $1.100. Hate these presumptuous kinds of articles and headlines. Also, the newer and much more expensive 200mm F4 SMC Pentax with the K mount is decisively inferior, showing small but annoying red chromatic aberration. I put quotes around the ones that are written on the lens. Stuff I used to take the photos. A Canon 70-200L IS II at 200mm at f2.8 has all the same characteristics of the Canon 135L. When all that was available were APS-C crop cameras a 85mm lens provided a near equivalent view angle to the 135mm on a full frame camera. Just not useful if you already have traditional focal lengths. Photography is art and technology, the latter serving the first.Photography is not something arty with a lot of gadgetry.