Nikon D810 with Sigma 14/1.8 art lens. Sky Tracked with same lens.
Ultra Wide Angle Lenses
One of the first lenses I used to capture starry skies was a 14-24mm/2.8 lens, and before that, many years ago, a fixed 24/2.8 prime lens when I had no 14mm zoom. Too much of the time, my zoom was fixed at 14mm because I was always wanting to have a big sky and foreground together; this was how I shot starlight. One of the reasons I was doing this was obvious - with no tracker at the time, the wider the focal length, the longer I could expose for, say 20 seconds. I am not the only person who did and does this. The top picture was an in-between shot in 2022 when I was shooting a tracked mosaic with my other camera (Nikon D850). I had long since stopped taking every shot at 14mm by 2022 (actually much earlier). The foreground is taken with the tracker off, otherwise the landscape would be a blur.
Orion over the Quiraing - 14-24/2.8S on Star Adventurer Tracker Mount
The above shot is with Nikon’s 14-24mm zoom; it is shot at 14mm and this is going to be the first field of view I show here. There are lots of reasons I stopped this practice. One of the most obvious, was that I grew and developed what I wanted to do, and my skills when shooting complex scenes improved, as did my post processing. Other reasons include the realisation that not every shot (or not as many as I was taking) required such an expansive field of view. Now that I owned a star tracker, I was no longer beholden to ultra wide angle lenses in the same what that I was with a fixed tripod up until that point. I am now glad, that I quickly got over this habit. Below, is the same scene as the first shown in this article, on the same night, shot entirely with a 50mm lens. This is about 20 individual shots of the night sky on the Star Adventurer Star Tracker.
Shooting at 50mm
Nikon D850 mosaic with a 50mm f/1.4 prime lens - A huge mosaic of the night sky on a Star Adventurer Mount showing incredible detail and colour as the core rises over the horizon
I don’t think I have to point out the very obvious difference in detail between the first 14mm milky way shot to the 50mm shot above. One is much more effort to do and takes a lot more skill to pull off, both in shooting and in post processing. I should mention that I still to this day find a great deal of satisfaction in a 14mm night shot that works well photographically. I just use it more wisely than I used to. The foreground is a little better here than in the last shot; it is less distracting and has better separation.
Shooting at 24mm
Meteor Spears Auriga - 24mm tracked sky
Shooting at 24mm is a good balance between land and sky. Every scene is different though, and in some circumstances we need slightly wider field of views in order to get a decent sky and land together. However, we are not beholden to doing them in one shot. Break free from this practice and consider that you can capture the sky right above the land where you are shooting, then pan the camera down to capture the landscape below.
Shooting at 35mm
Here is a shot made with a 35mm f/1.4 prime lens, without a star tracker because I was shooting the aurora:
Band of Green - Bright enough to be seen in residential areas
If I had used a 20mm, or 14mm focal length for this, I would have got yards of foreground, a distant sky, and the aurora would not dominate. I would also have gotten distortion to the houses in the bottom of the frame.
The next time you are shooting the night sky, consider that the be and end all is not ultra wide angle lenses. A star tracker greatly helps access longer focal lengths in your shooting. Unless there is aurora, I mostly use my Star Tracker Mount for astro work. See my gear page for more information, or my tutorial on how to shoot the milky way or aurora photography for further information and guidance.
The Milky Way Core over Scotland. A Mosaic made with a 50mm lens on a star tracker