Lens (Canon mounted) for night photography

Hi everyone,

I am currently using my Sigma 10-20 f/4-5.6 EX (on Eos 7D and 5D - completing a 24-105 f/4) for my landscape photography, but I definitely saw I was limited by aperture on such lens for night photography (stars and milky way).

So I am considering to change my (ultra-)wide angle lens to get a greater aperture (f/2.8 at least).
I already noted :
- Samyang 14mm f/2.8
- Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8

I am forgetting the Samyang one due to the front glass (no filter so limited I would be for day landscape).

I would like to know if you would know some other lenses (max budget around $1,000) for night photography.

I already saw that some of you use the Nikon 14-24 f/2.8 with a Nikon-Canon adaptater ring, but it is out of budget

Thanks for any advice you could bring to me.

Cheers,

David

David, Before you completely rule out the Samyang, consider that it may be a wise choice despite it's inability to autofocus or use standard filters. The Samyang (sold under several brand names for less than $400 US) optically outperforms the similar Nikon autofocus lens costing more than three times as much, and produces images just as sharp as the Canon autofocus 14mm f/2.8 costing about six times as much. The lens certainly has it's limitations, but If you can live with manual focus, no filters (I don't use them much for wide-angle work, anyway, and the Nikon 14-24 users have the same limitation), and having to correct the wide-angle distortion with a free Adobe Camera Raw plug-in, the Samyang is a bargain. I agree that it has lots of drawbacks as an all-around wide angle, but it may be the wise choice for the single purpose of night photography.

Thank you Wayne for your answer.
First of all the manual focus and aperture are not a problem in my mind. I could manage with these manual settings.
But I am quite used to filters, and generally use these. So that's why I rejected the Samyang from my choice list.

David

If using filters is your primary requirement, then probably the only choice would be Canon 16-35mm F2.8 II, although its corner sharpness is not the best in the class, especially when it is wide-open.

I have the Canon 16-35 F2.8 and find that it is pretty sharp wide open, where as the 17-40 is not. I also rented the Canon 24mm F1.4 and found it to be not very sharp, although it was the 1st version of the lens not the 2nd. I would also not worry about the filter since you can have light bouncing between lens and filter that can cause ghosting on long exposures. Granted I noticed this on an old crappy camera with crappy filter, but I am sure it may still happen to some degree.

The attached is the 16-35 F2.8 ISO 2500 for 25 secs on 5D iii.

Would be keen to see what others think about your 2 choices of lenses.

David,
I wish I had 5d iii.