A night under the stars with the Sigma 20mm f/1.4 ART lens

I’ve been impressed with the Sigma 20mm f/1.4 ART lens so far (see my sigma 20mm first impressions here) and decided to try some astrophotography with it. Unfortunately it’s been cloudy and or raining here for the last couple of weeks and it’s now nearly a full moon ruling out any deep space or milky way pictures for another 2 weeks until the new moon. However it’s been a while since i’d done star trails and also done some fun wire-wool spinning so I thought I’d give it a whirl (haha and a whisk).

So me and a collegue Robert Whetton headed off to darkest wimborne to find a deserted church ruins that I know would work well for this sort of photography. Coupled with what I knew of the Sigma 20mm ART lens and it’s awesomeness wide open I thought that this would let me shoot at a much lower ISO than i would with any other lenses. This fast aperture meant I could shoot at ISO100 and ISO200 instead of higher giving my images much lower noise! This is superb news for winter weddings and low light portraits. Good job Sigma!

One thing to note when taking night shots at this time of year with frosts is you need to watch the big front element for condensation, this can cause some flaring in your pictures, so I had to keep wiping the front element with a cloth. Worth bearing in mind if you’re shooting at 1am in a cold field in the middle of the country 🙂

Here’s some of the pictures we came away with!

All pictures shot with the amazing Sony A7S and sigma 20mm f/1.4 ART lens via photodiox adapter at f/1.4 and f/2