Photographing the Milky Way with a 24mm focal length!

Experienced Milky Way photographer Anja Kallenbach was able to test the Viltrox lens with a 24-millimeter focal length during her trip to Chamonix, a commune in France. In this blog post, she tells you about the challenges of choosing the right lens for Milky Way photography and what experiences she has already gained with the 24-millimeter focal length.

Testing and preparing the lens for night shots

The summer weather of 2021, with its heavy cloud cover, put one to the test, at least if you had a new lens for testing the Milky Way. Every night for the week before departure, the photographer got up to take a test shot from her balcony. When photographing stars, all the weaknesses of a lens were mercilessly revealed, and she had already had to send back many expensive lenses after just one day of testing. Decentered, lots of chromatic aberration in the corners, which meant that the stars were no longer rendered as round, or the result in the corners simply wasn't sharp enough.

All the more she was surprised by the Viltrox AF 24mm f/1.8 when she saw the test photo. She couldn't believe how much quality she could get for such a low price. The lens is already fully usable at open aperture, has little vignetting and chromatic aberration. In addition, it is small, handy and light. This was particularly important for the photographer, as she had to carry her equipment, which included a sleeping bag and tent in addition to her photo accessories, up the mountain. Despite the weather forecast, Anja Kallenbach really wanted to test the lens in practice and photograph the Milky Way with it. So she went to Chamonix to the Mer de Glace. There she had a breathtaking view of the Milky Way, as can be seen in the following result.

Breathtaking panoramic shots

After a long and hot climb up the mountain, the photographer was rewarded with a breathtaking view. The view over the receding glacier and the Drus lay before her. In the background rose the famous north face of the Grandes Jorrasses, a multi-peaked mountain in the Mont Blanc massif in the Alps. This scene cannot even be captured entirely with a focal length of 14 millimeters. Let alone the entire Milky Way arc. It was too large for such a shot. For this reason, she usually opted for a panoramic shot, as this is created from several individual image sequences. She emphasizes that with a 24-millimeter focal length lens, the image also became much more detailed. In addition, she used the Rollei Panoramakopf 200 Mark II "updated Version" so that she knew directly in the dark how far she could move the camera for the panoramic image.

A panoramic image like the one above, with a 360-degree all-round view by Anja Kallenbach, consists of a total of 108 images in four rows. All of this must be meticulously planned so that nothing overlaps too much afterwards and no discernible errors are visible in the foreground. On the night she created this panoramic image, it was particularly difficult for her because some clouds passed through the scene during the creation process, and she unfortunately had to start the shots all over again.

In addition to the lens and the panoramic head, she photographed with a Sony Alpha 7III and the Rollei remote trigger. The sky was captured with an ISO value of 4000, an aperture of 2.2, and an exposure time of 10 seconds. To prevent the stones and mountains in the foreground from being underexposed, the foreground was exposed for 30 seconds.

Chamonix may be a small village, but it is clear that light pollution illuminates the mountain peaks. Anja Kallenbach likes to consciously incorporate this illumination into her pictures. This serves as a size comparison to the landscape.

Overall impression of the lens

If the lens is to be used for Milky Way photography, whether for panoramic images or simple single shots, Anja Kallenbach can only recommend the lens. With its 24-millimeter focal length, detailed and breathtaking shots are possible. The lens will definitely accompany the photographer on her upcoming travels and continue to create breathtaking images.

Have you also been out and about with a Viltrox lens? Show us your pictures on Instagram or Facebook using #rolleixviltrox!

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