There was a new moon this past weekend so I convinced my friend Tyler to leave LA and drive north a couple hours to play around under the stars in the desert with me. I recently picked up the Sony 16-35 GM lens to replace three lens in my kit (Sony 16-35 f4, Rokinon 14 2.8, Rokinon 24 1.4) and I wanted to see how it faired in the night sky. So we left LA around 4pm on Saturday and after a few stops to pick rent Tyler a tripod and to get some food, we arrived at our destination: Trona Pinnacles.

One of the great things about living in Los Angeles, is that even while it's probably one of the brightest cities in the US, dark skies are not too far away. The entire region is mountainous which does wonders to break up the passage of light. The weather in Los Angeles was dreary at best, fully supporting the "June Gloom" phrase that was coined here. As we drove north, the gloom dissipated, but soon we were flanked by heavy storm clouds in all directions which made us slightly nervous of the ability to see night skies, but we trudged on.

 

When we got to Trona, it was dark and our location scouting abilities were limited to our headlights and my memory. Having been here before, I was able to direct us to a decent spot I had previously camped at. And then, we just started shooting. Here are some shots with the 16-35 2.8:

While I didn't push the lens to it's limits this evening (I forgot my intervalometer), I did discover that the quality from edge to edge was far superior than what I've experienced with the Rokinon lenses I've been using for astrophotography up until this point and that should be expected based on the price difference. The stars themselves seemed sharper and the lens rendered the Milky Way "cloud" flawlessly. Perhaps the most beneficial aspect of using this lens for astro is the zoom focus you get with Sony lenses that is absent when 3rd party lenses like Rokinons. I find that even while grainy, using the zoom focus greatly helps focusing at night if you have a light source to focus on in the distance. That being said, I look forward to more adventures under the stars and seeing how good a stacked composite will look.

Before we knew it, the sun was coming up and we hadn't slept, but as the landscape was slowly beginning to show itself and all of the amazing rock features, our excitement prevented us from laying down for very long. We scrambled up to a cool little vista point, where huge rock features surrounded us in every direction and the views in between yielded otherworldly sights. I brought my camera bag up with all my lenses so we could play around with different focal lengths. It should be noted, that I recently bought a new camera bag and I cannot stress how amazing it is. If you are outdoorsy and have a bunch of gear, there is nothing, in my honest opinion, better than the Atlas Athlete. Anways, below are a bunch of shots I captured during the sunrise with various lenses.