I recently bought Canon’s EF 200mm f#2.8 prime lens for some deep-sky imaging with the Canon 5D MkII.  To say I am highly impressed with this lens’ performance is a massive understatement – it is fantabulous!

Last night was “first light” for the EF 200mm and I imaged the Double Cluster region and the region around M31.  Note that the field of view is around 9.5 x 6.5 degrees and we have perfect round stars from corner to corner – this is AMAZING performance for a “daylight photography” lens.  It’s certainly more impressive than the refractors I use for the purpose – although at 200mm the focal length is a lot shorter and so the resolution is also quite a bit poorer.  That said – for wide-field deep-sky imaging I reckon this lens takes some beating.

The Double Cluster image was only 6 subs at 3-minutes per sub, f#4, ISO 800, IDAS filter.  The M31 image was just 10 subs at 5-minutes per sub again at f#4 but this time at ISO 400, again using an IDAS filter.

I am highly impressed with the performance of this lens and have a huge list of objects now on the whiteboard waiting to be imaged by this little beauty 🙂 🙂