M42 lenses for astrophotography
Vintage lenses with an M42 screw mount can be a great choice for wide angle astrophotography. Often available on internet marketplaces and second-hand camera
stores for reasonable prices, they can be mounted to modern DSLR bodies by means of a small adaptor. Some of these optics easily outperform modern zoom
lenses, like our trusted Yashinon and Zeiss Sonnar. But not all M42 lenses are well suited for astrophotography. A lot of them show considerable chromatic
abberation and coma, especially in the field corners. To find out which M42 lenses perform well in astrophotography, we acquired and tested a lot of these optics
over the years. The table below gives our result: a shortlist of M42 lenses very well suited for deep sky imaging with an APS-C sized DSLR chip. The optimum f-stop
for really crisp shots is given too:
Peleng
2.8/8
@f/5.6
Zenitar
2.8/16
@f/5.6
Mir-1
2.8/37
@f/5.6
Yashinon
1.7/50
@f/4
Jupiter-9
2.0/85
@f/4
Sonnar
3.5/135
@f/4
Tair-3
4.5/300
@f/6.7