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hibby11
Dec 4, 2008, 9:04 PM
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Hi- So i'm pretty new to the photography world and am looking at picking up a wide angle lens for landscape shots. I'm on a bit of a budget and can't afford an L quality lens but have found a few others I like. The camera i'm using is a Canon Rebel Xsi Thanks in advance for any help, Travis
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dilbar
Dec 4, 2008, 10:08 PM
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What lens do you have now? I have the XTi and it came with the 18-55 f/3.5-5.6 on the body and so far its been able to handle whatever wide angle shots I want to get. What is your price range?
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chanceboarder
Dec 4, 2008, 10:35 PM
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Hands down the Tokina 11-16mm f\2.8. This is just a spectacular lens. Very sharp, great color and contrast and built like a tank. Hard to find instock at place but if you can get your hands on it I'd grab one. If this is out of your price range take a look at the Tokina 12-24mm f\4. Jason
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dlintz
Dec 4, 2008, 10:50 PM
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chanceboarder wrote: Hands down the Tokina 11-16mm f\2.8. This is just a spectacular lens. Very sharp, great color and contrast and built like a tank. Hard to find instock at place but if you can get your hands on it I'd grab one. If this is out of your price range take a look at the Tokina 12-24mm f\4. Jason If I didn't already own the Canon EF-S 10-22mm I'd be getting a Tokina 11-16. I've read a lot of good things about this lens. d.
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Myxomatosis
Dec 4, 2008, 10:52 PM
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dilbar wrote: What lens do you have now? I have the XTi and it came with the 18-55 f/3.5-5.6 on the body and so far its been able to handle whatever wide angle shots I want to get. What is your price range? Yeah I argee. My 18-55 has always been wide enough and landscapes usually on a tripod so don't really need to worry about F numbers lower than 3.5. My mate has one of the Canon 12mm's and said its just too wide..
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gunit
Dec 4, 2008, 11:29 PM
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If you're looking in the $600 range, I'd say either the Canon 10-22 or the Tokina 11-16. I own the 10-22 and am extremely happy with it, but have also heard great things about the Tokina. Obviously the Tokina is the faster lens if you could use the speed for indoor social gatherings etc. The Canon has a bit more range which can be a plus for better cropping/framing when you are restricted on where you can go. If you are willing to spend a little more money, I owned the Canon 17-55 f2.8 IS and loved it. This obviously gives you something fast, image stabilized and with a fair amount of range (although it isn't super wide). Its price is L-ish but worth it in my opinion. The only reason why I switched to the 10-22 (with 24-104 f4 L as a walkaround) was that I planned on eventually going full frame and also wanted something a bit wider.
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wes_allen
Dec 5, 2008, 12:07 AM
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Canon 17-40 f4 L. My wife has this lens, and I use it sometimes. About 50% of the price of the 16-35 2.8 II, but pretty much it's equal in IQ. And for landscapes, you won't need f2.8 very much...
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hibby11
Dec 5, 2008, 12:12 AM
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Thanks for all the replies guys, definitely giving me a better idea of what I should be looking at.
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pico23
Dec 5, 2008, 4:40 AM
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hibby11 wrote: Thanks for all the replies guys, definitely giving me a better idea of what I should be looking at. The Tokina looks like a great lens. I know in the Pentax community we've been hoping to see Pentax release it (Pentax is owned by Hoya who owns tokina, and most of the Tokina lineup is Pentax/Tokina collaborations) but to date, the 11-16 seems to be the one lens we CAN'T pay more for in Pentax brand! I have no idea why?? That said, the Tokina 12-24 is a stellar lens, I briefly had the Pentax copy and it was nice, unfortunately it was a bit too pricey for me at $700 - 100 rebate, and it was bigger than the lens I traded up/down for. I kept the rebate and sold it for full value!! I ended up with a Sigma 10-20mm F/4-5.6 lens that I absolutely love. I do wish it was an F/4 all the way through but with these lenses you aren't shooting wide open often, and truthfully I mostly use this lens from 10-14mm where it's a F/4-4.5, otherwise I use my 21mm. I just don't like variable apertures. A few shots with the Sigma (unfortunately rc.com does some weird resizing to even 500px images, you can tell by how screwed up the caption text is!)...
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chanceboarder
Dec 5, 2008, 6:10 AM
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Some shots from my Tokina 11-16mm
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USnavy
Dec 6, 2008, 1:30 AM
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Don’t waste your money IMO. You can create pictures as wide as 80 degrees by 360 degrees with use of a cropping program. I have a program that will attach multiple frames to create a wide image picture and you would not be able to tell the difference between a wide angle lens and this cropping program. With this program I can make the image anywhere from two frames wide to 30 frames wide encompassing 180, 270 or even 360 degrees. There are tons of program on the net that have the ability to do this.
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USnavy
Dec 6, 2008, 1:32 AM
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chanceboarder wrote: Some shots from my Tokina 11-16mm [image]http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3267/3083311949_2f858c630b.jpg[/image] [image]http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3177/3079679410_3526fea4f1.jpg[/image] [image]http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3074/3077213106_c14f7d04d6.jpg[/image] [image]http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3217/3077213990_79bb2cdd68.jpg[/image] [image]http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3013/3084226232_74e8940b37.jpg[/image] How did you get the sky that blue? Did you have a bad ass polarizer, a good post production program or it just happened to be one of those days?
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pico23
Dec 6, 2008, 2:05 AM
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USnavy wrote: Don’t waste your money IMO. You can create pictures as wide as 80 degrees by 360 degrees with use of a cropping program. The only issue with this, is you can't take moving shots with this! That said, I bought a panoramic head for a few hundred dollars (which as you noted isn't truly even needed anymore) and the stitches are flawless ONCE you find the nodal point of a given lens. Basically, you can even flawlessly stitch fisheye shots with this type of head, and a good stitching program. I've seen people stitch urban scenes with right angles together using ultrawides on a panoramic head with no perceptible distortion. Although using a longer less distortion prone lens makes the whole process easier, and also gives more resolution. In lieu of a panoramic head, a shift lens will do a similarly perfect panorama. You simply shoot 2 or 3 shots. First shot the lens is shifted extreme left (usually 11mm) then you flip the lens and shoot extreme right, and some people (like me) like to also shoot a center shot with the lens at 0mm shift. This is something I did more with film, and will continue to do but with my digital SLRs I have an issue with the stupid lip for the flash housing, it means I cannot rotate the lens without unmounting it since the knobs get in the way!!! Huge PITA! My film bodies never did this! An example with the tilt and shift lens...6 shots total, camera only moved 1 time on a very level tripod to get all 6 shots and only a few degrees. This left parallax distortion nearly out of the equation, and the base images stitched together nearly perfectly with little effect or crop loss. Something like a 39MP, 300MB TIFF!! I like the 35mm (APS-C digital, or 50mm film/ff sensors) because it's reasonably wide or reasonably normal depending on the way you look at it, yet also distortion free, and compact. The FL gives a nice compromise to resolution vs. fewer shots to capture a fast changing scene! I typically still stitch "square" or slightly rectangular panoramics from my older point and shoot (G3) which is only 4MP but looks great when I turn it into a 12MP+ by stitching 3-4 portrait panos together. An example of what I am talking about (4-5 vertical shots stitched, something like 8 second exposures each but motion could have made this not possible, only the large overlap saved me!): Anyway, we digressed from the topic. The point is there are times though a true wide angle lens will be the only thing to get the job done, and for that I would second anyones opinion on the above lenses, all have a good following and showed excellent bench test (although all had flaws, just depends on which flaws your photography is most suited to accept!)
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chanceboarder
Dec 6, 2008, 2:22 AM
Post #14 of 14
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USnavy wrote: Don’t waste your money IMO. You can create pictures as wide as 80 degrees by 360 degrees with use of a cropping program. I have a program that will attach multiple frames to create a wide image picture and you would not be able to tell the difference between a wide angle lens and this cropping program. With this program I can make the image anywhere from two frames wide to 30 frames wide encompassing 180, 270 or even 360 degrees. There are tons of program on the net that have the ability to do this. That's all well and good if you want to spend hours in post stitching and processing all your photos when you get home. Hope you get all your images lined up correctly and exposures the same. Far more things that can go wrong then just shooting with a wide angle to begin with. Stitch is great for making wide panoramic images but is no where near as good as a decent wide angle lens. As for the sky in the photos, there were no filters used and minimal post processing but no color enhancements. Jason
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