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Was kinda puzzled, but that makes sense.

Well, enjoy your 18-55 ... and welcome back to civilization ;-)

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Seems like it’s become an APSC world.

stan0301 Loc: Colorado

The lens I carry with me and use a lot is the Sigma 8-16 - it very closely matches what your eye actually sees, and I enlarge to 20x30 all the time - it is wide enough to get the job done (I have all the rest of the wides, but this is the one I reach for)

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Just consider the thread title.

neillaubenthal

Yep…you don't really need one very often IMO…but when you need one you need one and there's really no substitute for wide when you can't step back or want a particular composition. I find them less than fully satisfactory for landscapes unless there's subject in the very near foreground and I want both it and the distant stuff in focus. If no interesting near foreground…I find them to diminish the distant stuff too much. I had a Sigma 10-20 on my D7500 which was 15-30 equivalent and it got used a fair amount for waterfalls…which I like and take a lot of but they're not my predominant subject selection.

That said…other's mileage certainly varies…there are a lot of people that use wide angles more than other lenses…depends on what you shoot.

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

Wider than 24mm is definitely useful for a lot of things... but perhaps not for some you mention.

Not recommended for portraits and groups... While it's possible to use an ultrawide for these purposes, there is natural exaggeration from wide angle lenses that can strongly distort peoples' proportions and look odd. People near the edges of the frame, as in a group shot, will show anamorphic distortion where one side of their body is much larger than the other. Individual portraits too close will make a person's nose look big and their ears tiny. Full length individual portraits can end up with "elephant legs" and other effects, also anamorphic. Sometimes these effects are used humorously, but other times the subjects may not find it funny. With some planning and care it's possible to shoot people with wide angle lenses... but it's usually "loose" compositions or "environmental portraits" that show a lot of their surroundings, thus minimizing the issues with distortion.

Highly recommended for landscape photography... Great for everything from the mountains to the sea, near to far. Also good for architectural and cityscapes, though you have to be aware of and careful about "keystoning" that comes from perspective exaggeration. This can usually be corrected to some extent in post-processing, so long as you are aware of and plan for it. There are specialized wide angle lenses with tilt/shift movements especially used to correct for this (Canon TS-E 17mm and 24mm, for example), but they are pricey, hefty and manual focus only.

Widely used for indoor architecture work.... And often necessary when you can only back up so far and need to get it all in the shot. Once again you need to be aware of and prepared to correct for any distortion. It can be minimized by camera position and careful leveling. Something to watch for in choosing lenses is how they render straight lines. Some lenses (especially zooms) have a lot of barrel distortion, where straight lines will appear curved. Zooms can have barrel distortion at one extreme and pincushion at the other end of their focal length range! (The-Digital-Picture website has extensive tests for virtually any lens that can be fitted to your Canon cameras... including image quality, distortion, flare resistance and more... plus extensive reviews of many of them).

Street photography is often portraiture and the same concerns about distortion apply with very wide lenses. Historically many street photographers have used mildly wide lenses (such as 35mm or 40mm, on full frame). Some also or instead use standard or normal focal lengths (approx. 50mm on full frame) and some use short telephoto (up to around 85 or 90mm on full frame). It's pretty rare for wider or longer focal lengths to be used for shots involving people. A part of street photography is interaction with the subject(s) and "too long" a focal length makes that difficult. Conversely, "too wide" a lens can make the human subjects too small within the image. Many street photographers also strive for as unobtrusive gear as possible, potentially choosing compact prime lenses instead of zooms. Often the street photographer prefers to look more like a tourist or amateur than a pro shooter with fancy gear, both to put subjects more at ease and to hopefully avoid being targeted by thieves. Another argument for prime lenses (fixed focal lengths... i.e., not zooms) is that even while being smaller and less expensive, they often offer larger lens apertures for low light shooting situations or greater depth of field control.

Taking all the above into account...

Do you REALLY need f/2.8? For nearly all types of landscape, as well as architecture inside and out, there are some excellent f/4 zoom choices. In fact, these often have the best image quality corner to corner, while being smaller, a bit lighter and less expensive. Some "fast" ultrawide lenses, including the Tamron you're considering, also have highly convex front elements that preclude using standard screw-in filters on them. That type of lens might provide a means of attaching gel filters over the rear element, or there may be accessory devices available that allow oversize filters to be used. Even "fast" ultrawides that can use screw-in filters often require larger diameter, more expensive filters, while an f/4 zoom often utilizes smaller, less expensive ones. On the other hand there are some instances where the larger aperture might be desirable, such as night photography (astrophotogaphy, aurora borealis, some cityscapes), perhaps to assist with composition and focusing using an optical viewfinder since the lens is likely to be stopped down for shooting anyway. You didn't mention these types of photography. I'm just bringing them up as possible considerations.

Some will say "never use a polarizing filter on a wide angle lens". I disagree and say "never say never". It is true that there can be uneven effect with that type filter when a lens has a wide angle of view. However that's not always a problem and sometimes doesn't occur at all. You can see the uneven effect in the viewfinder, if it's occurring, and then decide what, if anything, you want to do about it.

I also mention above that some lenses were manual focus. In truth this often isn't a problem with very wide and ultrawide lenses. For one, many (most?) of the typical uses of these lenses are slower types of shooting where manual focus is fine. Also, wide lenses naturally render fairly deep depth of field, which easily hides minor focus accuracy errors. That's especially true once the lens is stopped down, which is often desirable for many of the above types of uses. If a lens has it, you might even end up turning off autofocus if using hyperfocal focusing distance or scale pre-focus techniques. Hyperfocal is often used with landscape photography... while experienced street photographers sometimes preset focus using the distance scales on their cameras so that they can take very rapid shots (BTW, not all lenses have distance scales.... especially zooms! Another reason compact prime lenses are popular for street photography.)

Personally I shoot a lot of sports, where telephotos are used a lot more than wide angle lenses. But I still wouldn't be without wide angles!

For full frame, much like you I have zooms that go as wide as 24mm. I primarily use full frame for landscape, portraiture, macro and close-up work. I also have 24mm tilt-shift for architecture (also have 45mm TS-E and would love to have the 17mm... but that's muy expensive, so I will rent or only buy it if I get a job that calls for and fully pays for it). My widest lens for full frame is a 20mm f/2.8 prime. This a reasonably compact, affordable, well corrected lens and overall very good performing lens. If I start shooting more landscape or architectural interiors, I will buy the Canon EF 16-35mm f/4L IS USM. It is right up there among the very best, more expensive, bigger and heavier zooms. It uses 77mm filters and has image stabilization, which is not common on ultrawides. The only reason I might not buy that lens would be if I convert to mirrorless, in which case I will be looking for a similar lens in that system (or will adapt that 16-35mm f/4).

For use on my APS-C DSLRs I have a couple crop-only ultrawide zooms: Tokina 12-24mm f/4 and Canon EF-S 10-22mm (19-38mm and 16-35mm full frame equivalent, respectively). The latter is a particularly excellent lens for crop sensor Canon DSLRs. I mostly use these cameras shooting sports with a variety of telephotos. But there are plenty of times when I need something wider. When I first switched to digital and crop cameras I was still using a top-of-the-line 17-35mm f/2.8L, a very good lens on film/full frame, but nowhere near wide enough on crop sensor cameras... So I sold it to buy the Tokina (the Canon lens was a lot more expensive, at the time). I later got a great deal on the 10-22mmm and it's lived up to all the hype. It's one of the best ultrawide/crop zooms anyone has made: sharp corner to corner and more flare resistant than most. Today there is also the far cheaper, much more plasticky, slower aperture, but quite capable 10-18mm.

For some candid location portraiture and street photography, I also use a very compact mirrorless. While for those purposes I have short telephoto and mildly wide primes, I also have a very wide Meike 12mm f/2.8 (19mm full frame equiv.) that's a manual focus, manual aperture lens (also sells as an Opteka lens) that I use occasionally for landscape, architecture, etc. While a fully manual lens like this is slower to shoot with, it also is quite compact and was quite inexpensive. Frankly, I was very surprised how well built it was and very pleased with the image quality it produces. I should mention, too, that compared to DSLRs a fully manual lens is more easily used on a mirrorless camera where the electronic viewfinder can provide reasonably good exposure simulation and manual focus assist features. There simply aren't a lot of choices of wide lenses for this mirrorless system, but I'm happy. Notice that my wide angle solution for this crop mirrorless is very similar to what I've done with my full frame DSLR. Below is one of my early test shots done with the 12mm lens (with a B+W circular polarizer, incidentally)...

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Thomas902 Loc: Washington DC

Stellar lens work Hamltnblue... Those downloads are absolutely breathtaking!
You've mastered your Ultra Wide glass... Not an easy thing to do...
Loving the brilliant color harmonies latent within...

So very nice to see this exceptional caliber of imagery here on UHH...
Thank you so much for sharing your artistry... truly inspirational!

All the best on your photographic journey Hamltnblue.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Shoot a stitched pano. You don't even need a tripod to do it.

https://petapixel.com/2016/10/27/stitching-panorama-forget-wide-angle-lens-home/

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

rlscholl Loc: California

I have a 15mm super wide lens I use with my full frame camera. I definitely consider it as useful, but not in the sense that it is a continuation of a continuum from 50mm to 35mm to 24mm . . . etc. Rather I consider it’s primary use is to create a particular perspective that is not otherwise available (usually for landscape or architectural subjects). Consequently, when I use it my approach is not my normal one of wanting to record something I see, but to create something with an emphasis different than what I actually see. For me, that means that I don’t use it often, but there is no substitute for it when I do use it.

Thomas902 Loc: Washington DC

There seems to be a huge misconception about wide being inappropriate for portraiture... Possibly for want of creative thinking or more likely a want of having clients who expect you to exceed expectations by creating visual drama... Seriously!

Pick up any copy of VOGUE, Elle or especially W...
Yes wide angle is germane here and not the exception in Fashion Editorials...
Even product ads have embraced going wide... GUCCI; LOUIS VUITION;BOTTEGA salvatore ferragamo to name a few... this list goes around the block...

Luxury Selection Collections are frequently shot ultra wide...

If you want to shot fashion collections you'll be well advised to master wide and ultra wide glass...

Below is bridal at 85mm and at 24mm (embrace both if you want to book work)
Just saying...

85mm

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24mm

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Nigel7 Loc: Worcestershire. UK.

I used to do the photography for an estate agent. For house interiors I used a Sigma 12-24mm lens on my full frame Canon 5D Mk3. If I squeezed right back into a corner 14mm would allow me to show all the rest of the room. Now given up that work and lens. My Canon 16-35L lens is much sharper although won't quite do the 90 degrees to fully include the perpendicular walls.

jeweler53

Wide is a tool. Use it when it is appropriate.

JimH123 Loc: Morgan Hill, CA

I have the Tamron 15-30mm f2.8. But I admit that it is big and heavy to lug around. Also have the Rokinon 18mm f2.8 which is much smaller and lighter to carry and does get used more.

For my APS-C needs, I use the Sony 10-18mm. Used to think it was too soft at the edges until I discovered that DxO did a much better job on the images than Lightroom.

issa2006.

My favorite lens is my 18-140. Wide enough to do a family group and long enough to capture closeups . I do newspaper photography and find it very useful for that (which is essentially street photography). I have a 10-20 lens for interior real estate photos which works really well.