pic375 Loc: Rosehill TX.

In need of some suggestions for a lens to be used on a 80D to take pics of home interiors, furnished and unfurnished. This may be my first paid shoot and could lead to more with this builder so I need it to look great. I know I need to do my part, I'm just looking for some pro advice on the best lens choice.
My budget is about $1000
THANKS IN ADVANCE !!!!

jayd Loc: Central Florida, East coast

Canon 10-18. Or Rokinon 14mm I have both and like both do hotel room interiors

Plieku69 Loc: The Gopher State, south end

I have a Sigma 10-20 that does very well, I took my own pictures for the realtor when I put my home on the market.
Ken

crazydaddio Loc: Toronto Ontario Canada

Canon 10-18mm is one of the best value for money....will be well under your 1k budget.
If you had FF i would have recommended the 16-35 F4 IS . Good corner to corner sharpness but in a crop your width will be equivalent to 24 - 35.

Beware the 10-18 will distort the image at the 10mm end to the point of not really being fixable in post. You will need to play with it to see what width-distortion is acceptable for you and your clients.

Kissel vonKeister Loc: Georgia

Tokina 12-28 or used 12-24. 10mm might make it hard to deal with the distortion.

cthahn

You might need more than one lens. An architectural lens is a must . There is more to taking interior pictures than you can imagine. Lighting, time of day, DOF, light balance, and more. Look at some home magazines and practice taking interior pictures.

pic375 Loc: Rosehill TX.

I realize that 95% of my pics will be from a tripod with a aperture of prob f11 or greater and during mid day unless the customer wants some other lighting affects. I in now way think its going to be easy starting out. I had the same thought as you about the home magazines. Helps with different perspectives and lighting options.
Thanks for the advice !

pic375 Loc: Rosehill TX.

When you say "architectural lens" are you meaning a tilt shift lens or some other type?

byjoe Loc: Stillwater, OK

I have a Tokina 11-14mm lens to shoot for one of the top Remax realtors in the Dallas area. We have been quite pleased with its performance.

ecurb1105

Tokina 11-16 f2.8 , I used this lens on my D90 to shoot architectural interiors before I went full frame.
The most important trick to using this lens, IMHO, is tripod and level your camera to minimize WA distortion.

Dan Mc Loc: NM

mackphotos Loc: Washington, DC

Also check out Photography for Real Estate Flickr page for inspiration
https://www.flickr.com/groups/44315269@N00

DWU2 Loc: Phoenix Arizona area

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

What do you have now?

Most people who shoot with ultra wide lenses don't really understand them. When they aim the camera up or down they get divergent or convergent verticals and mistakenly refer to this a "wide angle distortion." This is not distortion, it is keystoning, and it is not limited to just wide angles.

There are three basic types of wide angle distortion - one is barrel or complex distortion, and this is easily corrected with a good lens profile in post processing. The second is volume anamorphosis, where things along the right and left edges, as well as the corners become horribly misshapen. A round plate on a table takes on the shape of an egg, and so on. To a small degree this can be dealt with in post processing, but only if it is modest in nature.

The third type is called extension distortion (the opposite of compression when you shoot with a long lens). It severely distorts the perception of depth, making a room that is 16 or 20 ft deep look like a coliseum. Things in the foreground are unnaturally and unexpectedly huge, and things in the background look like they are in the neighboring state. There is nothing that can be done about this.

For architectural use, the third type is completely verboten. However misleading it is - realtors are ok with that level of misrepresentation. But not with the high end, million dollar pluse properties.

That being said, if you want to set your work apart from the maddening crowd, who are all using ultrawides, learn how to use a longer focal length lens and a pano head. Your work will distinguish itself as the work of a pro, and it will look better than everyone else's.

Don't get me wrong - you still need the ultra-wide for close quarters and tight shots. But don't underestimate the value of what you have and how to better utilize is. You probably have a lens that can go to 18 mm. This will do you for the lion's share of your work. If you need a wider field of view, set it on your tripod in portrait orientation and shoot multiple, overlapping (around 50% overlap) shots, then use Lightroom or Photoshop to stitch them together. The amount of effort it takes to do a pano in the field and stitch it in post processing is measured in minutes. These are pretty easy to do.

Worth checking out before you go out and spend $$$ unless you just want an excuse to get a new lens.

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

The best Canon gear for this purpose are the TS-E 17mm f/4L, 24mm f/3.5L II and 45mm f/2.8 lenses... on a full frame camera such as a 5DS or 5D Mark IV. The EF 11-24mm f/4L, EF 14mm f/2.8L II and EF 16-35mm f/2.8 III or EF 16-35mm f/4L IS lenses are all good choices, too... on full frame. Schneider makes several Tilt-Shift lenses too.

But all those are way, way, WAY over your budget. Plus the Tilt Shift lenses are manual focus only and there's a bit of learning curve with them, to use the movements to best effect.

For use on your 80D, I'd recommend Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-5.6 USM (around $600) as one of your best options. It's well corrected and quite sharp across the entire image. It's been around for a while, so you can find lots of detailed reviews of it online. It's one of the best ultrawide zooms from anyone. The newer "budget" EF-S 10-18mm f/4.5-5.6 IS STM only costs about $300 and still manages excellent image quality, so is certainly a viable alternative. Plus it's one of the lightest and most compact UWA zooms and even has image stabilization... but is a bit plasticky build.

There are also some third party options. IMO the two Tokina ultrawide zooms are among the best: AT-X Pro 11-20mm f/2.8 DX $564 (after mail-in rebate) and AT-X Pro 12-28mm f/4 DX $350 (after mail-in rebate). I've not used these current models, but have used their predecessors and found them to be very well built ("L-like"), with quite high image quality and very good performance (the older 11-16mm f/2.8 had a very narrow range of focal lengths and was quite prone to flare... but the newer 11-20mm f/2.8 seems to solve these issues pretty well). A couple relatively minor things... all Tokina use a rather unusual "focus clutch" mechanism to switch between AF and manual focus, which doesn't allow for full time manual override the way the Canon USM and STM lenses do. Also, Tokina lens focus and zoom rings function the same way Nikon lenses do, which is the opposite of Canon. I find both these things to be very minor, though. I hardly notice the differences, when working with the lenses.

Samyang/Rokinon 14mm is an ultrawide lens on a full frame camera, but not terribly wide on an APS-C 80D. There's a very noticeable difference between 10mm and 14mm! One or two or four millimeters is negligible when comparing telephotos, but quite noticeable and significant among ultrawides such as these. The Samyang/Rokinon also has a lot of copy variation and some rather complex distortion that can be problematic for architectural shot. There are lens profiles available to correct it's "mustache" distortion, but that requires appropriate post-processing software (such as Lightroom) and additional work.

You are going to need to use some tricks and techniques to get good, usable interior shots. Here are some suggestions:

- First, try to use the least wide focal length you can. The wider you go, the more perspective distortion that will occur. Particularly, close objects and things near the edges of the image will look strongly distorted and "stretched" (anamorphic distortion). While an ultrawide lens can make rooms look larger than they actually are, you have to be careful not to overdo it. See Gene's suggestion above, too... about using a less wide lens and a panoramic head on a tripod, making multiple exposure and stitching them together. This is a good technique, too... might be the best choice for some purposes (discuss with the client how they will be using the images and try to figure out how much, if any, exaggeration will be tolerable).

- Also, I'd strongly recommend using a good, reliable, steady tripod. That will allow you to keep ISO reasonably low for best image quality, and use longer exposures to compensate, while also stopping the lens down to around f/8 for great depth of field (f/11 at most.... any smaller than that and an effect called "diffraction" will start to soften fine details and reduce resolution).

- Set up the camera about eye-level.... not down low or up high. Also check that the camera is perfectly level and don't tilt the camera up or down (might want to get one of those bubble levels that fit into the camera's hot shoe... or use the electronic level built into the camera). All this is to minimize perspective exaggerations as much as possible. Tilting the camera or shooting from high or low angles increases "keystoning" effect, where buildings appear to be tipping over one way or another. The same can occur inside, shooting interiors.

- Shoot RAW (or, if you wish, RAW + JPEG). RAW give you much more flexibility to make adjustments in post-processing and to work the image in 16 bit mode.

- Turn on most or all the room lights and set a Custom White Balance... take a shot with exposure settings to capture the interior. Assuming there are windows, anything outdoors will be overexposed. So, next... without moving the camera at all... switch to an outdoor color balance (sunny, cloudy, whatever is appropriate) and take a second shot using settings to get proper exposure of the scene through the window (interior will almost certainly be seriously underexposed). Later in post-processing you can combine the correctly exposed portions of each of these images into a single image. Done carefully, this looks natural and is way, way easier than trying to light the interior to match the outdoor light levels and color of light and capture it all in a single image (which is what we had to do when shooting film... so sometimes spent hours setting up lighting equipment and switching out all the interior light bulbs with special, daylight balanced... just to take one or two quick shots).

- Even using a tripod, to prevent camera shake and get the sharpest shots possible, you might want to use mirror lockup (Live View does the same thing). Also, so you don't have to touch the camera and possibly cause movement, use a remote shutter release (which can be wired or wireless... doesn't matter)... Or, alternatively, to work without a remote release, set the camera's self-time for a short delay.

- Depending upon what software you use for post-processing, there may be some perspective corrections possible. Just be careful... doing too much of that or not doing it correctly can cause problems. And often the image quality is significantly reduced because fairly heavy cropping is usually necessary, after doing perspective corrections with software (which is one of the reasons that perspective correcting, tilt shift lenses are so valuable for architectural photography).

- Before each shot, take a few moments to very carefully "police" the room... looking for things that are out of place or can be arranged better or simply be removed temporarily to remove the object. Watch out for accidental "self portraits", too!

- You might need flash... but I'd recommend trying to work without it first. Flash adds a whole new set of possible problems ranging from reflective surfaces to uneven effects and other limitations or issues. Ideally, you'd use multiple flashes to most evenly illuminate larger spaces, in particular. Most certainly, the camera's built in flash won't do. It's way to wimpy and located in the worst possible place. Someone will tell you to simply bounce your flash, but that presents even more possible problems.... including slowing you down because a bounced flash will need to fire more fully and so will recycle more slowly. Plus, it's anyone's guess what sort of bounce surface you'll have to work with... a colored ceiling or wall can add ugly tints to images. Plus, flash is typically 5000K or higher and interior lighting is usually closer to 3200K... and unmatched types of lighting can cause all sorts of problems in images (gel filters over flashes or special bulbs in fixtures are necessary). Finally, it can require a whole lot of lighting gear to properly light an interior and really balance it well... a friend of mine who is one of the top architectural photographers has a van load of lighting gear and often uses a dozen or more items to light an interior, in addition to the existing lighting. Actually, with digital it's often easier and even better to simply work with ambient light and, if necessary, multiple exposures as described above. I've actually more often used flash outdoors, to open up shadows when I had no choice but to shoot at the "wrong" time of day.

Hope this helps!