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Wide angle lens worth it?
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Feb 13, 2021 10:13:49   #
CPR Loc: Nature Coast of Florida
 
My 10-20 rarely comes out BUT when it does it's worth the price. The 18-140 lives on the Nikon but inside for real estate photos or other tight spaces the 10-20 rocks.

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Feb 13, 2021 10:16:05   #
trinhqthuan Loc: gaithersburg
 
Tino wrote:
We are planning a trip to the Rockies starting in late May and am wondering if it would be worth it to add a new wide angle lens. I have a D7100 with a 18-55 lens. I wonder if it is worth purchasing a little bit wider lens. Specifically, Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 AT-X 116 Pro DX Autofocus Lens. Would that lens be that much more beneficial?


Yes, with f/2.8 and you also get wilder 11 mm vs 18 mm. I have a 12-28 f/4 Tokina. SHARP. Read this
https://www.kenrockwell.com/tokina/11-16mm.htm

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Feb 13, 2021 10:21:27   #
davidrb Loc: Half way there on the 45th Parallel
 
Tino wrote:
We are planning a trip to the Rockies starting in late May and am wondering if it would be worth it to add a new wide angle lens. I have a D7100 with a 18-55 lens. I wonder if it is worth purchasing a little bit wider lens. Specifically, Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 AT-X 116 Pro DX Autofocus Lens. Would that lens be that much more beneficial?




Try this. Call one of the reputable lens rental companies and speak with one of their techs. Before you do this, you need to get some information about wide angle lenses. Jon Greengo at creativelive.com has a video to accompany his discussion of these lenses. When you start getting into the lower numbered lenses mm's become much more pronounced. 3-5 mm's can make a huge difference in FOV. Scale becomes very important in W/A photography. Learn as much as you can about W/A lenses, then call the rentors. They probably know more about the subject than most others. GL

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Feb 13, 2021 10:21:29   #
Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States
 
Tino wrote:
Thanks to all who replied. After reading the comments I have decided that it really isn't worth buying a new lens and will stick with what I have.


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Feb 13, 2021 10:37:39   #
DeeRock Loc: Nebraska
 
The Rockies in May? I'd suggest snow boots and a warm coat!

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Feb 13, 2021 10:38:09   #
anotherview Loc: California
 
For landscape photography, a 24-105mm lens suffices. You might consider a 100-400mm lens. You really need no more unless you have specialized activity in mind. I own and use Sigma lenses for my landscape work, with satisfying results.
Tino wrote:
We are planning a trip to the Rockies starting in late May and am wondering if it would be worth it to add a new wide angle lens. I have a D7100 with a 18-55 lens. I wonder if it is worth purchasing a little bit wider lens. Specifically, Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 AT-X 116 Pro DX Autofocus Lens. Would that lens be that much more beneficial?

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Feb 13, 2021 10:41:26   #
jayluber Loc: Phoenix, AZ
 
Depends on what you want to shoot and when.....

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Feb 13, 2021 10:47:58   #
IDguy Loc: Idaho
 
Gene51 wrote:
You may be disappointed down the road. There are aspects that you will see later that are masked by the novelty of a huge angle of view. I would rent and not buy one as others have suggested. Or buy used, so that you won't take such a hit when you sell it later.

There is the "honeymoon factor" that happens after purchase - one can't seem to get enough of the ultra wide point of view. For a bunch of weeks one leaves the lens on the camera and shoots everything with it - exploring a novel and very different perspective. Then the honeymoon is over, almost as quickly as it appears. The ultra wide perspective together with the extension distortion, volume anamorphosis, barrel distortion, CA, flare (in some cases), and on smaller sensor cameras (<full frame), distant details get "mushed" together, so a stand of trees looks fake, as if the leaves were painted with a broad brush. At more or less normal viewing distances one might not notice, but up close it is hard to ignore.

I'm not saying that a 10mm lens on a cropped sensor camera or a 14mm lens on a full frame camera is automatically a bad thing. I've used both. They can lend an interesting point of view where there is sky or interesting foreground elements involved. But to keep verticals vertical, one must keep the camera level. If you tilt the camera up to minimize foreground for a more interesting composition, or to capture more sky, then verticals begin to converge - which is referred to as keystoning.

There are only two solutions to this and both involve loss of pixels and or image width. First one can correct this "keystone" effect by applying adjustments in post processing. Doing so involves expanding the top of an image, which often ends up reducing height and overall horizontal angle of view. The other solution involves keeping the camera level and cropping the top and/or bottom of the image for compositional considerations.

All too often, at least at first, the old adage that when the only tool in the toolbox is a hammer the tendency is to treat everything like a nail. Maslow and other behaviorists describe this cognitive bias as "the law of the instrument" - an "over-reliance on a familiar", or in this case a new, tool. Ultra-wide lenses are actually highly specialized tools, and only appropriate in a handful of situations.

If standing on a roadside viewpoint or a ledge trying to take a picture of a mountain range, the last tool I would reach for would be an ultra-wide lens.

It is commonplace among experienced landscape photographers using digital cameras to go in the opposite direction - to use a longer lens and stitch a panorama. This is a good article that shows how to get that "ultra wide" view without an ultra wide lens. Pretty much every "unique" and sometimes undesirable characteristic of wide and very wide angle lenses is eliminated. It shows that even a tripod is not necessary to do panorama shooting - all that is necessary is to ensure that you have as many images you need to capture the scene, overlapping at least 1/3 of the image next to it. I generally use 1/2.

https://petapixel.com/2016/10/27/stitching-panorama-forget-wide-angle-lens-home/
You may be disappointed down the road. There are a... (show quote)


Nikon cameras include firmware to correct the distortion from wide angle Nikon lenses. I don’t know if it works for other brands. It might if it relies only on lens mm.

I do both stitching in post and using wide angle lens. The former when the wide angle isn’t on the camera. I learned from one of the experts to follow the pano shots with a pic of my hand holding up the number of fingers for number of images. Thus easy to see where to stitch when uploaded to Lightroom. Lightroom and Photoshop seem to equal on stitching.

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Feb 13, 2021 11:04:21   #
StanMac Loc: Tennessee
 
SuperflyTNT wrote:
I agree that an ultra wide angle is best used for close up work where you want to exaggerate the distance between subject and background or for interior work in tight spots. For those big vistas you’ll be seeing I would definitely be stitching shots into panoramas.


👍👍

I bought a Sigma 10-20mm for my K5 specifically to get wider views in street scenes. But I found that using the lens for wider views of landscapes pushes the distant objects even farther out. You lose that perspective you see with your eyes. Using a lens closer to the eye’s FOV and stitching a string of overlapping views together works better for capturing those wide vistas.

Stan

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Feb 13, 2021 11:04:31   #
Josephakraig
 
My father once told me that opinions are like rear ends, everybody has one and most of them stink. So take anything said here with a lump of salt. Anyway, there are people who never use wide angle and people who live by it. Shooting wide angle landscape requires a totally different methodology than using a long lens. I highly recommend you peruse YouTube for wide angle landscape lectures, there is a lot to learn.

Basically a wide angle can do two things. First it can make a small area look huge. Second, it can make something close look far away. It is the second feature that you use in wide angle landscapes. Standing close to a 100 foot tall boulder you will be able to capture the entire boulder and make it look natural and like you are far away from it. Or you can capture something right in front of you with a landscape in the background and fit it all in the frame.

I originally bought a wide angle, a 14mm Sigma prime for realestate photography but saw a friends pictures of Arches National park with his Nikon 14-24 and I was impressed. It works really well once you learn how to use it. People who po, po wide angle for landscapes just don't know how to use it properly, it has it's place. After the Sigma 14 (I shoot with a D850, a full frame) I got a Tamron 15-30, it is now one of my very favorite lenses and I have a lot of lenses.

Someone suggested you rent a lens, make sure what ever you get is not a fisheye, that isn't the same thing and will terribly distort your images although with some work in Photoshop you can likely fix them it's a lot of work. Again as others have said, understand that when you see a wide angle if it isn't made for a crop sensor camera you will have to add your crop factor to it. For Nikon that means multiplying it by 1.5. That means that my very wide 14mm Sigma (115°) would only be an effective 21mm (81°) on your camera, still wide but not ultra wide.

Since 50mm (40°) is considered normal or what we see "normally" with our eyes you can see that a 21mm lens is twice as wide as normal. However on a crop sensor camera it would take about 35mm to get that same 40°. If a lens does not have "DX" in the description (at least for Nikon) then you have to use the 1.5 multiplier. If "DX" is in the description then the multiplier is built in already.

I have attached a picture taken with my Sigma 14mm. It is a picture of a civil war cannon at Perryville battelfield in Kentucky. I was litteraly under the cannon, in the shade of the cannon. It was at the top of a hill so the horizion really is curved although the sky is not, but notice the landscape behind the subject. I was close enough to the subject to reach up and touch it.



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Feb 13, 2021 11:07:21   #
home brewer Loc: Fort Wayne, Indiana
 
I got a 10-24 dx nikor lens to use in addition to the 18-300 on my d500. The field of view is 109 degrees at 10 mm. The cost is $900. The 18 mm has a 79 degree max FOV
I did not use it as much as I expected while city hiking. I found I was swapping lens often. I suggest you look at post of the d7200 and the 10 mm lens to determine if you like it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmnbMX_ra00

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Feb 13, 2021 11:16:33   #
gvarner Loc: Central Oregon Coast
 
I used my D7000 with a Sigma 10-20 exclusively on our trip to the Canadian Rockies. Very happy with the compositions. Also used it exclusively in the Utah parks.

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Feb 13, 2021 11:23:33   #
ronpier Loc: Poland Ohio
 
larryepage wrote:
These discussions are always interesting. What's also interesting, though, is to do a quick search of the literally hundreds if not thousands of barely used ultrawide lenses. Tons of folks think they need one until they get it and find out that they really don't.

I have a 14-24mm f/2.8 zoom that I bought three years ago for night sky photography. I still use it for that and have also learned a couple of other things to do with it, but not landscapes. Things just get too small and too far away to be interesting, even when used with a D850, which has a lot of capability to resolve small details.

The suggestion above to rent an ultrawide first is a good one. If doing that just doesn't work for you, I'd suggest buying something economical like the Nikkor 10-20mm DX. It's not particularly fast, but it is a pretty neat $300 or so lens that will let you investigate what you want to do with it and make a more permanent choice later. If you don't end up using it, you aren't out a ton of cash.

Ultrawide photography is more than just sticking a short focal length lens on your camera. The difference between 18mm and 10mm on your camera is very significant. It introduces a whole array of challenges that you will need to learn to solve in order to get good results. It can be fun, but it's also quite a bit of work.

Have fun deciding, though. And let us know what you decide.
These discussions are always interesting. What's ... (show quote)


Very good points Larry. I decided instead of going ultra wide that the Tamron 17-50 f2.8 would better suit me. F2.8 constant aperture from 17 to 50. I can pretty much go all day without changing the lens.

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Feb 13, 2021 11:28:10   #
sennamonster Loc: fort wayne, IN
 
I disagree. A wide angle lens is one of the most important lens in my kit. Mountains, water falls, group shots ect. are best done with a wide angle.( at least in my opinion. You know what they say about opinions, so take it for what its worth)

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Feb 13, 2021 11:35:17   #
A. T.
 
Tino wrote:
We are planning a trip to the Rockies starting in late May and am wondering if it would be worth it to add a new wide angle lens. I have a D7100 with a 18-55 lens. I wonder if it is worth purchasing a little bit wider lens. Specifically, Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 AT-X 116 Pro DX Autofocus Lens. Would that lens be that much more beneficial?


Absolutely not, save your money; you have a wide angle zoom already. You will not gain anything noticeably different from what you already have.

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