Super Wide Angle Lens suggestions?

[Janie]

I need one for my rebel and it cannot be fisheye, which is all i can seem to find. Everywhere I think i can find one, it turns out to be fisheye!

[92135011]

whoops made a mistake

[Mr Yuck]

how wide angle?

[Janie]

how wide angle?

it's for shooting rooms - as wide as possible for under $400 lol no wonder I can't find any, right?

[jar_e]

I need one for my rebel and it cannot be fisheye, which is all i can seem to find. Everywhere I think i can find one, it turns out to be fisheye!

Janie,

Definately hard to find a wide angle lens but not a fish eye. Are you just looking for a standard wide angle, or something even more than the norm?

[drg]

Canon makes a 14mm wide angle non-fisheye, probably you can get one new for under $2000. Sigma makes a very similar lens 14mm wide angle non-fisheye for under a $1000. These are as wide as I know of that are not fisheye.

The Sigma 8mm fisheye is a wild lens if you ever need that capability. I did some client work that had to with ergonomics not too long back and some usage was made of this kind of 180º FOV.

Just remember, 90º+ lens starts to have strange effects if not aligned with the subject really well.

Have you thought about "stitching" photos together? When I do really wide outdoor photos anymore, I almost always use a "panorama" tool to put them together. Then a good zoom like a 28-70 or whatever 'reachs' the photo for you will work real well.

Another alternative is something that gives a fairly wide field of view and take an overhead shot. A big extension ladder and a light stand with a ball head on it shooting down will sometime capture a great shot.

One other option is to rent a LF field camera and lens. The bellows will alllow the film and the subject to be properly aligned.

One reason I still shoot a lot of film is that my 20mm lenses in 35mm format still give me a usable over 90º FOV with little or no distortion. I've used both a Canon EF 20mm and a Sigma EX 20mm and had excellent results.

Good luck and tell us what you find that works!

[DownByFive]

Tokina just came out with a 12-24mm f/4 for about $500 that has been getting pretty good reviews...

[drg]

I'm a moron. I forgot the new zooms. There's a 10-22mm USM EF from Canon also. With an APS size sensor I think that translates on the low end to 15-16mm 35mm equivalent. I have a catalog or two here that show these around $850 delivered.

Sigma has some new UW zooms but I don't know the prices or much about them other than I want to get my hands on the 30mm 1.4 just for testing.

-CDP

[another view]

For shooting home interiors, the wider the better. I don't know Canon lenses specifically, but the Tokina 12-24 should be a good choice if you can find it - it's pretty new. It looks like a copy of the Nikon that I have used, which is really good. I've also heard good things about Tamron's 14mm prime but that would be around $900.

The problem with super-wide angle lenses (zooms especially) is barrel distortion, which will make straight lines at the edges of the frame look rounded. This is a lot more noticable in architecture than nature photographs. The better the lens, the less the distortion. Photoshop can fix this too, but life will be easier with fewer corrections.

[Dzerzhinski46]

Don't forget too, with very wide lenses, you get chromatic abberation as well. Your colors on the edges of the picture will look a little muted or slurred. Just some pointers.