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A friend of mine needs a lens for hotel room photography. He needs something wide, but with very little distortion. I recommended the Canon 10-22, but I wanted to double check with all of you.
Which lens would you get?
canon 10-22
sigma 10-20
tokina's?
also keep in mind he will most likely be using a crop body. Can't afford the FF cameras.
Thanks
I think this one really comes down to what you want to spend. I have the Canon 10-22 and I love it. That lens produces some amazing shots. Even without it having IS I've taken some really amazing shots at 1.5 and 2 second exposures (semi-hand held... i.e. no tri or mono pod, but good arm bracing).
I've been really impressed by the Canon 10-22. I highly recommend it.
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Originally Posted by Cozen
Another option is stitching ("pano"): take multiple frames with any old lens, then stitch them with automatic stitching software. Usually more work, though.
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Originally Posted by Daniel Browning
Unless you know exactly what you're doing, I wouldn't suggest stitching. I've put a toe in the water, and thought the initial results looked great--until I started really looking at the image and finding out that things that were supposed to connect simply didn't. There's alot of odd things that can happen when stitching, and I think a short working distance increases the distortion issues (where things don't line up) significantly. If your friend decides to stitch panoramic views of the rooms, make sure he researches, practices, and then pays close attention to the final images.
I am able to do stitching decently, and that's with some photoshop training. He has no photoshop training and will have to learn. I think I'm going to avoid suggesting stitching to him for now.
Is the 10-22 worth paying double a Tokina? What are it's advantages over it?
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Originally Posted by Cozen
I originally ordered the Sigma 10-20 (the older version 4-5.6) but I got a horrible copy image-quality-wise. I returned it and got the Canon and I've been happy ever since.
Several folks like the wide Sigmas and Sigma does have a nice new constant 3.5 version. You just have to make sure you get a good copy, given that their quality of service seems to suck big time. I also have to admit that the Sigma did feel a bit more solid than the Canon, especially the zoom and focus rings.
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Originally Posted by [b
I agree with Sean here. Stitching is hit and miss. Sometimes it works nicely, sometimes it doesn't. I recently got a series of shots in Santorini, when rolling clouds were moving over the volcano. Stitching them turned out a disaster given that the clouds were moving fast and the edges between shots were sufficiently different and created obvious stitching lines...
Tony
Hello Cozen,
We have been using a Sigma 10-20mm 1:4-5:6 DC HSM for nearly 3 years now and have had no issues to date. The optical quality is superb for our purposes. We have used this lens for in & outdoor architectural work shooting Hotels, Taverns, Government buildings, Homes and some landscape.
A word of caution though, when using a flash, either take off the hood or use an off camera flash system. I took extensive cave shots with this lens and had the hood on (wanted to utilize the hood as protetion from dripping water on the front of the lens) OOPPPS, bad idea. Good thing they were personal images and not for a client.
Hope this sheds some insight on the choice....
Be safe and happy shooting...
I have a mint condition sigma 4-5.6 that I will not be using anymore. It is in PERFECT PERFECT PERFECTshape with original box, lens hood, Tiffen UV filter and padded lens case. I have a 5D Mark II now and a 16-35mm II lens so it will probably never see the light of day again. Bought it new from amazon. I'll sell it with shipping within the US for 320.00 if interested. Email bthornhill@freelanceshots.com
One of the people that shoots with a 30D at the newspaper where I worked got the 10-22mm canon lens where I compared the two side by side for feel and image quality. Image quality was almost identical where I thought the sigma had a very slight advantage for my taste. As far as feel and what I can only refer to as build quality the sigma wins hands down. I know the canon is made well but it has a real plastic feel and the zoom and focus ring feel really loose and not what you would expect for it price. Also as I can remember you will also need to buy the lens hood and that cost 40-50 bucks. The sigma feels more like an L series lens when zooming and focusing where this was the biggest selling point for me alone. When it came to buying either of these lenses it came down to the end number where I paid 470 instead of the 700 plus for the canon.
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Originally Posted by freelanceshots
I have considered this sigma lens, and have heard some good things about it, but I also hear you can get a good copy and a really bad copy. Do you have any pictures you can post that you took with this lens? Thanks.
I've got hundreds and hundreds as I used this lens all the time. I've got one 500 gig hard drives and two 250 gig hard drives where I will have to find a few of the specific images where I will post them on my site and provide you the direct links. Just give me a little bit of time and I post them here. Thanks for your interest!
-Bryan
Here are some quick sample images shot with my Sigma 10-20mm lens. These where shot handheld in a dark interior designer show house where they came out pretty good for shutter speeds of 1/15 and 1/30 of a second. The web adress where you can see them is: http://www.freelanceshots.com/Sigma_lens.html
-Bryan
I tried the 2 together. The Sigma didn't actually go down to 10mm. The Canon beats it every time but then again its quite a bit in front on cash as well. I use mine for 360 degree pans with a pano-maxx head. Its not often I get a bad stitch. One review described it a L series without the label.
I used the Canon 10-22 for my latest self-portrait. I tried to make it look like a movie advertisement. Image was cropped to a 2.39:1 ratio to mimic an anamorphic widescreen movie frame.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2472/...98b09d6c47.jpg
Sean, the word which comes to my mind is: brilliant!
Definitely looks like a movie and I'm definitely going to this movie! [:D]
That's one sweet shot Sean. Did you use strobes outside your windows?
I'd love to get my hands on a canon 10-22, but as it is, I can't justify spending double the cost. I'm picking up the Sigma 10-20 from freelanceshots as mentioned earlier in this thread. I hope it performs almost as well as the Canon.
Yes, I used strobes outside every window. That image is actually done from two exposures. I set up a strobe outside the three windows in the living room, reviewed the results on the LCD, liked the results, then packed everything up before looking at them on my netbook. I loved the shot, however, the kitchen area through the doorway was completely dark and somewhat distracting. It just looked like a hole in the image. So, I tried to set up my tripod and camera in the same exact place, and I set up an additional strobe firing through the window in the kitchen. It was a huge coincidence, but I ended up setting up the camera in the same exact place and didn't have to move it at all. I thought it was going to take me 20 minutes to adjust everything to make it just right, but I didn't--it just fell right into place. In the end, I just laid the final strobed shot on top of the original shot and used a "Lighten" blend mode.
I absolutely love my Canon 10-22mm. Its a little more costly but, I don't think I've seen a bad pic from it yet. Except when the wife tried to use it and didn't know it was in manual focus hehehe !!![img]/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Components.UserFiles/00.00.00.33.12/IMG_5F00_6185-_2800_2_2900_-800-pix.jpg[/img]
I think that you'll find there's a major difference in distortion, which would strongly affect architectural shots. The Canon is much better than the older Sigma--don't know about the new f/3.5 Sigma lens. The ultimate would be a tilt-shift lens, but they are fixed focal length and quite expensive.
Pano shots (put the camera in portrait mode) can be good, but they often don't look realistic to viewers. Normally, our brains compensate for perspective, but, like the "big-nose" shots of people taken too close, a flat image doesn't have the depth or angular clues that let our brains warp the image into what looks "natural." Pano shots of interiors (as opposed to wide-open landscapes) often look curved to people--and I'm not talking about barrel distortion. Talk to an artist. She can tell you that she will actually alter the perspective of a painting so that it looks "natural."
Having JUST gotten a 10-22 (last friday) and spending most of the weekend shooting, I can say I LOVE this lens! Unfortunately, I can't say that about the photographer's ability to compose a shot! [:$] This lens is great, but, it's showing me just how bad a photographer I am! [:)] Can't say about the Sigma (last sigma I used was for an A1! Worked quite well, but.... a LOOONG time ago!).
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Originally Posted by ntwkgestapo
Ultra wide angle does that to all of us. With a telephoto lens it's very easy to get powerful subjects that fill the frame, good light, pleasing background elements, etc. Doing all that with a 10mm is much more difficult: few compositions can fill the frame with one subject, and composing to hold someone's interest over such a large amount of real space can be much more difficult. Getting the right light and pleasing background elements are more difficult as well. (You can't just turn the background into a diffuse blur: it has to actually have something interesting and contribute to the image.) It's very hard, IMHO.
Daniel is very astute. Not only is it difficult to get a pleasing background, but outdoor super wide angle (SWA) shots can end up with a lot of foreground and sky. Sometimes, that's just the point, as with ghosthex's very nice photo above. (It often helps to be above the subject and point the camera down.) Sometime, though, it can be a real pain.
Below is an example of "wide-open spaces." It's not very interesting, to say the least. (Unless otherwise noted, these were all taken with a Canon 30D & Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 lens at 10mm, equivalent to 16mm for full-frame.)
http://homepage.mac.com/gslusher/.Pi...panse_10mm.jpg
It's pretty terrible. I took it just to see the result. It was the first time I'd been in a field that flat and expansive with that lens.
If you shoot buildings, you may get what some call the "parking lot" effect:
http://homepage.mac.com/gslusher/.Pi...house_10mm.jpg
There's more sky and parking lot than building. You could crop the picture, of course, especially for a web page. (Sometimes, it's better to use a longer lens--e.g., 50mm--and take several shots and stitch them together. That has its own problems, however, including parallax.)
Here's another wide shot, but it's a lead-in to the major point I want to make.
http://homepage.mac.com/gslusher/.Pi...field_10mm.jpg
Now, suppose that you got down (literally, in this case, on my belly) and, instead of showing a wide expanse, moved in close to an interesting subject, like:
http://homepage.mac.com/gslusher/.Pi...weeds_10mm.jpg
That's the patch of Queen Anne's Lace, etc, in the middle of the previous photo. This could be sharper/more in focus, but, even with a short focal length lens, the depth of field isn't enough to get more of the weeds "in focus." I compromised between aperture (f/8) and shutter speed (1/160) @ ISO 100 because the wind was moving the weeds. (Some of the blur is probably from the motion.) I was hand-holding the camera, but had both elbows on the ground, forming a "bipod." I should have upped the ISO and gone for f/16 or so, though that gets close to (or beyond!) the "diffraction-limited aperture," where sharpness starts to degrade. Still, the extra DOF may have been worth it.
My point is to suggest that, instead of--or, better, in addition to--thinking of a SWA lens as being for wide panoramas, think of it as a way to get "up close and personal"--really close. I'm not talking about "macro" photos, where the image is "enlarged"--those use a much longer focal length lens. I'm talking about getting right on top of the subject, with the front of the lens within inches of the subject. The minimum focus distance of the Sigma 10-20mm lens is said to be 9.4". However, that's measured from the sensor plane, not the front of the lens. On my 30D, the sensor plane is shown by a mark between the mode dial and flash housing. The front of the Sigma 10-20mm lens is about 5.5" from the sensor plane, so the minimum focus distance would be about 4" from the front of the lens. That's close! (The minimum focus distance of two of my primes--Canon 24mm f/2.8 & 35mm f/2--are about the same, but they are much shorter lenses, so the subject would be further from the front of the lens. The only lens I have that has a shorter minimum focus distance is the Canon 100mm f/2.8 Macro, at 5.9", which is just about at the front of the lens.)
Being that close to an object gives a different and often interesting perspective than we are used to seeing. (Note that perspective has nothing to do with focal length. It depends only on the relative position of the camera to the subject. The advantage of a short focal length is a wide field of view, so you can put the subject into context.) Objects look rounder from close up than from a "normal" distance, for example, and the foreground tends to stand out more from the background. (Or, conversely, the background seems to recede.) Here are some examples.
http://homepage.mac.com/gslusher/.Pi.../SWA_apple.jpg
The lens was only 5-6" from the nearer apple. The apples were only 6-9" apart.
http://homepage.mac.com/gslusher/.Pi...pples_10mm.jpg
Here, the apples are at nearly the same distance from the lens, but the image still has more feeling of depth than if it were taken with a longer lens. In fact, a bit later, I happened to take photos of the same two apples with a 100mm Macro lens. I found this one in which the apples are about the same relative size, though it's obviously from a different vantage point. Still, you can see the difference in the perspective. One way to do this would be to grab both photos (with my Mac, I click, hold, and drag the image to an open folder window--you can also use right-click, I think) and look at them side-by-side.
http://homepage.mac.com/gslusher/.Pi...ples_100mm.jpg
One last example of the "up close" technique.
http://homepage.mac.com/gslusher/.Pi.../oats_10mm.jpg
Those are oats, seeded by spillage from the stable, birds, horses' manure, etc. The area I was shooting in is a wildlife preserve (Fern Ridge, in Eugene, OR) that adjoins the stable's property. We can go trail riding through part of the reserve, though much of it is off-limits to horses and much of it even to people on foot.
One time that I deliberately used the 10mm setting for wide panoramas was to shoot lightning at night. I couldn't be sure where (or when!) lightning would strike, so I set up my 30D on a sturdy tripod, set it at ISO 100, f/5.6 & 30 seconds exposure. When the shutter closed, I pushed the release again, so I got a series of shots, each 30 seconds long, separated by a few seconds. (I played with the ISO & aperture to ensure that the photo still looked like night and that the lightning didn't blow out so badly that it smeared.) The 10-20mm lens was set to 10mm and focussed at infinity. (After reviewing my photos, I probably could have used 20-30mm, instead, as the storm was more localized than I had guessed.) Here's one result--not very good, but it was an useful experimment.
http://homepage.mac.com/gslusher/.Pi...tning_10mm.jpg
I cropped the image to home in on the lightning strike. (No sharpening applied.)
http://homepage.mac.com/gslusher/.Pi...tning_crop.jpg
Again, not very good, but I learn the most from my errors.
George, You and Daniel are 100% correct! One of the reasons I got this lens was to assist me (i.e. force me..) to look @ the total not just the immediate subject! I've been "playing" around with photography for about 50 years now (got my first camera, a small fixed focal, fixed shutter, fixed aperture camera, don't remember the brand. Used 620 roll film). Really learned the technical aspects of photography when I became one of my high school's newspaper photographers... Did the vast majority of my shooting with a Graflex Speed Graphic (2.25x3.25, had a Graflok back so I could put 120/220 roll film and Polaroid sheet film backs on it). Really taught me how to expose a picture (light meters, we don't need no stinkin' light meters! [;)]). Unfortunately, I've always been more of a photoGRAPHER instead of a PHOTOGrapher (get the details just fine, just not the greatest at composition....)... My wife is a water color artist and she's beating on me to get better at composition. I FULLY understood that the wide angle would make THAT job harder and embrace the challenge!
Got my first Canon 35mm back in '72 (an Ftb) which I used until I got my A-1 in '80 (gave the Ftb to my brother who promptly broke it!). Got the wife an AE-1 later the same year. Used them for many happy years but gradually stopped (film processing, etc). Got into digital about 9 years ago with a FujiFilm FinePix 3800, then a Canon A540, then a Canon S5-IS. THEN, this January, looked @ the 50D and decided to get a 40D (I used to shoot Kodachrome 25 and 64 in everything from the Graflex [well, 64 in the Graflex!] to the A-1. Film grain was important to me..) Not knocking the 50D, seems to be a great camera and I've occasionally had thoughts that I made a mistake, but not really... My only problem is that I've spent almost $4K in the last 7 months and I could spend a LOT more! [:)]... Oh well, it's only $$$
I'm enjoying getting back into photography and intend to get MUCH better! We'll just have to see!
Again, thanks!
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Originally Posted by George Slusher
Exactly!!! Photos taken with an SWA/ UWA lens can take on a brilliant perspective if you get down and dirty. A lot of the time, if I'm using a tripod I'll take the centre column out and spin it around so it's upside down. Obviously that means the camera and hence the photos are also upside down but that's an easy fix. This gets me right down low so the foreground is as much the focal point of the photo as the dramatic background/ skies created from using an UWA lens. Stopping down to f/8.0 @ 10mm will get the whole shot in focus a lot of the time too.