I’m going to be buying either a Nikon or Canon camera (about $1,100 US, warehouse price) and would like a good wide-angle lens–it being the weak link with point-and-shoot digicams in the $300 range.
I’d like to get as much coverage as possible, without too much distortion. Basically, this camera will be used for travel–shooting landmarks, family photos, small historic rooms, hiking, etc. I’ve shot a few small rooms at national landmarks and the 24 mm lens on my non-diogital SLR wasn’t quite enough.
How noticeable is the distortion from a good 16 mm lens? Any recommendations?
Since I cannot answer your question, here is a good resource: www.dpreview.com has specialized forums for different cameras/makers. I’m in the market for a Nikon D50 (just waiting on the money) and the people at the Nikon D50/D70 boards are very knowledgable and helpful. It’s where I go to get all my newbie questions answered. They also have Canon boards etc.
The cameras you mentioned have a 1.6 crop factor. So a 16 mm lens will appear about as wide as a ~26mm lens. So I venture to say that you’d get about the distortion that you would with the standard 28mm wide-angle lens. Which isn’t too bad, but then again, it’s not a superwide either.
Wide angle photography is definitely the Achilles heel of the digital SLR.
However…panoramic photography or “stitching” is one of the strongest points of the digital cameras. For landscape photography and small rooms, it’s totally possible to put the camera on a tripod, pan about the room and stitch the results together. So, you may not want to sweat the superwide end too much.
One great place to check out example pictures is http://www.pbase.com ;click on Camera Database, and then choose your manufacturer (lenses appear waaaay down the list, after the cameras). That should give you a good idea of what a lens is capable of. Sigma, Tokina and Tamron also make compatible lenses for both Canon and Nikon, so check out the wide-angle lenses from them too. http://www.fredmiranda.com/reviews/ is also another terrific resource.
I have the Canon EOS 350D, with the 18-55mm kit lens (28-90mm equivalent) and I notice mild distortion from the wider pictures I take. However, it’s always been my understanding that the wide-angle primes suffer much less distortion than the wide-angle zooms - look at the example pictures of the Canon 15 and 16mm lenses, especially the landscape shots. And there’s always software to “un-fish” a lens; ie correct for the distortion, although that does come at a small price in terms of image quality. As Finagle pointed out, stitching a set of pictures together into a panorama also works very well, and I’ve often used that rather than use the widest setting on my lenses.
You might also want to look into the latest line of Canon “full-frame” cameras, which don’t introduce a crop factor, although these cameras are significantly worse for your wallet than the consumer line. Canon’s EOS 5D and 1Ds Mark IIn are both full-framers.
While the Canon 350D does indeed have a focal length multiplication factor of 1.6, i believe the Nikon D50/D70 has a factor of 1.5, and while this mightn’t seem like much of a difference, it does mean an effective focal length of 24mm vs. 25.6mm for a 16mm lens.
Unless you can afford a Canon EOS5 or EOS1Ds, with a full-sized sensor.
I can dream, i guess.
I heartily endorse this solution.
I don’t have the money right now for a digital SLR, so i’m taking pictures with my Minolta 7Hi, which is generally fine except for its poor focusing ability in low light or low contrast situations.
Anyhow, i recently got myself a copy of Photovista Panorama 3.5, which will make regular flat panoramas, and also 360 degree panoramas, from multiple files.
I’m no expert with it yet, and i’ve discovered that it’s best to leave big overlaps and take lots of pictures, but so far i’ve been very impressed with the results that are possible with very little effort on my part.
If you don’t want to fork out for panoramic software, there is a nice little free program called autostich that can also help you put your photos together into a panorama.
