Prices on camera lenses are scary. $199.99 to $6,999.99. I'm no pro photographer, but notice a LOT of people here seem pretty knowledgeable about photography. So, I ask, if your budget were $500 or less (and I'd like it to be less), what would you buy to take wide angle photos with a T3i camera? Was at the recent 200th anniversary of the SAILABRATION in Baltimore, and tried taking photos of some of the tall ships with the new camera, and was disappointed that I was either too far away or too close. I felt that I had a better photo with my old Canon PowerShot SD780 IS Digital Elph and even my older Kodak DC-290.

The T3i came with the following lenses:

Canon EF-S 18-55mm lens
Canon EF-S 55mm-250mm lens
Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 III lens
Canon 75-300mm f/4-5.6 III Zoom lens

I also received a Canon Speedlite 430EX II Flash and a Canon BG-E8 Battery Grip. I had a helluva a time trying to lug it all around on Father's Day weekend. I never seemed to have the right lens for the right photo that I wanted to take. So, I found myself stopping opening up my backpack and carefully taking the one lens off, covering it up with a cap and then pulling out a new lens, taking the cap off and screwing it on the T3i. This totally killed spontaneous moment picture taking. When I did get a picture taken, it was the clearest and sharpest I have ever taken before in my life, but I feel I miss a lot of photos just trying to set-up. The speed of the T3i is impressive. I was able to take lots of photos of the Navy Blue Angels flying across the sky, and the photos were taken so quick, that it could look like a video when you scroll through the images one at a time. Sort of like a flip-book. That was impressive. Wide shots were less impressive (hence my asking for what I should be looking to buy next). A sweeping panorama of the Baltimore Inner Harbor with the tall ships from various nations was a photo that I was never able to get. :-(

A tokina 12-24mm f/4 is the best bang for the buck. I have seen used ones for $300-500.

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Please "Like" the Meiwah restaurant page because you love the place or you pity me [www.facebook.com]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/27/2012 01:13AM by pRICE cUBE.

pRICE cUBE,

Thanks. Appreciate the reply.

I have the Tokina 11-16 and love it. It's a bit out of your price range, but maybe you could find a good used one?

DharmaDog,

Thank you. Do you have any experience with the Rokinon 14mm F2.8 Ultra Wide Angle Lens? Is there an affordable wide angle lens that is automatic vice manual?

rapayn1,

I don't have any experience or knowledge of the Rokinon products.

I needed an Ultra Wide angle lens about year ago to take indoor shots of my house to put it on the market. I think I paid ~$700 for the Tokina 11-16. I did a bunch or research first and read a lot of reviews of many wide and ultra wide angle lenses (don't recall reading about the Rokinon specifically). I wasn't thrilled with the price I was going to pay, but based on reviews I believed I wouldn't get the results I needed if a bought a lesser lens, and since I was buying this for a significant reason and saving a ton of money marketing my house myself I decided a few hundred dollars more for a noticeably better lens was worth it. And I use it often now. I love it for outdoor/landscape shots. This lens and the Canon 50mm 1.8 are my two favorite lenses right now.

BTW, I ended up getting an offer on my house in 14 days when the average days on market was over 100 in my town. My open house event generated the offer, but the pictures are largely responsible for getting over 120 people to my open house. I'm happy that I bought that lens.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/27/2012 08:57AM by DharmaDog.

DharmaDog,

WOW!! Cool story. Thanks for sharing. Congratulations on selling your house so quickly. I'll definitely look into the Tokina. Appreciate the tip. Is your camera also a T3i Rebel?

IME you generally don't need a faster lens on a wide unless you're shooting events at night (weddings, for example.) So pRICE's recommendation of a 12-24 f/4 is a good one. Opens wide enough for lower light shooting when you need it, at f/4, and the t3i also has decent noise handling so you're able to crank up that ISO a little higher than normal without too much image degradation.

Also some unsolicited advice. I think your description of lugging around lenses and taking time to swap them, is something most people go through initially. Did you actually bring all four lenses? That's your first mistake. If you know enough ahead of time of the types of shots you'll be requiring, you can generally get by with 2 lenses in any given situation. 3 if you want the absolute most coverage.

So my approach would be something like this. For the Sailibration, you're going to want wide. So bring your widest lens, in this case your 18-55. But you also brought two telephoto lenses that have a large focal range overlap; why? I would have only taken one. Given the choice, I would have opted for the 55-250 as you're only giving up 50mm of reach, but you gain IS.

Plus you brought your prime - takes great portraits for sure but this was a daytime event, right? You probably don't need the faster aperture here. Leave it at home. If you want a nice portrait of a family member with a blurred out background, mount the 55-250 and step back a couple of steps.

Was the flash really needed? If it's a daytime event, probably not, you're not going to have much opportunity to use it as a fill properly as you're trying to enjoy the event with your family.

Doing a quick google images search of Sailabration, if I had attended that with my family I would have brought my 16-35 and a telephoto. I own a 55-250, but can also borrow a 70-200 from work if it's available. For an event like this I'd have no problem packing the 55-250 as it's MUCH smaller and lighter than the 70-200 and even gives a little more reach. Now that kit sacrifices the range from 35mm to 55mm, but it's not much of a sacrifice if you ask me. I take one step closer at 35, or one step farther back if I'm at 55. No flash. I always have my grip mounted. It's a small, two lens solution.

Not intended to be a critique. Hopefully there's some useful information in there somewhere for you.

DRR,

Awesome!! Certainly not taken as criticism. Very much appreciated advice. If it was not clear, I am a newbie. I bought the Canon PowerShot SD780 and the Kodak DC-290 years ago with my own money. This T3i was a present, a gift for me. Birthday and Father's Day combination. So, I took the whole shebang of lenses, because quite frankly, I did not know which ones were best for what I wanted to do. The whole mm and f stops lingo is still a work in learning process for me. Auto mode has served me well for years and while I always felt I could do better, I wasn't getting beaten up by the people who saw the photos I was taking. I wasn't taking pictures of my thumb or my shoes, or with the cap/cover still on for the whole vacation. I brought the flash because I figured it would be dark (and it was) on some of the ships when we were allowed to go down below the decks. Captain's quarters, etc. That flash stayed in my bag most of the day though since we were outside about 90% of the time. All in all, I still did get some nice photos from the event. It was usually luck more than skill, but when I worked, it worked REALLY well. I even forgot that I could use the camera as a videocamera too. In addition to the camera stuff I lugged around in the 90+ degree weather, I also had my Canon HD HV20 camcorder with a zoom microphone attached on top too. LOL!!!

So, like I said, I am learning. The next event up will be BBQs, picnics and fireworks next week for the 4th of July. Don't know what i will need to take pictures of the fireworks in the dark. Then what lens to take to get a nice wide shot of all of us down by the lake, but still close enough to make out people's faces. Nice to get the lake in the background and see the (hopefully) clear blue sky and trees along the bank. Then get action shots of kids running around playing games without blurring.

I have an old Rebel XT. Would love to upgrade, but now is not the time.

You can also stitch shots together with a panorama app. Fun to play with, as it brings back some of the "excitement" of not knowing your results until you get the prints back from the developer process the panorama at home.

Here's one way:
[hugin.sourceforge.net]

For the biggest image that captures more in the vertical dimension that a wide angle lens would also provide, position the camera vertically. Stand in one spot and keep the pivot point of the lens as stationary as possible--don't swing your body or neck around in a big arc. A tripod or monopod works best. Start at one end of the scene and take successive shot across to the other side. Look for a telephone pole or building side in the frame you can include in the next frame --- the stitching software relies on such markers to know how to stitch a scene together. Hold the camera as level as possible and expect curvature errors. Practice!

Quote
rapayn1
DRR,

Awesome!! Certainly not taken as criticism. Very much appreciated advice. If it was not clear, I am a newbie. I bought the Canon PowerShot SD780 and the Kodak DC-290 years ago with my own money. This T3i was a present, a gift for me. Birthday and Father's Day combination. So, I took the whole shebang of lenses, because quite frankly, I did not know which ones were best for what I wanted to do. The whole mm and f stops lingo is still a work in learning process for me. Auto mode has served me well for years and while I always felt I could do better, I wasn't getting beaten up by the people who saw the photos I was taking. I wasn't taking pictures of my thumb or my shoes, or with the cap/cover still on for the whole vacation. I brought the flash because I figured it would be dark (and it was) on some of the ships when we were allowed to go down below the decks. Captain's quarters, etc. That flash stayed in my bag most of the day though since we were outside about 90% of the time. All in all, I still did get some nice photos from the event. It was usually luck more than skill, but when I worked, it worked REALLY well. I even forgot that I could use the camera as a videocamera too. In addition to the camera stuff I lugged around in the 90+ degree weather, I also had my Canon HD HV20 camcorder with a zoom microphone attached on top too. LOL!!!

So, like I said, I am learning. The next event up will be BBQs, picnics and fireworks next week for the 4th of July. Don't know what i will need to take pictures of the fireworks in the dark. Then what lens to take to get a nice wide shot of all of us down by the lake, but still close enough to make out people's faces. Nice to get the lake in the background and see the (hopefully) clear blue sky and trees along the bank. Then get action shots of kids running around playing games without blurring.

Glad you had fun, even with lugging around all that equipment! I'm certainly no pro either but I went through the stage of lugging all the equipment around. You learn quickly what you need and what you don't.

Don't be afraid to use auto mode either. Just because you have a bunch of bells and whistles doesn't mean you need to use them all. The important thing is to get the shot you want. However a lot of the fun of photography is also playing with the bells and whistles. Experiment!

Also, two other pieces of advice. Unless you're shooting sporting events, shoot RAW. I'll give you an example. I took a shot of my girls in a field of flowers on a bright sunny day this spring. It was hard overhead light and made for an exposure nightmare. Expose for the scene and the faces were obscured by shadow. Expose for the faces and the scene gets blown out (too bright.) So I exposed somewhere in the middle, knowing I had shot RAW.

So when I get back home, having shot RAW, I have the ability to create two different files - one overexposed, one underexposed - from the same digital negative (RAW file). Then in Photoshop I'm able to blend the two so that both faces and scene were more balanced. If I had a flash fill or even a reflector when I was shooting, it would have been better in the first place, but I didn't. Shooting RAW enabled me to save a photo that otherwise would have looked terrible.

One last bit of advice - shoot a lot, but also edit mercilessly. Shooting quantity increases the likelihood you get a good shot. Editing mercilessly improves the quality of your library. You don't need 30 slightly different variations of the same shot.

Have fun!

As DharmaDog mentioned, the Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 is a wide/fast lens. The widest (non-fisheye) lens available for APS-C is the Sigma 8-16mm, but it's much slower at f/4.5-5.6. The Tokina will also accept filters, but the Sigma won't since it has a curved, protruding lens. Both are probably extremely hard to find used for less than $550.