Going wide

What are folks doing for wide angle with digital SLR's? With my film cameras I had a couple of options - either a 24mm FA* or a cheap 18-35mm AF zoom. My DS came with the 18-55mm kit lens, so I'm well covered from 28mm up, but I still need something wider as I found I used the wide end of my 18-35 zoom quite a lot when shooting film.

Personally, I shall be buying the DA 12-24 zoom after Christmas, but the DA 14 prime is also available, and is a stop faster.

As you already have an 18-35, the 16-45 won't offer much advantage in AOV, though it is widely considered to be the best lens Pentax has produced recently.

Secondhand, there is the huge and heavy K or A 15 f3.5.

Sigma and Tamron both make 14mm lenses in Pentax mount, and Sigma makes a 15mm and a slow 12-24 zoom.

A good site to see what is available is B&H:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com

AFAIK, the cheapest place to get the 12-24 if you are in Europe is:

http://www.technikdirekt.de/

George

For the sake of completeness - Sigma now make their 10-20 lens in a Pentax mount. Warehouse Express have them on their site. I'm tempted as it is half the price of the 12-24 and 2mm wider.

Half the price is fair enough, but it might not be 2mm wider....

Any zoom lens is quoted as an approximation, and if for example the Sigma was actually a 10.8-20.8mm and the Pentax was a 11.5mm-23.5mm then the difference would be quite small. I'm not saying that's what they are, but they could be...

So it might be an idea to try them on your camera at some point and see what you think, and then you would also be able to judge the ergonomics of the designs and the build quality.

I've seen a review of the Sigma lens where it seemed to compare favourably to a considerably more expensive Canon wide angle zoom.

10-20(ish) sounds ideal.

Has anyone on here actually used the Sigma 10-20, or for that matter the pentax 12-24 yet?

Hi Steve,
Another member of the forum recently bought one of these https://www.pentaxuser.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2050 Hopefully he will post some comments soon.

Kim

Only in Canon mount. A friend of mine has it, and I've seen some very good results indeed. I am going to try and get a better look at it myself Perhaps at a £300-ish price differential I can put up with a non-Pentax
Matt

The Pentax 12-24 does sound nice but if the Sigma lives up to the reviews its been getting then it'll be good enough for me.

I use a Sigma 12-24 EX DG f4.5/5.6, so its 35mm equivalent is 18-36 on my *ist DS, and I'm very happy with it. On the MZ-10 it's 122 degree field of view is outstanding. You can only use rear gelatine filters, which isn't a problem as most of my filters are put on electronically afterwars these days.

I'm pretty much decided that my digital kit will be the Pentax 12-24mm coupled with my existing Pentax 24-90mm.

That does seem to offer a large focal length range of excellent quality.

For low light shooting I will also add the 50mm f1.7 to the bag.

I posted a couple of shots from the 12-24 here in case anyone wants to look. It's a superb lens, it gets me back into the wild wide world of wide angle.

I've finally made up my mind on this and sold my Tokina ATX-Pro 20-35mm F2.8 and ordered one of the Sigma 10-20mm lenses to replace it.

I've been trying to decide whether to get that or the 16-45mm Pentax lens first, but I decided that I was missing the ultra-wide angles more so the Pentax will be my next purchase.

what did you pay for the 10-20?
I am looking for something to complement my 18-55 at the low end as well.
The 16-45 is a tad to expensive for my taste, so that will have to wait.
The funny thing is that Pentax Benelux (for the netherlands) do not have the 10-20 on their website.

The Sigma was about £330 and it's listed on both the Cameraworld and Warehouse Express websites (I went with the latter).