Lens - decisions decisions (wrong ones)

The perennial problem. So - Have Tamron wide-angle (wonderful portraits and nice macro) but really wanted this wide-angled for landscapes but doesn't work for that (very, very soft and muddy detail in the landscape) Any suggestions from the worldly wise? (have the lovely K5) What Landscape lens do you love?

How far do you want to go?

I find 16mm more than enough but others prefer wider

Increasingly I like using short telephoto lenses (50mm - 100mm) to bring out details in the landscape.

Sometimes the ultra-wide 12-24mm Pentax lens gets used if the foreground and background can be unified in a composition. That is, wide blank areas can be avoided.

Is that the 17-50 or the 17 prime ?

I don't think many landscape photographers use UWA lenses because of the distortion. On FF many would use 24 or 28mm (16-19mm on APS-C) and historically I think 15 was generally the maximum UWA lens (10mm on APS-C), but because the quality of UWA was not great again not used for landscapes.

A lot depends on the quality of the lens you want to use, many of the excellent zooms cover the typical landscape lens length (ca. 17-28mm) nicely, and how you want to use it (stitching may give you higher quality and lower distortion). Although some distortion can be corrected in PP you will lose the borders.

Options aside from the aforementioned would be the Pentax 14mm or the 15mm Ltd and the range of Sigmas from 20 to 30 (look out for soft corners and distortion on some). Otherwise personally I have just acquired a superb Contax Zeiss 28/2.8, which used will cost you less than either of the Pentaxes, and I intend to use this for landscapes and stitch where required.

The lack of AF in a lens shouldn't be an issue at all for you, shooting landscapes (e.g. using hyperfocal techniques you can have from ca. 5m to infinity in focus), and accepting MF will give you a wide selection of superb older glass to choose from.

I have the DA12-24 and its an excellent lens but only occasionally use it for landscapes although it was terrific for architecture shots on a recent holiday. By far my preferred lens is the DA17-70, nice colour/contrast and sharp. For some reason UWA lenses are often commented on as being the "must have" landscape lenses but at least from my experience it doesn't seem to be the case, I see them as a nice addition to a "standard" range zoom or perhaps a prime somewhere around 21mm

Simon

I had the Sigma 10-20, but I sold it as it didn't work for me with landscapes. Even with foreground detail they ended up looking oddly squashed rather than wide.

I am very happy with the 17-70 - wide enough to give a good wide view but able to zoom in on some detail in the landscape too. If I want a wider view I make a panorama of two or more shots now.

I use the Sigma 10-20 quite a lot for landscapes. If the distortion bothers you it can easily be corrected.

I have the Sigma 10-20 but I am coming around to the idea of two shots stitched together to achieve a wide vista using a standard lens. I am in the process of learning photoshop and wonder if others have had success using this method.

Technically it maybe quite challenging (I intend to write down a step by step plan to get the images correct when I am taking them).

I read a book called "Joe Cornish- A photographer at work" over the weekend and felt quite inspired by it.

It wasn't the distortion which bothered me - it was the proportions.

You get too wide a view for the proportions of photo so instead of the desired expansive view you get a squashed looking one instead. Hence the choice for panoramas now for that expansive view.

Thanks guys. Excited about this – excellent read.

To sum up - Don’t need extra wide. Also like the idea of stitching together from my good 50-100 Pentax zoom. Have tried stitching together in Photoshop on a street view and it worked very well. No reason for it not to work on landscapes - although speed needed if clouds moving fast I guess.

Interesting to read quality issue on wide angled. Great tip re using MF on infinity. Like sound of the DA17-70, but will use my zoom and stitch until have funds to buy another lens.

Wow! That really resolved the issue. Thanks again guys.

I find my DA12-24 indispensable for landscapes. I supplement it with a K35mm and M50mm which slip easily in the bag and I find it a very versatile combination.

Stitching is a good option for motionless subjects, but wouldn't work where there is a fair degree of motion in the landscape, water, clouds, vegetation, people, etc. I also particularly like long exposures.

I also find 12-24 covers a very wide range and I wouldn't want to be constantly swapping a 14 and 21 at the seafront for instance.

I think it is much easier to use a dedicated stitching tool to create multiple image compositions. There are some good free ones around.

Microsoft ICE is a very good starting point. It is almost completely automatic and does not need accurately aligned images or even the same exposure settings. It works fine most of the time even getting good results with hand-held shots but, typical Microsoft, when it does not work there is very little you can do to fix it.

Hugin is another free utility that I have tried. It does have an auto mode that works well but also will allow you to tinker with all the settings which is great for a nuts & bolts engineer like me . It therefore can be more complicated than ICE but does have good documentation and tutorials.

Both these tools just expect your images to have a reasonable amount of overlap.

I hope this is useful.

Glyn

I think if stitching is a possibility a prime becomes even more useful, the low distortion most of them exhibit is ideal - I always carry an FA35mm with me although to be honest have rarely used it, one day though I'm sure!!

Simon

I think it depends exactly the type of landscape you want to take - and no lens will be the best on EVERY occasion - sometimes you'll want a wider angle, sometimes you'll want a zoom to isolate some of the view.

Recently, I acquired the sigma 8-16mm which I'm still experimenting with - but in the right setting it's great - especially for including dramatic skies or for taking shots where you couldn't otherwise include everything you want in the scene. If you take a look at my Flickr page, the last three landscape shots were all taken with the lens at 8mm or there abouts.

You didn't actually say what 'wide angle' you already have?

I haven't had my Sigma 8-16mm for long but I can see myself using it for landscapes at the 'long' end. At 16mm it has far less distortion than my Tamron 17-50 (or indeed almost any 16/17-50mm zoom) at 17mm.