Room Interiors

Afteoon all,

I would like an ultra wide angle lens for my K20D to take photos of the kitchens and joinery I make once installed. I dont have a fixed budget in mind, just the most suitable lens is required for the job.
Thoughts so far are:
Pentax 12-24
Sigma 10-20
Tamron 10-2?
or hold out for the Sigma 8-16

What do you recomend?

Over to you

Matt

the 12-24 is the only one I would suggest to be honest, the sigma has quite some distortions and it's also a strange kind of distortion on the wide end and it would take some time in PP to correct those.
Don't know about the Tamron 10-24 but since it has a wider range I don't think it would fair better than the Sigma.
Another option would be the DA14mm.

With respect Stefan have you actually used the Sigma?

Yes the sigma 10-20 and the Pentax 12-24 spending the whole midday deciding which one was best for interior shots.
My father has his own business and asked me to take some photos indoors and needed a wide angle lens, I said I would do it if he would buy the lens for me, he only hooked off when he heard the price

So yes I've done a side by side comparison and PP, you could clearly see the differences with the product racks (?).
The Pentax one had less distortion and the distortions it had was easier to correct.
The problem with the sigma was that the corner had more distortion then the rest so either you could crop it, live with a not uniform photo or do it in photoshop with the warptool but that takes a lot of time.

What I said about the DA14 was by looking at the photzone site and we all know that primes has less distortions most of the time.

I initially bought my DA12-24 specifically for interior shots and couldn't be happier. I've never used the Sigma but I spent a lot of time looking at images from both before stumping up my money and decided in the end that the Pentax lens was worth the extra cash. Not once regretted my decision.

The Tamron wasn't available at that time so I haven't looked at it as closely, but I'd be suprised if it did a better job than the Pentax. I'm happy to be proved wrong though...

Anvh, using this ocassion, I guess you were testing "old" sigma 10-20, did you have chance to compare how it performes side by side with "new" sigma 10-20 f/3.5 ?

The f3.5 Sigma is not as good (in sharpness and distortion) as the old one. The only reason to get it over the old version is if you absolutely need the speed (bear in mind that you can go to 1/15 shutter with this). Otherwise the old version is better.

Thanks MrCynical.

As you said it was the old one.
Sigma also have a 12-24, I wonder how good that one is?

It's a full frame lens, so it's bigger and heavier, you cannot put filters on it, and it costs more. There's a few full res shots on my Flickr stream somewhere, but taken with a Nikon.

Edit: here

Thank you Tim, just read though that you can put a 82mm filter in the hood
Looks like a good lens though but still would prefer to have the Pentax 12-24 even if it was just for the name.
Here are some test on photozone.
Sigma 12-24 on Nikon link

Sigma 8-16 on Canon link has a strange wobble in the distortion, that's hard to correct with most software a nice even curve is most of the time easier to correct.

No, you cannot

There is a push-on lens cap with a removable end which looks like a hood, and which you can screw a filter into. But the lens vignettes really badly with this 'hood' on.

That they didn't tell
Does it even happen when using APS-C sensor?

Yes, unfortunately. I've only used this lens on a D80 which is a crop sensor. Images using the wide end of the lens have a big black circle around the edge

Wow they didn't really thought that one out