What Lens for tight spaces?

DA 16 -45 for me

Thanks all for the comments, JAK is right in that the images I've posted as examples could have been taken with a 16-85 as they are at 55mm and 70mm focal lengths. I do have a lot from our hols taken at longer lengths and I tend to feel most comfortable using a lens that covers the longer telephoto range rather than a wider lens when walking about in towns. I'm fond of doing a bit of street photography at a distance and the 55-300 is invaluable for this.

Regards
David

I love street photography with my 55-300 . To get a nice vantage point and take shots from a distance, with copping,a single shot may yield more than one image.
To capture people as they are,without a camera in their ken is sort of like treating people shots as nature shots. If I could only carry one lens it would be my 55-300.
I always carry three lenses though , in my backpack. A 100mm Macro, a 14mmf2.8 and the 55-300 .

For tight spaces mainly the Pentax DA*I6-50 or the Sigma 10-20mm, it depends how tight. But I generally have two cameras and two lenses with me, heavy but it means I've nearly always got the right combination. The second camera would have the DA*50-135 or the D FA*70-200 attached.
The majority of my street photography shots have been shot with either the 50-135 or the 16-50mm lenses.
The Sigma 10-20 is used for extreme architecture angles rather than pure street photography.
David

Well in really tight spaces I often end up needing my 100mm macro.

Got quite a few "good" street photography shots with my pretty old 10-20 f4.5-5.6 Sigma (sharp, in fact very sharp)!
Thus I don't agree with you that it is necessarily "limited" to "architectural" shots

I also tend to use 16-85.

The lens used doesn't really depend on whether you're in a tight space or not, but on what you want to include in the shot (which is always the case). Being in a tight space does not mean that what you want a shot of will necessarily require an ultra-wide angle. In fact, I fins the opposite is true - I'd be far more inclined to use an ultra-wide in a wide open space in order to convey that space in a photo.

For narrow streets I'd be inclined to use a standard (35mm-ish on APS-C) or something wide but not too wide, such as the 21mm. I find that using anything wider for a shot of a street results in too much wall and road and not enough of what makes that street interesting (if you see what I mean).

Many, many people (especially Americans visiting the relatively narrow streets of Europe) say "oh, you must have an ultra-wide in Europe" but that's really not the case. Ultra-wide angle lenses are generally over-used these days and their benefits over-sold. Many images (probably even the majority) taken with them would have been better with a narrower field of view.

I agree 100% with Jonathan-Mac's observations in the post above and this is precisely my train of thought when using my camera in tight spaces. I find the opportunity for using an ultra-wide or even just a normal wide angle in these situations is pretty limited and when it is used the result is often distorted.

For me it's a telephoto all the way when in towns / cities.

Regards
David

Using an ultra-wide angle lens requires care to make sure that the lens axis is perfectly horizontal if you want to minimize "sloping verticals" (unless, of course, you actually want that).

I find it is actually much easier to avoid sloping verticals with an ultra w/a, because, with care there is much less need to tilt the camera to cover both tall buildings (etc.) and large interior features.

Also, the smaller version of the Sigma, or at least my copy, has very little edge distortion if the lens axis is horizontal, and it has allowed me to take a lot of shots which would have been difficult or impossible without making overlapping exposures and a lot of PP.