Wide angle on a 20D

[pcasciola]

I'm looking for something a little wider than the 18-55mm kit lens on the 20D. I see a lot of people raving about the 17-40mm Canon, but that's not much wider than the kit lens. I will mostly be using this lens for shooting home interiors and outdoor home landscaping/pools, etc, so I will probably need something relatively fast for the indoor pics.

Has anyone had any experience with the sub-$1000 14mm and 15mm primes that Canon and Sigma make? It's either that or I hold out for the 10-22mm EF-S that Canon is releasing.

Thanks.

[Jon]

There are also the Sigma 12-24 and 15-30 zooms. Both of these have been discussed on here before, and both are well under $1000.

[Mark Kemp]

There is due to be a 10-22mm EFS lens that will fit the 20D - presumably fairly soon. This is notably wider - i.e. 16mm equivalent on a 35mm film body. No reviews that I have seen yet, but as its in the same series as the kit lens I guess it should be similar quality.

[CyberDyneSystems]

The only lenses currently available that is Significantly wider is the Sigma 12-24mm allready mentioned.. and the 14mm primes.

The 15-30mm is really a 16mm at the wide end according to a few reveiws.. and isn't worht it when compared to the excellent 17-40mm.

The Only Canon zoom lens is the soon to be availble EF-S 10-22mm that MArk Mentions.. I'd say it's that or the Sigma 12-24mm. Of ocurse the 10-22 will not ork on full frame cameras.. or even the 1D mkII.. where as the Sigma 12-24 will.

[pcasciola]

I'm leaning away from the EF-S 10-22mm because I'd hate to have a lens that will not work on full frame cameras, which I hope we will all have in a few years for what the 20D costs today.

The Sigma 12-24mm looks good (can't believe I never came across that one) but might be a little slow for my indoor pics.

I wonder how the Sigma 12-24mm stacks up against the sub-$1000 Canon 14mm and 15mm primes.

Ok, now for a REALLY dumb question. The Canon 15mm says fisheye. Does that mean it is more distorted than a typical 15mm lens, like say the Sigma 14mm that does not say fisheye?

[Jon]

Yep. A full-frame fisheye, which that is, will cover about 180 degrees corner to corner (diagonal). Fisheye lenses have very pronounced barrel distortion, by design. The only lines that will be straight in one of them are those which go directly through the center of the image. I wouldn't suggest using a full-frame fisheye on a 20D because it'll crop too much out. If you needed a fisheye for that, I'd say to look around for a T-mount 8 mm or so.

[drisley]

The Sigma 12-24mm looks good (can't believe I never came across that one) but might be a little slow for my indoor pics.

Keep in mind that with such a short focal length, you can get away with fairly long exposures handheld, so aperture isn't as big a deal as with a zoom.

At 12mm (x1.6x) you could get away with a 1/20s exposure.