Getting the widest angle?

[NJDrew]

I hope I’m phrasing this question right, but a couple of times now I have found my self trying to take pictures of, for example, a room in my house. I want to get the whole room wall to wall, but I cant zoom out enough. Is there some special lens out there for this?

My setup:

Canon 10d & Canon EF 28-105 F3.5-4.5 USM II EOS Lens

[mdude85]

well, there are of course the ultra wide angle lenses... these are usually 10 mm up to about 19 or 20 mm. 28mm on a 1.6x crop is not very wide, it's something like 45 mm which is almost in the "standard" sector of 50 mm . If you need to buy a lens to take pictures of your rooms, I'd suggest getting a lens in the ultra wide angle sector, but even at 10 mm on a 1.6 crop, you probably won't get corner to corner, but it will be close. I'd recommend for now just stitching together panoramas.

[Kenski]

Just remember though, the lower you go with the lens, the more barrel distortion you are going to get in the picture...

look at the building in the right hand corner of the picture. notice how it sort of LEANS towards the ground??? This was taken with a Canon 15mm fisheye f2.8 lens

http://www.pbase.com/kenski/image/36051150.jpg

Now, there is software out there that will correct this distortion. I use a good FREE photoshop plug-in called PTLens and it corrects for it but it also chops off some of the edges because it FLATTENS it out and the edges actually get rounded so it has to square it up... This is the outcome...

http://www.pbase.com/kenski/image/36051149.jpg

This is a good lens for EXTREME wide angles... Maybe too extreme for you..

[timmyquest]

sigma makes an 8mm lens, the widest i know of

[slin100]

Another possibility is to take multiple images and to stitch them together using Photoshop or panorama stitching tool. There are a lot of commercial tools available and some pretty good shareware (PTAssembler (http://www.tawbaware.com/ptasmblr.htm) and PTGui (http://www.ptgui.com/)) and even a decent free one (Hugin (http://hugin.sourceforge.net/)).

[velvetjones]

sigma makes an 8mm lens, the widest i know of

True, but the 8mm Sigma is a circular fisheye that won't fill the whole frame with your picture.....The 12mm Sigma on a full-frame camera would probably be the widest non-fisheye lens you can get....I think. The Canon 10-22mm would be...but, well...you know.

[Kenski]

True, but the 8mm Sigma is a circular fisheye that won't fill the whole frame with your picture.....The 12mm Sigma on a full-frame camera would probably be the widest non-fisheye lens you can get....I think. The Canon 10-22mm would be...but, well...you know.

Hmmm, he can't use the 10-22.... and I haven't seen a 12mm sigma unless you are talking about the 12-24.... They make a 14mm

[NJDrew]

Wow, ty for all the help. It sounds like the lowest I can go without getting the fisheye edge distortion is 12mm? Would it be more practical to get a point and shoot for this kind of stuff? Given the quality wont be as good and I wont have as much freedom in modes, but I believe most point and shoots have a minimum distance of 7mm or less. This is not pro level work or anything, I would just be using it for like before and after remodeling work and around the house type stuff.

[Jon]

No, the P/S 7 mm is with their much smaller sensors. They typically have 28-38mm equivalent at the wide end to about 90-138 mm at the long end (35 mm equiv. focal length - 10D with about 17-85 is about the same coverage).

[mdude85]

Wow, ty for all the help. It sounds like the lowest I can go without getting the fisheye edge distortion is 12mm? Would it be more practical to get a point and shoot for this kind of stuff? Given the quality wont be as good and I wont have as much freedom in modes, but I believe most point and shoots have a minimum distance of 7mm or less. This is not pro level work or anything, I would just be using it for like before and after remodeling work and around the house type stuff.

point and shoots have very small sensors -- to find a correct conversion, multiply the focal length listed on point and shoots by 4 to get an approximate 35 mm focal length. Most point and shoot cameras with 3x zooms range on a 35 mm sensor from about 35 - 115 mm.

But they are pretty wide and would be a good alternative to an expensive wide angle, especially if you want to focus at infinity with a large DOF.

[DaveG]

Just remember though, the lower you go with the lens, the more barrel distortion you are going to get in the picture...

look at the building in the right hand corner of the picture. notice how it sort of LEANS towards the ground??? This was taken with a Canon 15mm fisheye f2.8 lens

http://www.pbase.com/kenski/image/36051150.jpg

Now, there is software out there that will correct this distortion. I use a good FREE photoshop plug-in called PTLens and it corrects for it but it also chops off some of the edges because it FLATTENS it out and the edges actually get rounded so it has to square it up... This is the outcome...

http://www.pbase.com/kenski/image/36051149.jpg

This is a good lens for EXTREME wide angles... Maybe too extreme for you..

But a fish eye is NOT a conventional wide angle. The barrel distortion has been left in to give a unique - although in my opinion a one-trick-pony - look. A well designed super wide angle will not have the building curvature that your fish eye is showing.

[Kenski]

True, true, but you can kill two birds with one stone with a fisheye and a good software plug-in like PTLens. Even with the areas it cuts out due to the distortion, you are still getting a greater viewing angle then most wide angle lenses.

[Kenski]

Wow, ty for all the help. It sounds like the lowest I can go without getting the fisheye edge distortion is 12mm? Would it be more practical to get a point and shoot for this kind of stuff? Given the quality wont be as good and I wont have as much freedom in modes, but I believe most point and shoots have a minimum distance of 7mm or less. This is not pro level work or anything, I would just be using it for like before and after remodeling work and around the house type stuff.


even with a 12mm you will get some distortion, it just won't be as bad as a fisheye... You can correct for it though with software...

[Olegis]

First things come first - what's the budget ?

[velvetjones]

sigma makes an 8mm lens, the widest i know of

True, but the 8mm Sigma is a circular fisheye that won't fill the whole frame with your picture.....The 12mm Sigma on a full-frame camera would probably be the widest non-fisheye lens you can get....I think. The Canon 10-22mm would be...but, well...you know.


Yes, I was talking about the sigma 12-24........

[NJDrew]

First things come first - what's the budget ?

up to about $400 I guess. It apears that a fisheye lens and software is my best option? I will have to price it out and go from there. Thank you all for your help.

[gramps]

how about a smaller room.........

[Kenski]

I took 3 of my smaller lenses and took some shots of my smallest room and you can take a look. It is a 10x20 room and I took the shots right where a WALL should be to cut it off. I used my 15mm, 20mm, and 18-55 EF-S lens so you can compare the three lenses and I corrected the 15mm also...

15mm UN-CORRECTED

http://www.pbase.com/kenski/image/36249479.jpg

15mm CORRECTED

http://www.pbase.com/kenski/image/36249480.jpg

20mm

http://www.pbase.com/kenski/image/36249475.jpg

18-55 EF-S

http://www.pbase.com/kenski/image/36249477.jpg