best lens for night city scapes

Hi all -

I am really getting into taking city-scape shots at night. Can anyone recommend a lens that would produce well?

I am usually taking shots on the street of the buildings more so than a distant shot of the entire city.

A 17-40L would do the trick...or your current lens
But more importantly a good tripod.
If you really hate tripods, you could get a 17-55 2.8 IS and hand hold a 1/4 sec exposure at 17mm.

17-55 2.8 IS or Sigma 30 1.4/Canon 50 1.4

Get a good tripod, it's invaluable.

Here is a shot of Anchorage I took. I have kind of gotten into the night city shots also. Your tripod is as important as is the lens.

https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=431624

This one was taken with the 70-200 at ISO 400 using a 10 sec exposure at f/6.3. I usually use my 24-105 when in this location that works very well also.

Get a good tripod (eg. Manfrotto 055Pro/ Bogen 3021 with ball head if you don't mind the 3kg weight) and a 24mm or 45mm tilt-shift lens. Shoot multiple pictures and then stitch them together.

Alternatively you can opt for any of the ultrawide options (eg. Canon 10-22mm, Sigma 10-20mm, Tokina 12-24mm), or 17-40mm if you're using FF. But these lenses have some degree of barrel distortion. Plus, if you tilt your camera upwards to include the entire building you'd get issues with converging verticals, unless that is your intention.

What does a tilt-shift lens do? I've seen some on B&H but not really sure how/what they do.

The lens you have in your sig sould doo a good job.

Plenty of links on Google, and a lot of them fairly technical.

http://photo.net/equip​ment/canon/tilt-shift