Which lens for landscapes & buildings?

Hi,
The only lens I have for my Rebel XT/EOS-350D is the cheapo EF 50mm f1.8 II. This is my first non point & shoot camera and the first thing I noticed with this lens is how little I could "get in" the shot compared to my old compact camera. I guess this lens is more for portraits. I almost never use the camera indoors and people don't feature very much in my photographs. I enjoy taking landscape and nature shots and would like to take more medium distance shots of buildings and the like, so I'm looking for a wider angle lens to get more in the picture. However I don't want the image to look like it was taken with a wide angle lens if you see what I mean (ie. no distortion or fish-eye effect). What Canon prime lens would people recommend?

Depends sort of on what lens the compact (35 mm format? digital?) had. A "normal" SLR lens for the 350D would be about 30 mm f.l. Many 35 mm compacts with fixed lenses have about 35 mm f.l. lenses; on the 350D the equivalent would be about a 24 mm. The 50 mm lens, while "normal" on 35 mm SLRs is a moderate telephoto on a 350D, roughly like using an 80 mm on a 35 mm SLR.

The one lens that I find to be just awesome for landscape and...well...anything, is the canon ef 28-135 f/3.5-5.6 IS USM, normally priced at around 550-700 us dollars. I can't suggest anything better! I have one if you want it =P I mainly do weddings. not wide enough for that. it just sorta sits in my case. =\ Mine's brand new. Had it a week.

Surprisingly the 18-55 kit lens is pretty darn good at the wide end stopped down to f/8 to f/16.

Unfortunately, it has distortion. It's not as wide as you'd think, so it wont be that bad as long as you keep the straight lines through the middle (landscapes).

If you really want a wide angle lens that does *not* distort, you'll have to look for a rectilinear lens. These are very expensive, like the Canon 14/2.8L (~$1800).

There are ways, however, to distort the fisheye effect back to normal: http://www.photo.net/l​earn/fisheye/

In that case you can pick up the Canon 15/2.8 fisheye which is far cheaper (~$600).

There is also the highly acclaimed 10-22. I'm pretty sure that's rectilinear but still has some distortion, somebody please correct me. There are also wide angle zooms you can check out here: http://www.photo.net/e​quipment/wideangle-dslr.html

All these lenses are quite expensive, it all depends how wide you want. I'd pick up the 18-55 if you don't have it yet, it's less than $100 used and can easily be found on here or Fred Miranda forums.

Another thing you can try is the Russian Fishy, MC Zenitar 16/2.8. It's an M42 mount lens, so you'd have to buy an adapter. It's a Fisheye, but that can be fixed in post. It's also *CHEAP* compared to other primes that wide, only at ~$120 with an adapter for ~$25. You lose autofocus and auto-stopping down but buildings and landscapes don't move very often so I don't think that'll be a big problem.

The only way to shoot tall buildings without distortion is by using a TS or tilt shift lens.

The 28-135 is not good for what you want because the 28mm is effectively a 45mm on a Rebel XT/350 which is too narrow for lanscapes. You need a wide-angle lens. Typically a 24 or 28mm lens is considered a standard wide-angle, but on the XT it becomes a 38 or 45mm so what you'd want is something in the 15 to 18mm range.

I'd start with the 18-55 USM kit lens which you can get for around $75-100. That will give you an effective 28-88mm range. See how you like it and then you can move to a more expensive prime.

have to second IronDad on this one. It was the only lens I had for my rebel the first 4 months or so, took it to Italy with me and got some awesome landscapes and building shots. if you want to see some examples: http://flickr.com …spencermhall/se​ts/810897/

every picture in that album was taken with the 18-55mm kit lens. It gets knocked a lot by some of the 'hardcore'/ more advanced users, but IMHO it takes great shots and is a good multi-purpose lens to start out with.

S

The EF-S 17 - 85 would be a good choice for landscapes/buildings.

I second that statement.