Wide angle lens

exactiv

Hi.

I need to get a wide angle lens for some sports photography. Any suggestions?
I have a Nikon D50 dSLR. The lens that came with the camera was an 18 - 55mm. It's defo not wide enough. I'd say I need something like a fisheye lens. Maybe a 10.5mm.

Any ideas?

melekalikimaka

don't fish eyes completely distort the image?

Shrimp

wide angles and fish eyes are vastly different.

Fish eyes tend to distort the image greatly, while wideangle lenses tend to just capture more of the 'action' without much obvious barrel distortion.

If you are doing journalistic photography then I doubt it very much a fish eye lens will be useful as papers etc. don't want to put photos in their publications as they want a photo which represents exactly what happened. Then again thats kinda contradicting as papers are notorious for distorting the truth. However thats neither here nor there your asking about the lens not the journalistic substance of the papers.

So bottom line, don't get the fish eye if u are doing journalistic photography for a paper or the like.

May I ask why you need such a wide lenses? as a lot of sports photography usually requires a telephoto?

Fajitas!

Shrimp is dead on with his comments there.

I have the Sigma 10-20mm lens, great lens, really handy.

Just one point, if you're looking to get a wide angle for sports photography, you are going to have to get VERY close to get detail etc. Maybe you should think about a longer focal length first?

exactiv

I'll be very close, like within 1m of the subject. The sport is kite boarding. So the rider will be approaching me at speed and basically jumping over me or just in front of me. I want to be able to capture the rider, board & kite in the one shot. I managed it with the 18-55 lens, but I nearly killed myself and (more importantly) the camera. I mostly put my shots in our web gallery, nothing really goes for print.

Can you elaborate on the focal length?

FX Meister

That Sigma lens is preety good. Do Nikon have a similar lens? I had to chose between the sigma and a canon 10-22mm and I preferred the canon myself. As for the fisheye, it will be a good bit cheaper than a wide angle lens. They are very good but they do not work good at all with DSLR cut off. Don't even bother getting one. A wide angle lens will give you a totally different field of view though. Just bring your camera into cons cameras and try out a few different lenses.

Fajitas!

As FX said, bring your camera into a shop, the best way to find out is by looking yourself!

My Sigma lens also comes in a Nikon fitting if that's any use to you.

leinsterman

I have the sigma 12-24mm for my canon 20d ... great lens but more expensive than the 10-20mm the others are talking about ... It has the advantage that it can be used on full frame cameras as well (the 10-20 is DC meaning digital only) ... which is important to me as I also use film (though I must confess less and less!!) ... if you only ever intend to use 1.5/1.6 Field of view crop factor cameras such as the D50 then it may not be a good option.

Bear in mind on your camera the crop is 1.6 (I believe ... though I read somewhere that Nikon D50 is 1.5, so you may want to double check)... meaning 10-20 is in fact 16 - 32mm on your camera ...

Fajitas!

Actually, the D means its set for digital, but it can still be used on a film, though at lower lengths, it will suffer from a lot of vignetting!

leinsterman

Just and afterthought ... I'm trying to understand why you need to get so close to your subject if you are trying to everything in ?

I would have thought that the 18-55 would be ample for your needs ...

you may find you get better action shots from further out with a long lens such as a 70-200mm ... the long zoom will have the effect of drawing the subject in and compressing the image ... making everything look closer together and placing more emphesis on the main subject ... the wide angle has the opposite effect and will also give you greater dept of field when used up close ... not always desirable and it may pull too many things into focus and distract from the main image... in addition when used up close wide angles can have the effect of diminishing the importance of the main subject by bringing too much detail into the shot ...

... if you are right up close to the action then you may find getting everything less desirable than taking detail ... that said you can get some really cool effects shooting up close at 16mm ... things look distorted due to the perspective ...

To illustrate the point here are some (hastily taken) pictures taken with the sigma 12-24 @ 12mm and a Canon 50mm F1.8 ... light was not too good so sorry for the shake. Notice how the head of the guitar is exhaggerated in the 12mm shot ...

Les Paul 12mm.jpg

Les Paul 50mm.jpg

leinsterman

Fajitas! wrote:

Actually, the D means its set for digital, but it can still be used on a film, though at lower lengths, it will suffer from a lot of vignetting!

You are of course correct I should have been more specific ... the 10-20mm is DC is designed for APS-C but will fit on 35mm cameras ... while the 12-24mm DG is a more multi-purpose design ... and gives great result for film and digital alike ...

exactiv

Have a look at that. It's not great, but you'll get the idea. I need to be underneath the rider to get the kite (not in the shot) into the frame which is fairly dangerous. I'd prefer not to get hit when I'm taking photos!