Hello All
I have a question. I have a Nikon DSLR 3100 and it is a great camera capable of amazing shots. I want to get a wide angle lens in order to take better photos for my business. I have seen the add on screw on attachment lenses that turn my regular 18-55 stock lens into a wide angle and the prices go from $10 - $100 . I’m not looking for high quality photos from this add on but something that will just look good on our website. I have also seen the fish eye add ons but for now I’m just interested in the wide angle, mostly for the interiors of houses.
Does anyone have experience with these screw on attachement lenses? What do you think?
Todd
You get what you pay for…
Some of them work ok, none will be as good as a “real” lens.
I’ve used some and always reverted to a “real” wide angle lens, except on a real cheapie point and shoot.
Regards, Greg
An 18 mm lens is a pretty wide angle lens as it is. Any thing wider is going to be a fish eye.
Or are the digital lenses designated differently from film lenses? In my film world, a 50 - 55mm lens is considered a “normal” lens for a 35 mm camera. Doesn’t a DSLR mimic a 35mm camera? Normal means that the lens “sees” what the eye would see at any distance.
I’ve never been a real fan of zoom lenses because you loose something to the zoom function.
Those wide angle filters (the screw-on things you’re talking about) do a poor job, especially paired with your 18-55mm f/slow lens. Think of them like a magnifying glass (well, inverse, but…) as they will magnify optical issues with your 18-55mm. If you want a good wide-angle lense for Nikon mount look into the Sigma 10-20mm.
If you had the 17-55mm f/2.8 then the screw-on filters wouldn’t be as-bad, but if you can afford the 17-55mm f/2.8 then you can afford a real wide-angle so it seems silly.
What might be best for you is an image stitching program. The past few releease of photoshop allow you to put several photos onto seperate layers and it will stitch them together for you. I’ve used it to create 360-degree panoramas. What I do is I shoot for about a 1/3 over-lap between shots AND I shoot a vertical image (often called a portrait, as opposed to landscape orientation). This way you have more up-down information to bring to the party when you stitch them all horizontally.
Todd,
I’ve not used a magnifier ring so will trust the judgement of those that have. I have a Nikon 10-24mm that is a great lens and works well with an APC sensor. Your app is shooting houses. One thing a real wide lens has a tendency to do is cause vertical lines to be distorted so they are not vertical. That can be corrected in Photoshop or Elements. As others have posted your 18mm is fairly wide - much wider and will will need to be concerned with the distortion, but from my experience if you are shooting interiors the wider the better. Just a thought in case you consider a wide lens. Hope this helps.
Mike
For those that don’t know. The APC sensor in his camera is about 2/3 the size of a full frame 35mm film frame.
So… This is a close enough rule of thumb…
a 50mm lens (from a regular film camera) gives a field of view on a APC sensor like a 80-85mm lens on a full frame camera
a 35mm lens (from a regular film camera) gives a field of view on a APC sensor like a 50-55mm lens on a full frame camera
a 28mm lens (from a regular film camera) gives a field of view on a APC sensor like a 35-38mm lens on a full frame camera
a 16mm lens (from a regular film camera) gives a field of view on a APC sensor like a 28-30mm lens on a full frame camera
a 10mm lens (from a regular film camera) gives a field of view on a APC sensor like a 16-18mm lens on a full frame camera
So… the 10-20mm zoom would be the goal if the distortion was OK to live with.
Dave2-8-0