Advice on best camera and lenses for versatility.

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bombfrog

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Please bear with me on this one, it might not be easy to explain.

I currently have a Canon 50D and next year I'm going travelling round the states so I've been trying to work out which lenses to buy. I'm going to be doing all types of photography from a safari in Yellowstone park to architecture in Chicago to landscapes. Herein lies the problem.

I recently hired 2 lenses, a 70-200mm 2.8L which I took to the zoo and got some wonderful shots and a Canon 10-22mm lens, which on the surface of it produced some good shots but on closer inspection it clearly wasn't in the same league as the L lens and wouldn't be fantastic if blown up onto canvases etc.

Anyway, that lead me to look into L grade UWA lenses and I realised that the only way that was going to work would be to upgrade to a full frame camera, so I started to look at the 5D MkII (which will probably be the mk III by the time I get it). It looks like a fantastic piece of kit and matched with an L range wide angle lens would be perfect for architecture and landscapes I bet.

Hang on though! I then realised that on a full frame camera the lovely 200mm lens isn't going to get me as much zoom as I currently get on my crop sensor, which would mean I would have to get a longer focal length telephoto which probably wouldn't have the versatility of the 70-200 and be a lot more expensive.

So, erm.. I think I have three options...

1) Stick with the 50D and put up with the quality from the 10-20mm

2) Upgrade to a 5D and get an L range wide angle lens and then get a different telephoto lens too.

3) Get a 5D to use for wide stuff and keep the 50D for wildlife stuff

Is this a common dilemma or am I just missing something?
 
bombfrog said:
Is this a common dilemma or am I just missing something?
Click to expand...

It's a very common dilema, also known as 'have your cake and eat it syndrome'. The only thing I think your missing is the quality of the 10-22 I've never heard it slated and it generally gets very good reviews. I'm sure dozens of people will be along shortly to tell you how they have huge prints from it, are you sure your not pixel peeping a little to far?
 
What were the typical focal lengths you shot with the 10-22? There is a very pricey 14mm f2.8 which might do you on your current body if you need something shorter than whatever your standard zoom is...

The full frame sensor cameras will need a 16mm lens to get the same FoV as the 10mm of the 10-22 so you're probably looking at the 16-35 f2.8 at £1000 anyway.

Alternatively how about something from Sigma/Tamron (no idea what they're like, but there are reviews out there).
 
Strange. Most 10-22 owners love the lens. The Tokina 11-16 is supposed to be slightly better, but can be difficult to find.
 
I reckon 50D with 10-22, 17-55 and 70-200 and you are pretty well covered

Seen great shots from all of the above and you can adjust the micro focus on your camera to suit

Also if the worse was to happen and the body went wrong you could get a cheap replacement that would suit those lenses. If you had full frame lenses that option would be a lot more expensive
 
tijuana taxi said:
I reckon 50D with 10-22, 17-55 and 70-200 and you are pretty well covered

Seen great shots from all of the above and you can adjust the micro focus on your camera to suit

Also if the worse was to happen and the body went wrong you could get a cheap replacement that would suit those lenses. If you had full frame lenses that option would be a lot more expensive
Click to expand...

Yes, I was looking at the 17-55 too, It's not an L either but I gather it's very popular has IS and more expensive than the 17-40L anyway, which I know is no measure of how good it is but nevertheless it probably says something about the quality.
 
No L lenses in the EF-S range, but the 17-55 is highly regarded and rightly so. Never had a 17-40, but it would have to go some to be any better

IS is very handy too for a shaky old sod like myself, that probably accounts for some of the price diference as would it being a constant f/2.8 as opposed to the 17-40's f/4
 
Here are a few close ups (1:1) of shots taken with the Canon 10-20mm.

The green and purple glows round everything aren't a good look and I could provide a few more examples of other shots where everything is pretty fuzzy and grainy.

It's perfectly possible that I'm just doing something wrong. Please feel free to tell me :)


badwideangle13.jpg


badwideangle12.jpg


3rd image deleted because it was actually taken with another lens. My mistake, lol.
 
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Hmm, the last shot is pretty amazing for the 10-22. Because the exif says it was taken at f1.8 and at 50mm! But the first two, especially the first one, don't look right. I've just hunted through all of my 10-22mm pics trying to find something similar and failed. Were these crops taken from the edge of the image, or near the centre? If it's the latter I'd be sending it back to Canon.
 
Oops, my mistake. The third photo was taken with my Tamron lens.

The other two were definitely the 10-22mm though and the first one has the CA about 1/3 of the way down the image, not right at the edge.

As I said, it was hired, not bought so I don't have to send it back. I wanted to know if it was normal though because my choice sees to be between buying one or upgrading my camera to full frame to get anything better.
 
Sorry, quick bump.

Does anybody else get this effect on their 10-22mm or should I go ahead and buy one, safe in the knowledge that the lens is fine and it's just me that's crap?
 
The CA is terrible for a lens costing that much.

The FF Vs crop is a dilemma for everyone who shoots both wildlife and portrait/landscape etc.
The downside being of course you either need longer lenses with the FF for the wildlife or carry two camera's.

From a quick glance at your posts it seems the crop body would suit you more than FF, so I would stick with it, if you want to upgrade the body why not try a 7D?
Lens wise if you want UWA try the Tokina mentioned, but I would grab a 70-200mm F2.8 and a 1.4x extender/teleconvertor as it seems that would suit a lot of the photography you do.
I have to admit I think I would be happy going over there with just the 17-50, the nifty and a 70-200/1.4x set up
 
I've had a 10-22 for a while now and after returning the first copy (which with hindsight there was nothing wrong) I have a few observations to make.

These thoughs apply to my lens with a 40D, your mileage may vary as they say.

First is that despite being ultra wide and therefore expected to have mahoosive DOF it does need very carefull focusing especially at wide angles and wide apertures.

I suspect it suffers from some field cuvature, that is does not bring all the light rays to a single flat plane (ie the sensor surface), so the image seems to go in and out of focus as you cross the image. I suspect it was this that I saw with my firrst copy (second is just the same).

The best way round this is to use live view to focus, or set the lens to manual focus and leave it at infinity for anything more than a couple of meters away - especially at 10mm.

I suspect that the 40D focusing system struggles to make sense of so much detail unless there is a very clear "focusable" object in the frame. If you mash the focus button the lens will often seem to stop at random points around the infinity mark. Focusing past infnity does have a marked effect on the IQ which is odd as you would think the DOF would cover focusing errors??

So I decided to have a test session.

Indoors with direct flash from my 430EX, at 10mm using 10x live view to focus on the part of the image shown. They are L to R f3.5, f5.6, f8.0 all from the extreme top right corner of the image BUT with a bit of PP applied to each image to "optimise" them.

Not sure if the image of this DPP screen grab shows much but I was quite impressed with the finished images and how equal they were.



So the image quality is very impressive, especially considering what the lens is doing at 10mm squishing such a wide view onto a crop sensor.

I have seen some CA but only at wide angle/apertures, easily corrected in DPP.

HTH

David
 
I certainly dont get that amount of CA from my 10-22, in fact I'm hard pushed to see any CA from it at all!

Considering it uses the same exotic lens elements as a lot of the L series range I wouldnt expect it to either. Looks like a rare 'off' copy, though it may have suffered abuse being a hire lens?
 
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