Newbie wide angle question

S

Samael

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I apologize in advance for being ignorant...
I am traveling to the UK for a summer holiday and I want to take some landscape photos.
My question is I want to get an inexpensive wide angle lens for this purpose, does this make sense?
Any advice on this would be appreciated, also what about a screw on wide angle attachment, .45x, is this a waste of money or would it give me a feel for this type of technique.
(canon digital 350D, standard kit lens 15-55)
 
I have used one of those converters before and I was not impressed by the quality, it was one of those £40 things from eBay if you do get one just make sure that it’s the right size for your lens.

The lens you have at the moment if fairly wide and should be sufficient for general landscape shots. But if you do feel the need to so super wide I think the general consensus is if you can afford it go with the canon 10-22 or else try the sigma equivalent still not cheap though.

Julian
 
I would agree that the lens you have at the moment is reasonably wide and will probably do a good job. If it's not wide enough you could try taking multiple images and stitching them together as a panorama, in Photoshop Elements or similar.

Anything that is inexpensive may not give you the quality you want and you'll up being disappointed.

Enjoy you holiday
 
Welcome to TP, Sam.

I'd say the Canon kit lens is an inexpensive wide-angle lens. (Especially inexpensive, seeing as how you already have it!) It's not the sharpest lens around, but if you stop it down to f/5.6 or f/8 it will be fine, and even in the UK we normally have enough daylight for that.

Those wide-angle converters are usually fairly mediocre in terms of image quality. But they are cheap, and everyone has different standards of acceptability - nothing wrong with that - so if you're not planning on making any huge prints then it might be OK. But it would be a real shame to try it out on holiday and then find you were disappointed with the results; far better to try it at home before you travel.

If you want a lens that's wider than the 18mm your kit lens can achieve, there aren't any inexpensive options. The Sigma 10-20mm is very popular, but not cheap (£275/$500); the Canon 10-22mm is arguably a little better but even less cheap (£420/£675). Alternatively you might want to consider hiring one for the duration of your trip.
 
Thank you all for the advice! I'm not traveling until August end so I may have time to experiment or budget some money for some new equipment.
;):bat:
 
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