Tempted To Get A Wideangle Dx Lens

[David Mitchell]

Hi all,

I have just taken my 35mm f1.8G lens out for a play today in the woods as the weather is rather nice at the moment (which was unexpected!) and although I am actually quite happy with the performance of the lens I might want to go wider in the future. The kit lens I have is an 18-55mm lens but its an f3.5 to f5.6 lens so this might not exactly mean the best build quality.

There is a shot I want to get near me, I saw it when passing it on the train and knew that it was a shot I wanted to go back and get at some point but would probably require a slightly wider lens than I have at the moment.

Is it worth me getting a wider lens for my D3100 as it is a DX camera, I could look at getting a wider lens in a different mount and use it on my NEX but I know that older manual lenses weren't really as wide as they are today as they didn't need to be.

For landscapes and wider shots can I have some suggestions as to which focal length they are using the most - I might be able to get away with using the kit lens at 18mm however it might not be as good as for example a 14mm zoom lens but shot at 18mm.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Hamish Gill]

Those 18-55 lenses are pretty good!
Shoot the shot, if it's no good then think again, but I'd be very surprised if you didn't get more than satisfactory results from it!

As for my landscape shooting ... In fact any shooting, I don't use anything wider than 28mm more than once or twice a year tops! In fact, I've leant my wide lens to the chap who runs the local camera shop... I used it once last year, for one photo, and that was out of many 10's of thousand photos...

 

[Dan Cattermole]

Kit lens all the way baby!
Or even your 35mm 1.8 lens stopped right down would make nice landscape shots.

 

[Dave Green]

I don't tend to shoot wide angle to get wide shots as such. I use them to get close to stuff whilst still getting lots of background in.

My weapon of choice is the Nikon 16-35mm F/4 VR. For DX I'd go for one of the Sigma 10-20mm lenses.

 

[Hamish Gill]

Yeah, what he said ^