[ilkand]

I am looking to buy a wideangle lens, will my Cokin P filters work with this not at all, with a new holder or as is?

Not sure what effect the wideangle has.

Thanks
Andy

[stepheno]

Andy - your cokin P filters should work with a new lens but you will probably need a new adaptor eg if your current lens is 52mm filter thread then you will have a 52mm adaptor, if a new lens is 62mm then you will need a 62mm adaptor - they're only a couple of quid. No need to get a new holder.

Regarding the second part of your question - if you're not sure what effect wide-angle has then how do you know you need one? Please excuse me - I'm not being flippant here. If you need a definition/description then have a look here HTH.

regards

[ilkand]

Hi Stepheno, thanks for the reply.

I really meant the physical size/shape of the lens. Didn't know if it would be wider than the filters, or if I'd need a different orientation, or something odd like that. Haven't actually got the filters etc yet, still stuck in the post.

In a way you are correct though. I don't really know about wideangle lenses, and they are really expensive. I know they are suggested if you want to take landscape photos, and I know I would want a wider lens than the one I've got, but it is a bit of an experiment. But then so is the whole world of dslrs. Its all new to me.

cheers
Andy

[stepheno]

Originally Posted by ilkand

.....but it is a bit of an experiment.

Be careful Andy. Unless you are rich it can be a very expensive experiment. You need to be very sure of your purpose and the specifications of the lens you mean to buy, otherwise you'll be on the road to penury.

Just out of interest what camera do you have and whats the range of your current lens(es)?

regards

[ilkand]

I bought a D70 body recently, and use a lens that my sister no longer uses on her F55 - its a 28-80mm G lens, but results have been very disappointing so far, after going from a coolpix 5200, my first and only camera.
I am in a bit of a quandry as to where to go from there.
I would like to stick with Nikon, but that makes it very expensive indeed, and I am only at the basic level

andy

[Dave]

Hi, the 28-80 is not a very good lens, vs the std kit lens of 18-70mm (which has rave reviews). What kind of range are you looking at ? & we'll see if we can help you out. The Nikon D70 is a cracking camera so don't give in yet

Most of the Nikonians on here have D70's apart from those with cash to burn.

Have a look at this thread I started on suggested lenses for different budgets :- http://www.thephotographyforums.com/...ead.php?t=4816

BTW I just bought a Sigma 10-20mm for ultra wide angle......very please with it. You'll see seom sample shots raised in my last few posts on Photo Sharing (Cleeve Hill etc)

[SammyC]

ilkand, 18mm will give you roughly the same field of view on your Nikon that you sister has on her film F55 with the 28mm.

You need to look into crop factors to find out why this is.

[Steve]

Just to help a little, the Cokin P system works fine on my 17-40mm lens which has a 77mm screw thread. I would say that it would work fine on even wider ones too, so if your intended lens has a thread of 77mm or less it will definately be fine.

[Arkady]

In the good old days of film,it was all quite easy - standard lenses came with cameras and you bought extra ones as the need arose.
For a 35mm lens, 'standard was roughly equivalent to 50mm - or what corresponded to a 'normal' or 'standard' angle of view - as the human eye sees, in other words.
Wide angle lenses were those of 35mm or less and telephoto lenses, those of 85mm or more.

With the advent of DSLRs it got a bit complicated - the sensors uses were not the same size as a 35mm film negative, so the angle of view was altered.
Even though the same lenses could be used on both types of cameras, they offer different angles of view - 50mm on a film camera, equates to about 75mm on most DSLRs.
So, to get the same angle of view as a film camera, you needed a different lens.
With zoom lenses it's less of an issue, as the standard or 'kit' lenses often range from medium-wide to short-tele, with the 'standard' angle of view somewhere in the middle.

Most of us who've been doing this for a while have adapted our equipment to include lenses with the focal lengths that we use most.
I used to use my 17-35mm for wide-angle shots when I shot film, but now use it as a 'standard' lens as the angle of view it offers on digital is less 'wide' - to get the same effect as I used to get, I had to buy a 14mm lens and will soon be getting a wider zoom to fill the gaps.

What you need to do is decide what it is you want from a lens - do you find that you constantly need to move further away from the subject to 'get more in', or do you always end up moving closer?

Extreme wide-angle lenses will slightly distort the scene in front of you. The best way is to try before buying - go to a shop. Those are those things on the High Street, not the little screen attached to the computer in the corner. They'll let you try a lens on your camera beforehand so you can decide if it really suits your needs.

Using filters on wide lenses is fraught with problems, the least of which is that at wider apertures, the filter housing may become visible, resulting in vignetting.
With digital, there is very little that can be done with a filter that cannot be done in photoshop - why add hardware to the camera when it can all be done post-production?

There's more to it than this, but to save space it might be an idea if you buy a couple of books on basic camera skills and do some swotting. Go to the local bookshop and check out anything by Michael Langford - he pretty much knows everything (smug git) and his books are the default reference material for most photo courses in the UK up to degree level.

[Steep]

I have a Cokin P filter system for my Sigma 10-20mm it works fine but I need to cut some of it off (it can hold 3 filters at once but I only need 1 ) because it's a bit deep and shows in the frame at 10mm.

[mfwild13]

IIRC Lee sell two versions of their system, standard and wide angle which is lower profile.

Mark

[ilkand]

Hi all, thanks for all the comments, much appreciated.
To answer some of them (in no particular order), I got my D70 at christmas time and started to take some photos of the moors near me. I found that the sky was always burned out with everything else exposed correctly, or the sky was ok and everything else too dark, hence the filters. I got an ND Grad to hopefully balance the exposure out, but i had heard of vignetting and wondered about this effect when using them. I saw someone on ebay selling a filed down filter holder.
I often see wide-angle lenses suggested in magazines for landscapes and did find there were occassions when treelines and rocks lost a lot of their scale with my lens. I looked at the Cleeve Hill post, DJW,and must say i really liked the first post with the 70-210mm, so I suppose it depends where you position yourself.
I've been following the lenses thread, and checking that out, so I am a bit more informed now.
I think a few books on camera work would be a good idea. I go to a local club, and we get fantastic talks from top photographers, but they never cover any basics (why would they? they are members of the london salon or whatever it is called).
I appreciate that digital lengths are 1.5 times as long, but it is still difficult to guess what the view from a 10-20mm lens looks like. I find i want a wider view but how much wider is hard to guess. I certainly don't want any distortion.
You are correct, I will just have to go to a shop and try it. I always feel obliged to buy then, though.
Much to learn,

Thanks,

andy

[Arkady]

You might also consider working on your exposure technique. With the first generation of Digi SLRs, it certainly was the case that the Subject Luminance Range (another SLR for you all...) was beyond the capability of the chip to record it faithfully, but it's not so much the case now.
If you're photographing landscapes (which tend not to move around all that much) there's no real reason not to use manual to set your exposure.
Again, without going into long-winded explanations here (it's easier to demonstrate, believe me), get yourself a book on basic photography and practice until you get what you're after.
There aren't any short-cuts, I'm afraid - any of us here can tell you how to do something, but until you understand the process in your own mind you'll never be able to fully replicate it on your own.
Don't worry about being 'obliged' to buy from shops - I think they're used to it by now.

[Dave]

I've added which lens I used to text on some of my landscape shots here if it helps.

From my experience I would suggest following :-

18-70mm kit lens is a good budget choice to cover most scenarios for shots.
10-20mm lens for when most of detail is in foreground. It takes quite a while to get used to how wide this lens is & for landscape everyhting in the distance becomes a small dot.
70-210mm - apart from some tight crops of landscape, the B&W shot I took on Cleeve Hill was a portion of distant landscape that required this focal length.

So in summary I think 18-70mm would be a good starting point & then decide if the ultra wide shot is required or not.

Note I'm a novice with landscape shots, so the more seasoned guys/gals may have some better advice.

By copy Mods, this is an example where the facility to search for members photo's based on EXIF lens info would be of great benefit. I know it's on the way.....sooner the better

[Steve]

Originally Posted by DJW

By copy Mods, this is an example where the facility to search for members photo's based on EXIF lens info would be of great benefit. I know it's on the way.....sooner the better

Honestly Dave I can't tell you how much work we are putting in behind the scenes regarding the galleries. It’s a big change is so many ways that we need to get it right first time. It is definitely coming, it’s just taking a little longer than any of us had hoped.

[Dave]

Much appreciated by us all Steve

[ilkand]

Again, thanks for the comments.

DJW, the texts on your landscapes make interesting reading - the orchard and the footpath ones really are wide aren't they. My favourites were the man in the distance, though. Again, on the 70 - 210mm again.
I think a 18 - 70 might be a good compromise for a while. The 70-210s like yours would be nice, but are silly money again on ebay - there was loads of people on the last one that went. Damn that Rockwell bloke.

Arkady, take your point entirely. Will be getting some books asap. Have tried manual and spot metering; centre weighted etc. I find it difficult to guess a midtone, though, and centre-weighted sometimes works ok and sometimes doesn't, so I'll have to keep practising.

Thanks very much
Andrew