Wide Angle Lens

[Johnboy2978]

I have been looking around for wide angle lenses for my digital and film pentax cameras. I was considering something along the lines of a zoom at first, maybe 18-50 but I think I'm leaning more towards a good prime lens.

How wide can you go before you start to get barrell distortion. I would be using this for some wedding work in the future as well as some portraits when doing small groups. I was thinking 28mm would be probably be what I settle on. Is the soft focus version worth an extra $170?

Also, I was wondering....is fisheye a specialty lens, or is it just when you get below a certain mm that it is considered fisheye? Is there such a thing as a 10-20mm lens for example that doesn't give it that fisheye appearance?

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/con...s&Q=&sku=40726&is=GREY&addedTroughType=search

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/con...s&Q=&sku=144735&is=REG&addedTroughType=search

 

[JIP]

As far as wedding work goes I would stay away from buying a fisheye until you have the other lenses you will need (18-70, 70-200or whatever the Pentax eqivalent is) and then you can use a fisheye. A fisheye has a place in wedding work as a neat extra thing you can add to you selection of images but it's usefulness is limited. Any wide-angle lens at a certain focal length will show some distortion I'm not sure where it is for digital but for 35mm it usually starts at 24 or 20 and goes from there the only lenses availabe that will not give that effect are very expensie specialty lenses designed for architectural work that are corrected I'm not even sure they are available for Pentax I know Nikon makes one. As far as a 10-20 this is probably wider than you would want to start with for wedding work unless you have other lenses to work with.

 

[Stevedevil]

I too am looking at a Wide Angle lens, and recently took my camera into a camera shop and they were kind enough to let me have a play with the Sigma 10-20mm lens, and I fired over 200 shots from inside the shopping center which I then viewed later, it gave me a good insight into the coverage and useage of the lens, maybe you could try the same as to see what type of lense you may use more, Will be reading this post as I said I am after one too, Cheers Steve

 

[harkain]

Steve is on to something. Try before you buy!

You can rent lenses from professional camera stores. Maybe whatever lense you decide to buy, you could rent and use for a weekend. For professional work, it is good to have a professional lense. You can SEE the difference.