Lens to take cabin pictures

[oliverweagle]

Hi - I have a Canon 40D with which I'd like to take some pics of the AB suite on the NCL Sky. I'd especially like to capture the balcony with - I'm thinking - a wide angle lens. Given that the 40D is not full frame - what lens would you recommend? I'm considering renting a Canon 10 - 22 mm or perhaps the Sigma 12 - 24 - but am entirely open to suggestions!

 

Thank you,

 

Ollie.

[chipmaster]

Yup superwide; Tamron, Sigma and Tokina make decent super wides, a bit cheaper then Canikon lenses.

 

Here is a review of the major options:

http://www.dpreview.com/lensreviews/sigma_10-20_4-5p6_n15/

http://www.dpreview.com/lensreviews/tokina_12-24_4_n15/

http://www.dpreview.com/lensreviews/tamron_10-24_3p5-5p6_n15/

 

If you end up renting and nothing is available in your locality lensrentals is a good source here: http://www.lensrentals.com/category/wide-angle/for-all

 

Hi - I have a Canon 40D with which I'd like to take some pics of the AB suite on the NCL Sky. I'd especially like to capture the balcony with - I'm thinking - a wide angle lens. Given that the 40D is not full frame - what lens would you recommend? I'm considering renting a Canon 10 - 22 mm or perhaps the Sigma 12 - 24 - but am entirely open to suggestions!

 

Thank you,

 

Ollie.

[pilotdane]

Definitely rent something. The 24 end of my 24-105 is barely useful and I was cursing on my last cruise for not bringing something wider & faster. I recently borrowed a Canon 16-35 f2.8 which is a decent lens for the price though 16mm is probably still a bit too tight for what you want.

 

Make sure to post back so we know what you got. A little mini lens review would also be nice.

[TheRoff]

I used the Canon 10-22 on a 30D for most cabin shots. It works well, but be careful of the distortion in such a wide lens even on a crop body.

 

Larry

[chipmaster]

Beside taking indoor pictures of our cabin without doing a pano/stitch a superwide offers gives you another set of flexibility for prospective.

 

Two good reads, yes Ken Rockwell has some good tidbits :D

 

http://www.lensrentals.com/news/2010.02.13/a-broad-guide-to-ultra-wide

 

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/how-to-use-ultra-wide-lenses.htm

 

[trophy_23]

I use the Sigma 10-20mm and really like it for cabin shots and the like. I would look at one of those, can be had for under $400USD used.

[zackiedawg]

Picked up a Tamron 10-24 last year, and got to use it on a cruise in November - definitely is a new world being able to fit a whole cabin, or whole balcony, in a single shot without pano-stitching something together.

 

Of course, the lenses are also wonderful for other shots throughout the ship interiors, and on the islands...and anywhere else you go - I love ultrawide lenses!

[pierces]

I use a Sony11-18 ultrawide on my A700 and it does a good job on cabin interiors.

 

That said, I really like the Sweep Panorama feature on my new 24x7 pocket cam. The HX5V has a feature the allows you to simply hold down the shutter release as you pan from side to side to create a panorama of up to 270°. It does this my capturing and stitching as many as 100 images in near-real-time at the wide end of the 10x zoom (25mm equivalent) and saving them as an ordinary JPEG. It also goes as far as removing ghosts of people or objects that may be moving during the pan. The image is limited to 1080 pixels high, so it won't replace serious panoramas with the DSLR and software, but for quick captures in a way that was too much trouble to bother with before, it's hard to beat. (Serious pano-stitching of cabin interiors for web display would fall into the "too much trouble" zone for me).

 

An example straight out of the camera:

 

 

I would still get an ultrawide for all of the other cool things you can do with it, but if it's time to upgrade your pocket camera anyway, the HX5V has some compelling features.

 

Link to mini-review I wrote in another thread

 

Dave

[zackiedawg]

BTW Dave - I'm sure you could figure this out yourself being a photo guy...but just thought I'd throw it out there - if you want more than 1080p high, you can do the pano in 'vertical sweep' mode, wide setting, then hold the camera in portrait orientation and sweep. The widest pano setting won't be as wide as in horizontal orientation, but the pano itself will be 1920 pixels high by 4912 wide and will print nicely!

[pierces]

BTW Dave - I'm sure you could figure this out yourself being a photo guy...but just thought I'd throw it out there - if you want more than 1080p high, you can do the pano in 'vertical sweep' mode, wide setting, then hold the camera in portrait orientation and sweep. The widest pano setting won't be as wide as in horizontal orientation, but the pano itself will be 1920 pixels high by 4912 wide and will print nicely!

 

Yeah, I tried it and it worked ok. (Needing to fiddle with sweep orientation settings if I have the Alpha with me negates the convenience;)) Another fairly cool trick is to take two (or more) sweeps, one above the other and use a stitcher to join them.

 

Endless fun!

 

Dave

[oliverweagle]

The brown van with a Tokina 11 - 16 f2.8 showed up yesterday .... more to follow!:)