Toronto Photography Meetup Group

I'm looking for a wide angle lens that has a wider fov than what an FX 14mm would provide. The key feature is that it has distortion correction in the glass leaving the lines straight. I've heard rumours of some lens able to achieve that without using a tilt shift or lens correction in pp.

If someone can through a name my way that'd be great. It's for an FX Nikon.

How about the Sigma 12-24?
http://www.photozone.de/nikon--nikkor-a ... rt--review

You get your extra 2mm, and it's surprisingly free of distortion.

The review is for DX, but the lens is definitiely full frame.

Oops, double post...

... and yes, I do happen to own one.

What type of distortion are you most concerned with?

Barrel distortion?
Perspective distortion?
Why do you want something wider than 14mm?

Lens design is by definition an exercise in compromises. I'm not aware of any UWA lenses for 35mm d/SLR that are well corrected for all aberrations.

If your film/sensor plane isn't aligned perfectly perpendicular to your subject (ie. tilt upwards or downwards) then perspective distortion will be apparent and can only be corrected (to a degree by tilt-shilt lenses or in PP). A well corrected rectilinear lens will correct for most straight lines when aligned properly with the subject - however the compromise may be that that lens will vignette as much as 1 stop or 1.5 stops at the edges.

Barrel distortion is better controlled by current lens design and generally speaking the newer the lens the better the performance. Having said that UWA zooms tend to have more barrel or pincushion distortion than primes.

As a general rule, the better corrected a lens is for aberrations the more expensive it will be. My suggestion is to determine a budget then investigate the best options given your budget.

If you can afford a new system consider the following:

<1000>$1000 2. Hasselblad SWC (only 21mm equivalent but it's probably the best corrected UWA lens made in any format ever).

Other options to consider is large format cameras and lenses as well.

The alternative is to shoot multiple pics of the scene and do a pano.

There are only three lenses for SLR's that alow you to go wider than 14mm on FF 35mm SLR's

The aforementioned Sigma 12-24
The rare and bloody expensive Nikkor 13mm
The semi-rare Voigtlander Ultra-Wide heliar 12mm f5.6 in F mount (Requires MLU, only compatible ith F, F2 and Nikkormats).

The Sigma is actually the best option with relatively low optical distortion and good vignetting performance. The Voigtlander is sharper, especially at the edges but is unsuitable for use on modern DSLR's (the LTM or M mount versions are usable on an M9 though).

Thanks a lot. I attempted lens correction assisted with calibration to tilt the curves a bit when dealing with a steep curve and it did help. I'll give the Sigma 12-24 a shot.

Again thanks.