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Recommendation on Camera Lens

Condoguy
Apprentice

I am not that knowledgeable on cameras so excuse my ignorance in this area.  I purchased a Canon EOS Rebel XS a couple of years ago.  The lens says it is 55mm-18mm so I thought this would produce wide angle shots.  I want to photograph interior shots of rental condos to display on the web.  With my previous digital camera, I would take a photograph of a bedroom and end up with a shot of the bed and little else.  I thought the Canon, with a lens that would drop to 18mm would produce more of an image of the room.  However, I can see only a marginal difference from the previous camera.  Can someone make a recommendation as to either a new lens or possible an adapter to the current lens that would increase the field of view.

5 REPLIES 5

cicopo
Elite

It's not hard to see why you're a bit confused as to why 18 mm isn't wide enough. On the old SLR's and a modern FULL FRAME DSLR it would be a very wide angle lens BUT the camera you have is what's known as a crop body (smaller sensor) so EVERY lens you use on it acts 1.6 times longer. In other words that 18 mm acts like a 28 mm lens. Your needs require something like the Canon 10-22 or a third party lens with similar specs. I have not used the Canon 10-22 but it gets very good reviews & any images I've seen from it has very little of the distortion such extra wide lenses normally produce.

"A skill is developed through constant practice with a passion to improve, not bought."

JoeDavid
Enthusiast

The Rebel cameras use a smaller "crop" sensor than the full-frame (35mm film) size sensor.  That means that there is a multiplication factor of 1.6x that factors in to the focal length of the lens.  For example, 18mm would be very wide angle on a full-frame sensor but on a Rebel it is the equivalent of 18x1.6=28.8mm (in terms of a 35mm lens).  Canon makes a 15-85mm EFS lens that gets you down to a 35mm equivalent of 24mm which is fairly wide but, if you are shooting interiors, you really need to look at their EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 lens.  It is a true ultra-wide zoom for the crop sensor camera bodies.  It doesn't have image stabilization so you may also need a tripod if the interiors are dimly lit.

 

Currenly using R5 and R7 mostly plus a variety of Canon RF and EF lens...

ebiggs1
Legend
Legend

I can vouch for the Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM Lens. Good lens!

It is well worth it's price of around $720.00. But be warned, it will not work on any Canon FF, if you upgrade later on.

EB
EOS 1DX and 1D Mk IV and less lenses then before!

For your existing (crop) camera get the EF-S 10-22. You might want to rent that lens first to see what kind (if any) distortion you get.

+3 for the 10-22.  As the previous poster said, 18mm just isn't that wide on a 1.6 crop sensor.  The 10-22 gives you quite wide field of view.  I use it frequently for real estate photography and it has served me well.  Most times the lens never comes off my camera.  It's wide enough at 10mm to back into a corner and grab pretty much the entire room.  The distortion isn't too bad at 10mm, and negligible at 12mm.  Lightroom does a reasonably good job at correcting distortion and falloff for the lens.  I have read a lot of people praising the lack of CA, but I still find myself doing a fair amount of work in post to clean it up.

 

Oh, and I highly recommend picking up software to fix perspective.  Photoshop and Lightroom can do it, but if you're shooting with ultrawides a lot I found it to be worth my time to invest in 3rd party software.  I've been very happy with DxO Labs Optics Pro.  I only use it for perspective, as I've been happy with the automated profiling of the 10-22 in Lightroom, but it can also correct distortion.   And Hah!   I couldn't remember the name of the program so I looked it up and I found out that Optics Pro also has a correction for CA.  Can't believe I didn't see that feature.  I'll have to give tthat a shot and see how well it works.

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