Wide Angle Lenses - Full Frame vs APS-C

[Marvin]

I'm shooting on a crop sensor (30D) and using a Tamron 10-24 Di (poor quality, I must say) to cover my wide angle needs. I'm looking to upgrade my body and lens soon, but I need  little help. I shoot real estate and to be honest the 10mm just isn't wide enough at times. Here are two issues I'm stuggling with:

1. Do I wait to get better glass until I upgrade to possibly a full frame body
2. How do the focal lengths of the Canon wide zooms compare to my 10-24

See, if I get a new lens now (Canon 10-22) then I'm essentially forcing myself to stay in the crop sensor body market. However, if I decided I will go with a full frame body, then I cannot use the 10-22, and should get something like the 16-35, which would not cover my current wide angle needs on my 30D. Dilemma.

Has anyone else fought this battle who can offer some advice & insight?

[Twilightscapes]

If you're serious about real estate photography, then you would be best served by getting a 17TS-E lens. This isn't as wide as 10mm on your existing sensor size, but you can shift-pano two or three shots together and get even wider if need be.

This way you would be spending your money on the glass which is most important here.

Then, if you like, you can pick up a cheap 5Dc or 5D2 and have the ideal FF/TS set up.

[Monito]

If 10 mm is not wide enough, then you have two options: 1) Fisheye lens (but do not de-fish or you once again won't be wide enough); 2) Pano rig to pivot on the entrance pupil of the lens and stitch the images together.

The latter is your best solution because you won't have fisheye distortion (option 1 is not really an option). It also allows you to get maximum resolution, even from low resolution cameras. Use the Hugin or AutoPanoPro panorama software. PS CS 5 or 6 is pretty good these days too. You can stitch with any focal length, and subject matter like interiors that are static (non-moving) are ideal for stitching.

[mycanonphotos]

Going under 16 you will start seeing much more distortion. TS-E you can correct with the tiltshift or you can correct in Photoshop. I say grab a 17-40L, 16-35L II or save some money and get the Tokina 16-28 f2.8 I have been recently shooting with this and its killer sharp!  bought it over the Canon 16-35 LII. Yeah, I would start taking more shots and stitching together in potoshops autoalign and autoblend layers tool.Till you go full frame rent a few for your 30D...you can even try that when you go full frame, test em out. 

[shoot_ric]

Before accepting a project make sure you have the tools you need. If you need to rent, calculate your costs into your quote.

Don't trust advice given to you for free. 

[RexGig]

I went ahead and bought a 10-22mm, and find it very useful. I have no regrets. If being "tied" to cropped-frame is a concern, well, purchasing a pre-owned lens, and then re-selling it later, in good condition, should result in recovering most or all of one's cost.

I do not shoot images for real estate purposes, but my evidentiary photography often includes interior and exterior images of houses and other buildings, so my 10-22m lens is very useful. I will be using it for quite a long time, as I have no plans to part with my 7D cameras, even if I do buy a 5D Mark III in the next year or so.

[2n10]

I believe sigma has an 8-16mm.  I am pretty certain it is for aps-c bodies though.

[Marvin]

Thanks for the input everyone. My favorite idea so far is to buy a used 'crop' lens if I am worried about moving to full frame.

Shooting pano's just ins't an option for how much I'm getting paid for these shoots. It's a struggle just to do semi-OK work for such low pay. That means I just have to get it in one click (or 3 for HDR).