Taking wide-angle, indoor still shot's for rental properties with my Rebel T3i

[COnewbie]

I own apartments and really struggle with getting good shots of small rooms. My Rebel EOS T3i came with the EFS 18-55mm and the 55-250 mm kit lenses. I have taken some wide-angle still photos of rooms with the EFS 18-55 mm lens, but my apartment rooms are generally quite small (think of 12x12 living rooms and small baths, etc).  I just want to be able to fit a little more in the picture than I am getting right now, and I just cannot back up far enough in the room. Some distortion is OK. I saw some great room pictures taken with an adjustible 10-22mm, but don't know if I need an adjustable lens, and it seems they cost considerably more. Someone recommended using a fixed lens. Any ideas on a good sized fixed lens (hopefully at a reasonable price) that should work well with my camera for this purpose.  I am a newbie so sorry if I am not giving enough detail. Any ideas you can give me would be great.

[TCampbell · Accepted solution]

The EF-S 10-22mm lens is probably just what the doctor ordered.  If you want, rent a copy (lots of places rent them... LensRentals, BorrowLenses, B&H Photo, etc.) and try it out before buying -- but I suspect this is the lens you'll want.  There are a few competing lenses with similar focal length ranges... the Canon tends to get the best reviews.

This is a "rectilinear" wide angle lens... which means all "straight" lines will actually be maintained as "straight" in your photos. In a "fish eye" lens (aka "curvilinear") straight lines are not preserved and will appear rounded (unless the line happens to go through the very center of the image).  

But there is a problem... if you aren't careful, these very wide angle lenses will turn things that *should* appear as rectangles (windows, doors, etc.) will turn into trapezoids (keystone shapes) -- and in architecture this can look unappealing.  

To prevent this from happening, the camera needs to to be "level".  Make sure the lens is not angled downward or upward -- keep it level.  As long as the camera is level, the lines on the sides of your doors and windows will be upright and wont lean-in creating wonky shapes.

Good luck!

[cicopo]

I think you'll find most will recommend the Canon 10-22 or the Sigma & Tamron versions. From what I've read (no experience with it) Tokina also has a very good ultra wide short zoom.

[ebiggs1]

The Canon EF-S 10-22mm is what you want.  

[ScottyP]

The only problem with a fixed wide angle for a crop sensor is that the ones available are either not much wider than your 18-55 kit lens, or they are a "fisheye" lens. A 16 mm lens would be wide on a full frame camera, but not on yours. The crop camera robs you of some width compared to a standard full frame camera, so you really want to get down to like 11 milimeters or else it is no different than your kit lens. You probably want a normal rectilinear wide lens and not a fisheye, which gives a crazy warped "funhouse" effect that is hard to avoid in a confined indoor scene.

The Canon or the Sigma version of about 10 or 11 to 20 or 22 would be a good choice. There are other brands in this general range too, but i think id stick to these 2. The Sigma is a couple hundred bucks cheaper, and the two are about the same image quality from what I've seen in magazine comparisons.

[TCampbell · Accepted solution]

The EF-S 10-22mm lens is probably just what the doctor ordered.  If you want, rent a copy (lots of places rent them... LensRentals, BorrowLenses, B&H Photo, etc.) and try it out before buying -- but I suspect this is the lens you'll want.  There are a few competing lenses with similar focal length ranges... the Canon tends to get the best reviews.

This is a "rectilinear" wide angle lens... which means all "straight" lines will actually be maintained as "straight" in your photos. In a "fish eye" lens (aka "curvilinear") straight lines are not preserved and will appear rounded (unless the line happens to go through the very center of the image).  

But there is a problem... if you aren't careful, these very wide angle lenses will turn things that *should* appear as rectangles (windows, doors, etc.) will turn into trapezoids (keystone shapes) -- and in architecture this can look unappealing.  

To prevent this from happening, the camera needs to to be "level".  Make sure the lens is not angled downward or upward -- keep it level.  As long as the camera is level, the lines on the sides of your doors and windows will be upright and wont lean-in creating wonky shapes.

Good luck!

[COnewbie · Accepted solution]

Thanks to all of you.  Loved the idea of renting first and that is what I will do.  Why, however doesn't my kit 18-55MM lens get me there on the 18mm end?

[TCampbell]

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@COnewbie wrote:

Why, however doesn't my kit 18-55MM lens get me there on the 18mm end?

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This has to do with optimization.  

If you have a point & shoot camera (something where the lens cannot be removed) then they tend to have fairly aggressive zoom ranges... from a pretty wide "wide angle" to a fairly strong telephoto.  But the downside of these are that having this all-focal-lengths-in-one-lens is that the optical quality is not particularly great.  Lens design is a game of trade-offs.

Lenses that are a little less ambitious about their zoom range tend to offer better optical quality in the zoom range that they do offer.  And since your camera has the ability to let you swap one lens for another (the main point of a DSLR is that you can swap lenses in an effort to get a substantially better image quality then you could get with a point & shoot camera) there's not so much need for lenses with extremely agressive zoom ranges.   

Keep in mind that not too many years ago, a typical camera didn't have a zoom lens at all and we had to "zoom with our feet".