Good Wide Angle For Occasional Shots

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westmill

Banned
Geoffc said:
Westmill you've now caused me a problem :tennis: I was thinking my next purchase would be the Nikon 2X or 1.4X TC for the 70-200 which is around £400, but this is about £300 and would get much more use. Are your comments based on the VC version or the other one. I assume VC = VR in Tamron. I'm not sure if I would be too worried at that focal length and F stop. I take it any curvature could be corrected by something like DXO software. I think my ony slight reservation is that it is a DX only lens. Is that an issue at this price, possibly not. I must admit I will probably stay DX if they get the ISO performance up in the future.
Click to expand...
Oops ! sorry lol
errrr yes to VC being tamron version of VR and no Its the none VR version you want :D

It seems, while adding there VC they messed up. The none VC version is opticaly superior.
Best of all its even cheaper lol. Feild curvature is common in wide angle lenses which is why i bought up
the fact the 18-70 is excellent. You cant correct it though. This is not barrel distortion or pincushion distortion.
mmmmm how to explain lol.... I will try.... OK... when you focus a lens at a set distance... you assume that anything
at the same distance will also be in focus. If you have a lens suffering from feild curvature it means the focus point
changes in the lens towards the edges. If you set a load of people in an arc and focussed in the middle they would
all be sharp. If they were in a straight line, those at the end would be out of focus. Shutting the lens down reduces it
slightly as does the natural effect of more DOF when shutting down. Its genraly said its not that important unless
you are producing flat copy work, but it certainly has an efect if its severe. It doesnt bother me too much, since i can
genraly stop down to F8 anyway. Its just worth knowing if your after top results. Its only at the 17mm setting this is a problem. Its still an impressively sharp lens. I would also add...the Differance in image quality between the VC version
and none VC is actualy quite big. The none VC is far finer detailed throughout.
Since ive gone this far lol... Ive seen testers testing this lens without knowing about the feild curvature at the wide setting, and as a consequnce report it sometimes struggles to focus. It will focus fine and fast when single points are used.
When you have 50 focus points it naturaly cant agree where to focus.
I stress though, this is just at the wide 17mm setting. Other than that, it sets standards for sharpnes in this class. Its a great lens !
for the rest of the time its fast and perfect.
its like anything else. know your equipment to get the best out of it.
 
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pedroj

Senior Member
I have the 16-35mm F4 VR more expensive but well worth the extra dollars in my opinion...Designed for FX or DX if you ever go full frame....
 
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DaveW

Senior Member
Ok I think I am all lensed up now as I have had a stroke of luck.
I got a 18-70 non vr though for not much money. I tried the 18-70 on 18 and it took some great pics (well I'm pleased with them anyways).

I like this setting of 18 which comes out at 27 field of view, it reminded me of the Ricoh compact I have (film) which has the 24 fixed lens and I took that everywhere.

Also got the 35mm 1.8 (well I already had it) and 85mm 1.8 (new buy) so I reckon that covers me except for shooting birds which I don't do lol.

I think I would love to have that Tokina 11-16 or 12-24 one day, the wide certainly opens up things.
 
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