At 100' I would think your kit lens should handle it quite well. You don't need to spend more money unless your looking for faster glass. In that case a 35mm 1.8 G would do for you for about $200. Be sure to post your pics.
Hello everyone! I recently bought a d3300. One of the reasons I bought it was to shoot pics and video of my animated Christmas display. I'm looking to purchase a new, wide angle lens but of course, I'm not sure what to get. My display is about 60' wide and I can get back about 100' to shoot it.
It is not a wide angle situation. A 40mm DX lens zoom will cover pretty much exactly 60 feet wide and 40 feet high from 100 feet.
Not sure of the movie format. For still pictures, the diagonal measurement (or a bit longer) is normally considered the "normal lens" focal length. For DX, that is 29 mm. Or it would be valid to consider 50mm as "normal" for FX, so then 50/1.5 is 33mm for DX. So, around 30 to 35mm would be the "normal lens" for DX, and wide angle is shorter.
DX is 3:2 format, and HDTV is 16:9, so movies would be a little different, and I realize now that I don't actually know about movie format. Making this up, but my guess is that the cameras use the full width, but the height would be shorter. There are sources that claim Nikon movies subsample every third FX pixel row, and every second DX row.
What would you need a new lens to do different, that your current lens does not do now?
A wide angle lens would let you stand closer than 100 feet.
Thanks for the info! I was thinking of a closer shot. Mainly because to get 100', I have to get across the road and stand on scaffolding to film. I guess I should have asked about a lens at a shorter distance. Sorry about that! To stay in my yard the max distance is about 60' and the height is about 30'.
If staying in your yard means from say 30 feet, then it would take a 12 mm DX lens to cover 60 feet width. That certainly is wide angle, and before, I just meant that 100 feet would not be. At this extreme, you would encounter some lens distortion (field curvature, straight lines on house would show a a little curve, which some software could correct, for example, Adobe Raw).
Here is a calculator that will show the numbers:
http://www.tawbaware.com/maxlyons/calc.htm
4th calculator down "Dimensional field of view". Use 1.5 for DX "Focal length multiplier". You sort of have to enter numbers trial and error to hit your goal.
And that is showing DX 3:2 format, and not HDTV 16:9 format, which my notion is, HD will be a little less tall. 16:9 is not far from 2:1, but closer to 60:33.75 feet will fit in the format.