wide angle?

[liverlipsyyz]

hi. i'm reading up on landscape photography and one of the articles i read was talking about the authors 5 guidelines to landscape photography. the first point was to use a wide angle lens. that makes a lot of obvious sense to me but being a beginner i'm wondering i i need to purchase a wide angle lens or is my current 18-55 nikor sufficient? at the 18mm end is that considered "wide angle"? thanks for any help. i priced out some wide angle lenses and they are too expensive for me.

[Nicole]

The 18mm end is considered wide angle, and there's nothing wrong with using that lens for landscapes. I recently used the previous version of that lens during a trip to Valley of Fire National Park and found it worked quite well. And when it didn't feel quite wide enough, I stitched together a few panoramic shots.

The thing is, you can take good landscape shots with any lens. Yes, wide is good. But at this point you have to think about whether or not you really want to invest in something that's even wider. (And I think you answered your question there).

[AgBeard]

18mm is fine ! Before investing in another lens, buy a set of Cokin P series ND graduated filters - they will enhance you landscape captures no end by bringing the sky & the foreground into a narrower dynamic range that your sensor can cope with.

[dcclark]

You don't need to purchase any other lens. The very first thing you should do, if you want to work on taking landscapes, is to go out and take some landscapes! Use what you have right now. Experiment and play around. I consider myself a "landscape photographer", but I often use my longer focal lengths to focus in on one or another interesting aspect of a landscape. Not all landscape photos have to be wide and sweeping -- in fact, those are often the most difficult to capture. Work with what you have, learn a lot, and then decide if you need to buy a new lens.

[fletch]

A lens is normally refered to as wide angle if it has a 35mm eqivalent focal lenght of 28mm or less. Your 18mm combined with your crop factor means you have a 27mm eqivanlent focal length. Therefore the lens is 'offically' a wide angle. A lot of P&S cameras only go down to 35mm which can be one of the major downsides and is much more improtant than the zoom multiplier.

[liverlipsyyz]

thanks for all your help everybody! i'm going to shoot some stuff with what i have now and also get some nd filters as agbeard suggests and play around with those. thanks, again!

[paulcompton]

Originally Posted by liverlipsyyz

hi. i'm reading up on landscape photography and one of the articles i read was talking about the authors 5 guidelines to landscape photography. the first point was to use a wide angle lens. that makes a lot of obvious sense to me but being a beginner i'm wondering i i need to purchase a wide angle lens or is my current 18-55 nikor sufficient? at the 18mm end is that considered "wide angle"? thanks for any help. i priced out some wide angle lenses and they are too expensive for me.

I wouldn`t say a wide angle was needed at all personally, a landscape can be any angle of view, if you feel you want to go wide with the 18 take a couple of shots and do a panoramic?

[wal]

I use 18-55mm, to me it's good enough... infact even at 18mm you'll be using some time post editing.

[Kathryn811]

Originally Posted by liverlipsyyz

hi. i'm reading up on landscape photography and one of the articles i read was talking about the authors 5 guidelines to landscape photography. the first point was to use a wide angle lens. that makes a lot of obvious sense to me but being a beginner i'm wondering i i need to purchase a wide angle lens or is my current 18-55 nikor sufficient? at the 18mm end is that considered "wide angle"? thanks for any help. i priced out some wide angle lenses and they are too expensive for me.

I too am looking for a wide angle lense to be able to take those landscape photos that would lend itself to an incredible landscape rather than joining three or more photos together. I have a Canon 400D and already is 'wide angle' but not wide enough. My thoughts are to buy another camera and a secondhand wide angle lense for it. what do others think?

[fletch]

You don't need another camera, the 400D has interchangeable lenses. You just need to buy a wide angle lens for a Canon mount. Anything less than 18mm would be considered wide angled on your camera. 10-22mm zooms are popular as super wide angle lenses so you could try to get one of them. A bit pricey though.