Fast wide and semi-wide primes

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tylerrad

Active member
I'm looking for good wide-angle primes. I'll be purchasing a wide angle zoom (which one, I've not yet decided), but for those shots where I need an aperture of greater than 2.8, a prime lens is a must.

The only lens I've seen so far that seems to fit the bill is the Sigma 20mm f/1.8, but I've heard that at 1.8 it's extremely soft.

I'd love further suggestions. Vintage lenses too. I'm not interested in anything with a focal length of 30mm though. On a crop DSLR, anything more than that can't really be considered wide.

Footage, suggestions, experiences, etc. are all welcome
 
Going faster than 2.8 wider than 30mm is going to be expensive. This is especially true if you don't want a lens that is soft wide open. A typical set of zeiss superspeeds includes 18, 25, 35, 50 and 85 so you should try to look for primes at similar focal lengths. The thing is, a major reason that zeiss super speeds are so fast (t 1.3) is that lenses don't reach optimum sharpness until you stop them down a bit. Film resolves much more detail than video on dslr does so it needs this extreme sharpness. Barry has said many times that video on dslr is the great equalizer. You are not going to see the kind of needs for sharp lenses you do with film, red or stills.

Most of the stuff you see is shot between 2.8 and 4. Shooting much more open than that is going to result in that extreme bokeh effect you see so much nowadays.
 
I grabbed a Sigma 28mm 1.8 for $350 and completely love it. It doesn't look soft at all wide open. Granted, the 28mm focal length translates almost to 50mm on a crop body. Still a fabulous lens though.
 
My Sigma 24mm f/1.8 (Nikon mount) works nicely. It's sort of hard to describe softness/sharpness with that lens because it also has a macro function....when you are close to your subject the DOF is very very very shallow, but what's in focus is nicely sharp. When you're further from the subject the subject gets sharper and the DOF seems deeper (but still on the shallow side.) I really like the lens actually.

I also have a 20mm f/1.7 but it is only for my m4/3 camera. It is sharp as hell at critical focus, even wide open, but won't work on your Canon :(
 
Thanks for the suggestions everyone. The Zeiss Compact Primes look fantastic, but if I could afford a $4000 lens I'd probably be getting a camera a step up from the T2i. Anything that can't be gotten for less than $500 is unfortunately out of my range (and I'm fine with buying used). That means the Canon 14mm L lens is out -- but even if it were cheaper, it's still not fast enough (at least for my purposes; I plan to be shooting often in the dead of night). Ben B, have you ever tried any landscape/deep focus type shots with your Sigma 24mm wide open? And, if so, did you notice it being especially soft? I wonder how comparable the wide open sharpness of the 24mm is with the Sigma 20mm, which is closer to the focal length I'd prefer.

Keep the suggestions coming, I appreciate any offered. I do hope someone comes in with some first-hand experience of the Sigma 20mm on a Canon HDSLR
 
I'll take a few in the morning. Street outside is too dark to get anything at all at video shutter speeds...if I was in a city or a different part of the town here that would be different. They'll be on my GH1 so 2x crop...I haven't even started either roll in my FM2s so no full frame this time :)

You probably won't be able to get "deep focus" shots with it at night, but if your subject is near your background it will probably do ok...or rather if your subject is not right next to your camera with far off wide background the DOF won't be super shallow...am I making sense?

Guessing the 20mm is better for you...just more expensive.
 
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I nearly bought a Sigma 20mm 1.8, and I recall reading in photo forums that some versions are much better than others wide open. So essentially it is a very random situation - you either get a good one or a bad one.
 
when i had my D90 i had a 28mm 2.8 mm Nikkor lens that was pretty nice and it ended up being my walk arond lens (the 50mm 1.8 just wasnt wide enough a lot of times),only cost about $100 or so.
 
jonE5 said:
when i had my D90 i had a 28mm 2.8 mm Nikkor lens that was pretty nice and it ended up being my walk arond lens (the 50mm 1.8 just wasnt wide enough a lot of times),only cost about $100 or so.
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I second this. I like the Nikon 28mm for most shots.
 
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I have the lens and use it often. It can be a bit soft at 1.8 and also requires both a switch and push to go from auto to manual focus. A good review of the lens can be found athttp://photo.net/equipment/sigma/sigma20-vs-canon2035 . Also, when I picked this up it cost about $360 but now runs for much more. It seems quality control is not that great as I see a lot of bad reviews.
 
evilken said:
I nearly bought a Sigma 20mm 1.8, and I recall reading in photo forums that some versions are much better than others wide open. So essentially it is a very random situation - you either get a good one or a bad one.
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Took some pictures but you can't tell much...it's sharp where critical focus is and everything else is workable, the closer you get to the camera the softer things look.

I would never shoot with a lens that fast wide open trying to get a wide shot, regardless of focal length...it's just not a good idea. I would suggest investing in some lights.
 
Here's some footage of the Sigma 20mm f/1.8 from Vimeo -- shot wide open at night: http://vimeo.com/8494071

Check out the videographer's comments at the bottom of the comments section. Seems promising... The video looks good too -- at least I imagine it once did, before it was compressed to 17MB
 
I have a Nikon 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5 DX lens (DX meaning it's optimized for APS-C sized sensor). The Sigma 20mm f/1.8 is not optimized for an APS-C sized sensor (such as that of the 7D/T2i). Does this mean that the 20mm focal length on my Nikon 18-70mm is wider than the 20mm focal length of the Sigma prime? Does the 20mm Sigma, on an APS-C sensor camera, really provide the field of view of 32mm focal length on a APS-C optimized lens?

Kind of an aside question before continuing the lens discussion, just for clarification
 
The Sigma is optimized for a full frame camera, on a cropped sensor it is the same as your Nikon at 20mm. It is a 32mm when you compare it with a full frame camera like the 5d.
 
tylerrad said:
I have a Nikon 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5 DX lens (DX meaning it's optimized for APS-C sized sensor). The Sigma 20mm f/1.8 is not optimized for an APS-C sized sensor (such as that of the 7D/T2i). Does this mean that the 20mm focal length on my Nikon 18-70mm is wider than the 20mm focal length of the Sigma prime? Does the 20mm Sigma, on an APS-C sensor camera, really provide the field of view of 32mm focal length on a APS-C optimized lens?

Kind of an aside question before continuing the lens discussion, just for clarification
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There is no such thing as an APS-C "optimized" lens in the sense you've described. The DX lenses from Nikon have the exact same FOV as full frame lenses when both used at the same mm value of focal length on a crop camera. What DX means is that the image circle of the lens is not large enough to fill the full frame.

Lets put it another way. If you put your 20mm full frame lens and your 20mm DX lens on a crop camera they would both look exactly the same.

If you put your 20mm full frame lens and your 20mm DX lens on a full frame camera the DX lens would not fill the frame and would sort of be like looking at a circle in the middle of the frame, with black edges (think super vignetting.) If you were then to cut a circle exactly the same size out of the photo from the 20mm full frame lens and compare the two shots, they would look exactly the same.

Here is an example of what a DX lens looks like on a full frame body:
Rob_Gruhl_FX-on-DX_12.6.2007_270x405.jpg


If you had a FF lens of the same focal length on their, the dog and the man and everything else that you see would all look the same, the edges would just be filled in with new imagery that we can not see in this photo as well. Therefore, when you put both lenses on a crop body the images will look exactly the same.

Did this explain it? Feel free to link this post whenever someone gets confused by this. :)
 
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The wide end is where the 5d really shines - used nikkor 20 2.8 - very cheap

On my 7 I use the 16-50 tokina which I like, the 11-16 tokina has a good rep too

I dont know any wider than 2.8 sub 20mm lenses are there any (sub $4000) ?

S
 
morgan_moore said:
The wide end is where the 5d really shines - used nikkor 20 2.8 - very cheap

On my 7 I use the 16-50 tokina which I like, the 11-16 tokina has a good rep too

I dont know any wider than 2.8 sub 20mm lenses are there any (sub $4000) ?

S
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Hmmm....2.8 becomes the sort of defacto fast standard wider than 20mm doesn't it?

The canon 16-35mm is AWESOME but yeah, it's f/2.8. And of course there's the 15mm fisheye...f/2.8.

Hmmm....on my Gh1 I use the 20mm f/1.7, that's faster than an f/1.8 :D ... but not wider than 20mm, especially since it's designed for a 2X crop...will never be wider than 40mm.

There's a Leica (Panasonic) 25mm f/1.4 for 4/3rds (not m4/3) that is like $1,000....not wider than you said but fast and it's sharp as hell even wide open...Noct Nikkoresque they say.
 
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