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Wide Angle Primes... fairly useless?

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yes, they are useless. Canon is known for having pathetic wide angle primes, even the L lenses. The "widest" you can get on canon have it be decent glass is the canon 35 1.4L lens. If you go wider than that you should be looking at zeiss glass. Assuming you are looking for the best quality possible.
 
Iggy_Rebel said:
Please tell me how did you achieve this effect

http://ryan.li/showphoto.php?cat=11&p=9
and
http://ryan.li/showphoto.php?cat=11&p=10

This does not look at all like my nightshots in London! What type of
settings did you use if you dont mind me asking. And PP?

good work!
Click to expand...
Cheers! :)

First off, the sky was actually that bright in reality - there's more light pollution in London than one would think.

Secondly, both were shot handheld with my 5D + Sigma 20/1.8, at ISO 1600 and F/2 allowed me too use shutter speeds as fast as 1/20 or 1/15 seconds. I think I used around -0.7 or -1.0 EV to prevent overexposure as well (which is of course always something you have to watch out for with night shots).

Shooting wide open had two other "side effects". Firstly, the vignetting (normal for such a wide angle lens with such a large aperture) - I deliberately didn't touch this in PP, I think it adds to the images. Secondly the very shallow depth of field - the Dali shot is actually out of focus if you look closely, I had to MF this one as the statue was too dark for AF to lock on, and took one shot in a hurry. Again I don't think it detracts from the image.

As for PP, these two images are pretty typical and didn't require major retouching (compared to portraits etc). I shot in RAW and processed using Bibble, with lens distortion correction and noise reduction as part of the process. Then I used Photoshop and converted to Lab mode - this allowed me to use curves to increase contrast, saturation and also perform very precise colour correction (auto WB was just a touch too warm) independently of each other.

In the final stage of my workflow I'd "dodge and burn" using a 50% grey Soft Light layer: I'd "paint" white or black over the areas I wanted to lighten and darken respectively. E.g. in the Dali photo I brightened the back of the statue a bit whilst darken the shadow on the underside; in the boat photo I brightened the buildings and the strip of water just "beneath" the boat. Subtlety is the key here, unless when I'm deliberately trying to achieve a "spotlight" effect.

Looks like I'd gone into more detail than intended :p Hope you find it useful anyway.

Cheers
Ryan

--
One night in Sofia
http://ryan.li/
 
Ryan Li said:
Iggy_Rebel said:
Please tell me how did you achieve this effect

http://ryan.li/showphoto.php?cat=11&p=9
and
http://ryan.li/showphoto.php?cat=11&p=10

This does not look at all like my nightshots in London! What type of
settings did you use if you dont mind me asking. And PP?

good work!
Click to expand...
Cheers! :)

First off, the sky was actually that bright in reality - there's
more light pollution in London than one would think.

Secondly, both were shot handheld with my 5D + Sigma 20/1.8, at ISO
1600 and F/2 allowed me too use shutter speeds as fast as 1/20 or
1/15 seconds. I think I used around -0.7 or -1.0 EV to prevent
overexposure as well (which is of course always something you have
to watch out for with night shots).
Click to expand...
I have lately tended to not adjust EV; it seems generally better to expose normally, measured for what you can accept blowing out (this is one area where spot metering would be useful, automation or not, to connect to another thread), and then darken the image in RAW conversion to get the right light level. Less noise that way.
Ryan Li said:
As for PP, these two images are pretty typical and didn't require
major retouching (compared to portraits etc). I shot in RAW and
processed using Bibble, with lens distortion correction and noise
reduction as part of the process. Then I used Photoshop and
converted to Lab mode - this allowed me to use curves to increase
contrast, saturation and also perform very precise colour
correction (auto WB was just a touch too warm) independently of
each other.
Click to expand...
If you're in LAB mode anyway, don't forget that you can denoise and smooth the living daylights out of the color channels to get rid of color noise without actually affecting the image quality at all.
Ryan Li said:
In the final stage of my workflow I'd "dodge and burn" using a 50%
grey Soft Light layer: I'd "paint" white or black over the areas I
wanted to lighten and darken respectively. E.g. in the Dali photo I
brightened the back of the statue a bit whilst darken the shadow on
the underside; in the boat photo I brightened the buildings and the
strip of water just "beneath" the boat. Subtlety is the key here,
unless when I'm deliberately trying to achieve a "spotlight" effect.
Click to expand...
That's a nice idea - thanks! The usual Dodge tool is too blunt and difficult to control.

--
Japan: http://www.lucs.lu.se/people/jan.moren/log/current.html
Images: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jannem/
 
Have you used any of the lenses that you mention, or are you going off of photozone and photodo ratings? I have the 20mm f/2.8 and 28 f/1.8 and find them to be excellent.

As others have mentioned, there is another side to primes, weight, speed, and bulk being just as important as image quality. The comparable zooms are huge and heavy - something that doesn't fit my needs at all.

Those of us who have swam against the stream and own the lenses that get poo-pooed around here find them to be wonderful tools. I'd really suggest trying them for yourself.
 
you use something like the 28/1.8 for a year, shooting mainly indoors w/ available light, and then slap on the 17-40 for the same use and find out just how useless IT is . i know, because i lived it.

the 28/1.8 beats 17-40, by a large margin, for low light shooting any day of the week. gurarnteed.

and i've never found it soft. with a good copy (not outright defective) it's all the sharp i need for tac-sharp 8x12's.

ofcourse, will always have our measurebator, pixel-peepers viewing test charts on screen at 1000%.
lukewarm said:
Canon seems to have a fairly limited selection of wide angle
primes, and most of them are fairly old models. I've looked at
reviews for the 28mm, 24mm, and 20mm lenses.

All of these lenses seem disappointingly soft, but are pretty fast.
However, except for very specific and rare instances, it seems
rather pointless to have a wide angle lens at with the extremely
short depth of field you get from f1.4 or f2.

Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like the popular 17-40L zoom lens is
actually sharper than ANY of the canon primes of 28mm or wider.
Wide angle lenses are primarily used for landscape and
architectural photos --- where corner-to-corner sharpness is at a
premium, and exceptionally large apertures are almost always
pointless. Relatively speaking, is it safe to say that wide angle
primes are the most useless of lenses?
Click to expand...
 
Jan Moren said:
Ryan Li said:
I think I used around -0.7 or -1.0 EV to prevent
overexposure as well (which is of course always something you have
to watch out for with night shots).
Click to expand...
I have lately tended to not adjust EV; it seems generally better to
expose normally, measured for what you can accept blowing out (this
is one area where spot metering would be useful, automation or not,
to connect to another thread), and then darken the image in RAW
conversion to get the right light level. Less noise that way.
Click to expand...
Depends what you mean by "expose normally", the camera meter doesn't always do a good job hence compensation is needed even if you're aiming to "expose to the right" without blowing out highlights. But agree that spotmetering would be useful.

However, don't forget that it's nearly always easier to clean up noise in PP than to recover lost detail in blown highlights.
Jan Moren said:
Jan Moren said:
As for PP, these two images are pretty typical and didn't require
major retouching (compared to portraits etc). I shot in RAW and
processed using Bibble, with lens distortion correction and noise
reduction as part of the process. Then I used Photoshop and
converted to Lab mode - this allowed me to use curves to increase
contrast, saturation and also perform very precise colour
correction (auto WB was just a touch too warm) independently of
each other.
Click to expand...
If you're in LAB mode anyway, don't forget that you can denoise and
smooth the living daylights out of the color channels to get rid of
color noise without actually affecting the image quality at all.
Click to expand...
Of course, although with Noise Ninja built into Bibble RAW I have no need for this extra stage in the workflow. If you haven't seen Noise Ninja, I'd recommend it - it does an excellent job (although default settings are too strong for my tastes).
Jan Moren said:
Jan Moren said:
In the final stage of my workflow I'd "dodge and burn" using a 50%
grey Soft Light layer: I'd "paint" white or black over the areas I
wanted to lighten and darken respectively. E.g. in the Dali photo I
brightened the back of the statue a bit whilst darken the shadow on
the underside; in the boat photo I brightened the buildings and the
strip of water just "beneath" the boat. Subtlety is the key here,
unless when I'm deliberately trying to achieve a "spotlight" effect.
Click to expand...
That's a nice idea - thanks! The usual Dodge tool is too blunt and
difficult to control.
Click to expand...
Agree. FYI I find 3% strength for the paintbrush to work best (not too weak but gives enough control).

--
One night in Sofia
http://ryan.li/
 
I have a Canon 24 f/2.8 on my XT probably 90% of the time. I switch it out for a 100 or 200 mm as needed. Sharp, bright moderately wide lense is perfect for my shooting style.
 
mine stays on 20d most of the time. it's everything you said, adding versatile, small, and light to the list.

it took several years and many L lenses to finally be content with this little gem.
lespurgeon said:
I have a Canon 24 f/2.8 on my XT probably 90% of the time. I
switch it out for a 100 or 200 mm as needed. Sharp, bright
moderately wide lense is perfect for my shooting style.
Click to expand...
 


















my favorite inexpensive prime....
--
jypsee in Michigan again
http://www.stonelakephotography.com



...we live in a universe whose age we can't quite compute, surrounded by stars whose distances we don't altogether know, filled with matter we can't identify, operating in conformance with physical laws whose properties we don't truly understand.
Bill Bryson; A Short History of Nearly Everything
 
Just a question for the owners of the 24 2.8. I have this lens and it is extremely sharp when my subjects (2 very fast kids) are within 10 feet. However, for objects that are further away (say 20 feet), the output seems somewhat soft. Is this a common trait of this lens? Or am I doing something wrong?

PS - I am at work right now and do not have access to my pictures, so I can not post samples at this time.
 
i recently purged most images from my web site and w/ the few remaining net images it's hard to tell. but most of my printed images, where subject is beyond 10 feet, are sharp.






Tangerine said:
Just a question for the owners of the 24 2.8. I have this lens and
it is extremely sharp when my subjects (2 very fast kids) are
within 10 feet. However, for objects that are further away (say 20
feet), the output seems somewhat soft. Is this a common trait of
this lens? Or am I doing something wrong?

PS - I am at work right now and do not have access to my pictures,
so I can not post samples at this time.
Click to expand...
 
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