Wide angled lens for mountains?

Dheorl wrote:

Gary from Seattle wrote:

Dheorl wrote:

Gary from Seattle wrote:

I think in Nepal if you are on a trek there is so much vertical relief (10000' is not uncommon) in some of the valleys that tend to be rather narrow that you would do well with ultra wide. Personally, I think the 8mm F1.8 fisheye Pro is a great choice with the added bonus of being a terrific lens for shooting star shots. It also fits the bill for being lightweight and rather small.

On the ultra wide end of the spectrum, unlike mid and longer length lenses, I don't think a zoom is as valuable - just the wide end.

Although this shot shows curvature (which looks good to me here) it is very easy to avoid curvature in most cases by keeping the horizon near the center in the image.

See, I personally just don't like these type of images. I feel that you loose all the majesty of the mountains shooting them in such a way. Obviously though some people do like them.

I think I'd advise the OP go and flick through flickr at pictures taken in the Nepalese mountains and see what the widest focal length that regularly crops up in images they like are.

This image was all about the breadth of the larch-covered terrain, here over 20 miles wide. It is all about color.

Sorry but whatever the intent the image really doesn't do it for me and I stand by my initial statement when it comes to wide angle lenses in the mountains.

And I find "majestic" images absent great lighting to be repetitive and boring. It has to be a very dramatic and rugged scene (sharp toothed peaks) with shadows on glaciers and wind ridges or good alpenglow for me to find it interesting....and so there you go. Only about 15% of my mountain scenes are telephoto. The vast majority are shot at 14-17mm (Olympus), usually with a floral foreground.