Limburger
Veteran Member
Hi guys,
Looking for a cheap wide angle on my A7.
Are there any bargains?
Looking for a cheap wide angle on my A7.
Are there any bargains?
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brightcolours
Forum Pro
No criteria at all? What is the actual budget idea?
For my Canon EOS 6D I chose a Voigtlander 20mm f3.5 SL II. Up close, astigmatism makes for less than agreeable corners, that is why it tests badly in MTF tests. But at normal/infinity distances it is a pretty sharp and nice lens. Only quibble I have is the CA. Not that bad, but trying to find profiles for RAW converters to really correct it proved an impossible mission for me.
Love its compactness and feel.
The Samyang 14mm f2.8 obviously is a candidate as well.
You can buy Nikkor 18mm f3.5 manual focus lenses on ebay for under $400.
A similar option is the Canon FD 17mm f4, also a pretty nice lens. The Canon FD 20mm f2.8 is not too bad either. http://www.sonyalphaforum.com/topic/383-canon-fd-lenses-images/
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Limburger
Veteran Member
Thanks for the reply.
Well as criteria, cheaper yet comparable to the Voigtlander 21 F4 color skopar. 18mm would do but I am affraid 14mm is a bit too wide for me (fishy eye).
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Cheers Mike
Register and vote.
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One possibility:
Tamron 21mm f/4
Typical corner and left & right edge issues but if you can live with that...
Lightshow
Veteran Member
Robert Tolputt
Forum Enthusiast
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If you do find a classic legacy UWA for the A7, the corners will be disappointing - in my experience anyway. The modern options are not cheap either with the exception of the Samyang/Rokinon 14mm which I find to be very good. If you think it is too wide then with the A7 you have scope to crop and its infamous distortions are easily dealt with if they bother you
The Kolari sensor mod seems to improve matters, but is not cheap.
Go for the Samyang/Rokinon is my advice.
The Kolari sensor mod seems to improve matters, but is not cheap.
Go for the Samyang/Rokinon is my advice.
N
neil holmes
Guest
I would go with one of the 17-35, 19-35 20-35 type zooms over many older lenses.....some are pretty good, some are ok.....you get what you pay for but with older wide legacy lenses because there are not THAT many around and they were expensive in their day, the newer zooms are better value I think.
What is a bargain?
I consider the Canon 17 f4 L TS-E (the most expensive lens I have ever got by FAR) to be a bargain.....and other lenses I paid very little for to have been over priced.
Tamron 17-35 2.8-4 was a lens I liked a lot....sold it early on after getting an A7 as it was MF on the A7 and a waste of an AF lens.
If you get it or one of the cheaper AF 19-35 (many models) you can get it in A mount or EF mount and have AF to some degree with the A7 as well.
I have an old 19-35 Soligor which CAN be ok.....too many other issues with my copy to recommend fully (loose mount.....has AF on the lens but was MF only in Pentax K mount) but some of them might be what you are after.......have to give the Soligor a run on my A7s at some point (sold the A7 too)....I am mainly a prime shooter.
I did (do) have a ancient Canon 20-35 2.8 L.....was a lot better on the A7 than I expected (like many Canon zooms before the latest lot, not the sharpest especially away from the center) but was certainly useable (has bricked itself)...maybe not an absolute bargain especially since I only had use of it for about six months and am more of a prime shooter.....
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LynniePad
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Considering the performance, I consider the Zeiss 16-35mm f/4 to be a bargain. Mine was US$800 after cash-back (and no adapter needed).
Canon, Nikon and Tamron UWA (full frame) zooms are much more expensive.
Limburger
Veteran Member
Not a bargain at about €1300 here.
Limburger
Veteran Member
Read many times that corners a problematic, even with modern Voigtlanders.
Robert Tolputt
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My Rokinon has smearing only in the most extreme corners and is much, much better than my Minolta MD 17mm. The Voightlander v3 looks very good from posted shots (although hard to know if they have been slightly cropped). I think if I cropped the Rokinon to about 15/16mm they would be the same.
RemcoR
Senior Member
Tokina 17/3.5 (rmc or AT-X) and Pentax 20/4 or 20/2.8 all have "good" corners wide open and inprove stopped down. Center shapness is very good to excellent on both. They are cheap. Many reviews on both floating around.
RemcoR
RemcoR
RemcoR
Senior Member
Purchased a Tokina 17/3.5 AT-X EF mount some months ago on ebay. Seller mentioned focusing issues so 85 Euros was enough. Replaced some parts missing due to a clumsy DIY job it must have had. On the 5D MK II it works fine, corners are good. Should do well on A7's too. The RMC is not optically the same but at least smaller, the AT-X is quite big.
Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst
700+ inkjet paper white spectral plots: OBA content etc.
I second that link! ;-)
Please note that these pictures were shot on my Sony A7 in raw format and processed with the same settings in Capture One without correcting for vignetting or chromatic aberrations. The camera was on a tripod, with 2 sec delay and I adjusted the focus with the help of the magnifier before each shot. I shot 3 pictures for every lens: one wide open, one at F/5.6 and one at F/11.
The page is easier to use if you use the following link: http://abbazz.zenfolio.com/ultrawides/h6c2d9da4#h6c2d9da4 (click on the upper left corner of each picture to open the menu in order to download the full size 24MP image).
Cheers!
Abbazz
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The 6x9 Photography Online Resource: http://artbig.com/
http://artbig.com/broch1b.jpg
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Limburger
Veteran Member
Read all comments and see there are some interesting non native offerings.
Not sorted yet since I still got the 21mm Voigtlander in the back of my mind (nice lenses Voigtlander got) as FE28+21mm converter lens, €700 combined but does AF yet adds weight and bulk I try to avoid. I am also not so sure about the performance of the latter for this kind of money.
Not sorted yet since I still got the 21mm Voigtlander in the back of my mind (nice lenses Voigtlander got) as FE28+21mm converter lens, €700 combined but does AF yet adds weight and bulk I try to avoid. I am also not so sure about the performance of the latter for this kind of money.
For cheap the Tokina RMC 17/3.5 is definitely worth consideration. The entire right edge on my copy is soft and it flares pretty easily. But the sharpness can be pretty impressive, everywhere else. And it's under $200. And it's fairly small. And very wide! :-D
ProfHankD
Veteran Member
The quick answer is yes, but fewer good choices the wider you go, and virtually none <=21mm.
Ultrawides for SLRs have to be retrofocal designs to clear the mirror, and that means they are essentially a conventional wide lens with an inverted telephoto lens behind them to reproject the image farther back. Not a big deal, except that tends to need about twice as many elements as a regular lens and having lots of elements is something that is really helped by modern computer-aided lens design, cheap aspherics, and anti-reflection coatings.
Despite that, there are some decent old ultrawides, but the demand for them is higher than it should be, and so the prices usually are too. You might think rangefinder ultrawides would be the answer, but there virtually are none because they wouldn't work with the rangefinder viewfinder, so the few that are out there tend to be rare and even more pricey than the already-inflated baseline for rangefinder lens pricing.
The best of my old ultrawides under 21mm is probably my Mir 20, which is a huge 20mm f/3.5 that can focus very close and gives a nice "Soviet glass" rendering (very neutral, fairly Zeiss-ish). Mine cost me about $10, but that's because it was one of a bunch of lenses I got in Kiev 10/15 mount, for which there are no commercial adapters. They tend to run closer to $100 in M42 mount.
My Spiratone 18mm f/3.5 give off-axis IQ worth avoiding for FF, and both my Vivitar 20mm f/3.8 (which look a lot like the Mir 20) have classic Kiron sticky-aperture issues. My tiny Vivitar 19mm f/3.8 is quite OK, but has gobs of field curvature as well as subtle vignetting and a healthy helping of distortion.
In sum, I own and use over 140 lenses, mostly old manual focus. However, the ultrawides I use most are two modern Sigma zooms. ;-)
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