If you could have only 1 UWA

burritosandbeer wrote:

So I want to fill a gap in my lens selection, but my budget isn't allowing for a plethora of options. Currently the widest lens I have is the 14-42 kit zoom from my G7.

I want an ultra wide-angle lens.

I want it for landscape
I want it for astro
I want it for interior/real-estate photography
I want it for architectural photography
I am likely to do environmental portraits with it as well

The current two contenders are

A used Panasonic 7-14 mm f/4
A new or used Laowa 7.5 mm f/2

My normal tendency would be to get the zoom, as it will give me a better chance to frame the shot from my position than a prime, and later get the prime if I still want it, but the difference in aperture is significant enough that for astro I don't know if the 7-14 will do the job.

Any one have both? If you could only have one what would be your choice?

The pro UWA zooms are out of the budget, I'm sure a 7-14 mm f/2.8 would probably solve both problems, but this is a fairly limited section of what I shoot, so while that may be true, the price difference places it too far out of reach for just a toy lens for me.

If you want it for astro, get the Laowa.  If you want it for anything else, get the zoom

7.5mm is certainly wide, but for most of what you want to do, it's too wide.  I don't like going wider than 9mm for real-estate, most landscape, and definitely not portraits.  And you only have 16mp to work with, so you can't crop much.

So how much time do you spend doing astro?  You can always shoot stacks and merge them in post.

I would get the zoom and save for the astro.