Which landscape lens should I get?
Feb 11, 2020
2
I just bought my first digital camera with an interchangeable lens, the M100. The way I justified it to my spouse was that we have a two week trip to Athens, Delphi, and Santorini coming up at the end of March. I also do a lot of hiking, backpacking, and backcountry skiing here at home in Colorado and I have two kids 6 and 10 who are very photogenic if I don't say so myself. So, I will be taking lots of landscapes and portraits. I would also like to try my hand at astrophotography.
Since buying the M100 used on ebay, I promptly purchased the canon 22 and 35 mm primes + the 55-200mm zoom. I have only had a couple days to shoot with the primes, but they are lights out! I bought the zoom thinking it would be useful to have but haven't tried it yet except to confirm it works. Definitely not as exciting or as sharp as the fast primes.
The place I like to be the most and the kinds of pics I want to take the most are landscapes above timberline. I would like to have something wider than the 22 (35mm full frame equiv). It seems like I should just take out a second mortgage and get the 16mm Sigma Contemporary. I think it would be fun to shoot with and super bright for astrophotography if I ever get into that. But it isn't that much wider than the 22mm I already have. I see there are manual focus options by Samyang/Rokinon/Opteka/Mieke in the 12mm range as well as the slow (f/4 - 5.6) Canon 11-22 zoom which also has AF and IS. Which would you use for landscapes in the high country? I appreciate your insight.