Wide Angle Lens confusion

Question

I was researching for a lens specially for architectural and interior shots including full room for real estate photography. My camera is a canon Eos 1200D and was advised to get Sigma 50mm f1.4 EX DG HSM - Canon Fit. The picture on the right is the basic kit lens and on the left is the sigma. I am quite confused since I was advised that this wide angle lens will give capture way more of a room then the basic kit lens. I'd be grateful for any advise, thanks in advance

Answer 1

Your basic kit lens probably covers the 18-55mm focal length range.

50mm is very near 55mm, so the Sigma 50mm f/1.4 is going to look a lot like the 18-55 kit lens zoomed all the way in. This is not wide angle. It would be 80mm-equivalent, or a short telephoto, and would be better used as a portrait lens, not real estate.

If you needed something wider than an 18-55 can zoom out, you need a shorter focal length than 18mm. For example, something like the EF-S 10-18mm f/3.5-5.6 crop ultrawide zoom lens or the Tokina 11-20mm or 11-22mm f/2.8. There are also primes like the Samyang/Rokinon 10mm f/2.8, but with real estate, where you may not know what size room you're going to be shooting and how much space you're going to have, a zoom lens would probably be handier than a prime.

Answer 2

50mm is not wide angle lens. This is counted as middle of the range (on full frame, on your crop is more like short telefoto lens). For your camera (crop sensor) lens like Canon EF-S 10-18mm f/4.5-5.6 IS STM will be counted as wide angle lens.

Answer 3

I have no idea what you mean by "I was advised that this wide angle lens will give capture way more of a room then the basic kit lens". Wide angle means that you can capture way more of a room than the basic kit lens does.

And indeed, the photograph on the right captures way more of the room than the photograph on the left does, with the left photograph just showing a few steps and the right photograph showing the whole stairway and part of the corridor.

This ability to capture a lot even when you cannot step back a lot before hitting into a wall is what makes wide angle lenses desirable for interior architecture.

To capture a whole room from a corner (such that the adjacent walls to the corner are both just shy of being in the frame) you need 18mm full-frame equivalent or lower. For your camera (crop factor 1.6) this would translate to 11mm and lower.

Answer 4

Lots of suggestions here. But I think I know why you got confused.

1. Wide ‘angle’ does not equal wide ‘aperture’, more commonly called ‘wide open’. That 50 shoots much more wide open and lets in more light. So your kit lens can get to a wider angle but not a wider open aperture!
2. The salesman was stuck on aperture fever and misunderstood your question. They may not have done much interior room photography.
3. Rather than a fast expensive lens to do the job, a far less expensive option would be to use a flash and use it to fill in each room.
4. That 50 f/1.4 you ended up with is still a great lens. But you would have to use some sort of post processing tool to stitch together your photos for interior work, and clients may not have time for that!!

Good luck, and if you really don’t need that 50, exchange it for a 14mm prime for that interior work.

Answer 5

About your question shooting architecture and interior design. I think the one that suggested you 50mm lens was a total mistake.

BTW, lens for architecture will differ from the ones that are good for interior design. For architecture, I will get ONLY tilt shift lenses, as you don't want to correct afterwords in PS and get stretched pixels. Something like 17mm ts-e, 24mm ts-e, and 45mm/50mm ts lenses are good options for shooting architecture photography.

I myself have Canon and Nikon TE-E, PC-E lenses and use them much shooting exteriors. Most of the lenses I used were 24mm/45mm PC-E lenses.

If you want to shoot interior photography, then it's a different story. You can also use wide angle lenses like 17mm, 24mm TE-E and 45mm will be good for medium closeups.

For real estate, if you are not working for interior designer, ts-e lenses will be big investment, so I would offer zoom lenses like 16-35mm mk3 from Canon, as you usually don't raise lens up/down interiors. You can just set the tripod for needed height. And the lens I advised costs cheap today. You can even go for 16-35mm mk2.

With this lens/focal range, you can capture all the room without any problem. And if you will need to do some closeups in real estate, or there is some interesting element of interior design worth photographing, you can shoot it with your 50mm, but suggest getting pretty cheap 85mm lens and you are covered. (Assuming you have your flashes or you are using HDR technique)

Answer 6

The number in front of the 'mm' is the focal length, basically how much of the field of view is your lens going to capture. Back in the day of 35mm film, a rule of thumb was that 50mm closely matched the field of view that your eye can see (all the stuff you can see basically), but your camera effectively doesn't match your eye, such that a 35mm lens more closely matches what you can see. So if you are happy with what you can see, 35mm is a good option. But if you want to see more than you can see, you need to choose a lens with a smaller number in the focal length, such as 17mm or 12mm or 10mm.

Answer 7

Here's something different and relatively inexpensive.

Consider a "full-frame fisheye" lens. It will capture 180° corner-to-corner. You can get these for under $200.

It will be manual focus, but its depth-of-field is so great that normally, you'll stop it down a bit and lots will be in focus.

Then you can "de-fish" it in software like Photoshop.

This option will probably give you the widest angle for the lowest price, albeit with the added complication of having to adjust it after the shoot. Most image software will let you set up a batch for converting a folder-full of such files at once.