Lense recommendation for Interior Photos (Canon)

[luckycharms]

Need good lense for interior photo shots of new homes (home builder)....seems like speed shouldn't matter that much as I can go long exposures with tripod....17mm too wide? 20mm the way to go? Canon L or save some money with the gold band? Thanks.

[kenw]

which canon body? if you have one that does the 1.6 factor, your wide angle will suffer and you'll need to go ultra-wide to compensate. I have a 10d, and the field of view of my 20mm is equal to that of a regular 32mm, and I use it for this exact purpose quite often.

In fact here's one of my practice shots in our bath, using the Sigma 20/1.8, tripod, no flash. you can see that the effective 32mm field of view is still adequate for even cathedral ceilings in tight quarters. Without the 1.6 crop factor, you can imagine the field of view a 20mm would give you.

As a point of reference, I'm about 7' from the near edge of the tub and have applied perspective correction in PSP.

[tragic hero]

I like the efs 10-22, nice and wide on the crop bodies and its a 3.5-4.5, which isnt bad when you price compare it to the 17-40L f4, its not L glass but 15mm wider than 25mm

[Daniel Bates]

I often recommend the Tokina 12-24 f/4. It's a sharp lens, and fairly inexpensive.

[luckycharms]

Sorry, shooting Canon 5D...so have the 1:1. The shots I'm lacking are the tight powder rooms and often obscurly laid-out masters. Higher end homes, so we often put nice finish on the powder and of course the master/master bath/master closet. Thanks to all.

[Duffy Pratt]

I would think the 17-40 would be good for almost all the indoor shooting you need to do, provided you can use a tripod.

Duffy

[Cerbera LM]

Likely more work then it's worth but here's how one can approach it from the other direction.

www.imagicdigital.com/architecture.html#int

Mark, used to post on FM until his account was "locked", made some eyepopping interiors stitching 50mm 1.8 pictures together.

Quotes taken from this 3+ yr old thread: www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic2/33890/0

Well, here it is, [picture has long since disappeared into the internet ether] the culmination of everything I've been blabbing about...sperical pano bracket, 50mm f1.8, Nikon Capture RAW render. The file is so detailed that a 24"x28" print has more detail than a 6 MP DSLR 8"x10" print! I'm going to do a few more of these, probably of Atlantic City Casinos, and then use posters as part of my marketing! Finally something worth printng on my plotter, after all there years.

As image there is no vignetting due to the fact that it is a mosaic. Also, composits like this can use relatively contrasty images for the tiles, and the extra contrast is present in the final image without any blocking/blow-out effects.

The lens I used was the Nikon 50mm f1.8 $99 from B&H it exhibits almost no lens artifacts. I use Nikon Capture to process the RAW files, utilizing the vignette control feature. This enhances the continuity of the mosaic. Since this lens is sharp and free of chromatic abberation the source files are already better than what wide-angle lenses achieve.

The fact that it took so many images to cover the field of view required to capture this building is almost incidental. Another approach would be to render 800x1200 pixel TIFFs from the RAW files and stitch them into a 10 or 15 megapixel file. That whole process would probably have taken 10 minutes, instead of 90. The resulting image benefits from having no discernible lens artifacts whatsoever, and a total lack of noise.

Posted here is an interior, from the same building, photographed in the same manner. It has no dynamic range enhancement, but it is two rows, 8 vertical images per row, and shows how well the 50mm f1.8 handles having bright light shine directly into it.

[Happyfunball]

One of the reasons I went with the Canon system is for the architectural capabilities you get with their Tilt/Shift lenses. They work very well for these applications, and you can rent them at many shops if you aren't looking to make that investment yet. I have used it with my 5D and really like the results, but there is a learning curve with the lens.

http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/co...categoryid=156

[LadyShutterBug]

i shot real estate some (high-end remodels) and used a tamron 11-18 aspherical. it worked great... i just got insanely bored photographing houses ;)

[AndrewCCM]

On 5D, the 17-40 works very well mostly without some of the fisheye distortion you can see in the even wider lenses. You might think about renting one and seeing how it performs. I am quite happy with mine for tight places and landscapes.