Help - new lens doesn’t fit my Nikon? Is it me

12-24 which won't be nearly wide enough for things like real estate photography or whatever. In fact the 10mm minimum on the Sigma really needs to be an 8 for that kind of work.

 

Please explain this statement, why do yo need a Fish Eye lens or wider :confused::D for "Real Estate"work ?

How much wider would you advise for this kind of work?

Please explain this statement, why do yo need a Fish Eye lens or wider :confused::D for "Real Estate"work ?

How much wider would you advise for this kind of work?

 

I believe the theory is that it's helpful to be able to cover at least 90 degrees, because then you can put the camera in the corner of a room and capture both the walls you're next to - ideally a little more than 90 degrees, because you really want to be standing behind the camera, so there's an offset (and you want to see the adjacent walls). With the camera in landscape orientation, that's a focal length of half the sensor width, so 12mm for DX and 18mm for FX is slightly too long. I've been known to use a 14mm on FX to capture a large room in which an event was happening, on the same basis. (I've also used an 8mm fish-eye, although for real-estate the distortion of straight lines would probably be a bit unhelpful.)

 

I think you might need a slightly less-wide lens if you stuck it against the ceiling and pointed it down a bit (so it was in the corner of the room in three dimensions rather than two), instead of keeping it horizontal, but I'm not awake enough yet to do geometry. :-) I can see that might not be a useful aesthetic choice either - at least with a horizontal corner view you can take the photo from head height.

 

Or you can stand in the middle of the room and stitch a spherical panorama (easy with your average phone), which is an approach I've also been known to use when nothing's moving. It does take longer, though.

Is the 4 bayonet lug design unique in 35mm terms?

The Leica M-Mount, introduced in 1954, is a 4-lug design.

 

The new Leica L-Mount with electronic contacts is also a 4-lug design.

Unfortunately it's all there is, aside from buying a Nikkor or going to a 12-24 Tamron, which won't be nearly wide enough for things like real estate photography or whatever.

 

The Nikon 10-20mm is a real little jewel for $300.

 

Yes its cheap and plasticy, and it has lots of geometric distortion. I appreciate the former when I'm carrying it, and the latter corrects out nicely.

Please explain this statement, why do yo need a Fish Eye lens or wider :confused::D for "Real Estate"work ?

How much wider would you advise for this kind of work?

My camera is a cropped sensor one. If yours is a full frame camera, ignore what I said.

My camera is a cropped sensor one. If yours is a full frame camera, ignore what I said.

 

Or multiply the numbers by 1.5 (and if that makes you throw away your 19mm TS-E, can I have it?)

FWIW, unless I'm missing a newer 3rd party offering, I don't know that there's a practical Nikon FX rectilinear alternative wider than 14mm.

 

The excellent 14-24mm f/2.8 zoom that I like despite its size and weight, and the 14mm f/2.8 prime that I think dates back roughly to the D1 era(and IIRC was kind of pushed to get PJs and others a something resembling a UW on DX) and seems not quite as good as the zoom. Nikon made a 13mm f/5.6, but it's rare, expensive, and huge. There use to be some "defishing" algorithms around, but I'm not sure if defishing say a 10mm full frame would actually give you more coverage than a 14mm(regular distortion correction generally involves some cropping to keep even borders, as does perspective correction, which is why PC lenses and even view cameras still have their place).

 

An 8mm rectinear on DX would give you more coverage than a 14mm on FX.

FWIW, unless I'm missing a newer 3rd party offering, I don't know that there's a practical Nikon FX rectilinear alternative wider than 14mm.

 

Sigma 12-24.

Laowa 12mm f/2.8.

The old 13mm Nikkor (as you mention).

Irix 11mm f/4.

 

I have the Nikkor 14-24 (and have since about 2008, it being one of the reasons I switched from Canon). The Sigma might be slightly better. The Nikkor is optically okay, especially at the wide end, but the field curvature is annoying unless you stop down a lot, and I'm amazed I've not dropped the cap off a cliff yet. I still use it quite heavily, but my Sigma 8mm fish-eye is a lot cheaper and smaller. I've been known to use the 14-24 like a shift lens just by knowing I plan to crop the result, but I still lust after the 19mm (as I mentioned above) for landscapes, more for the tiltability.

 

Are there cylindrical lenses (fish-eye one way, rectilinear the other)? I want to think of the old scanning slit things they took school photos with... (Edit: What you'd get if you put a fish-eye lens on what Wikipedia calls a "rotating panoramic camera". Only as a single lens. No idea why you'd want to, just a thought for any bored optical designers.)

Edited May 29, 2020 by Andrew Garrard

My camera is a cropped sensor one. If yours is a full frame camera, ignore what I said.

 

Mine is cropped too, but plenty options to go wide..

Offcourse all need som post corrections to remove falling lines and or correct perspective but that is all in the game for real estate i guess ..

 

A 12-24mm DX nikkor gives you 99° wide at the short end (shouldcover the 90 degrees but the last inches ito the corner do not fit into any camera there is no camera that an do that no matter which lens

 

A 10-24mm dx nikkor gives you a 109°-61° angle , still the corner itsel cannot , can never be included.

 

A sigma 8-16 mm gives you 114.5°-75.7° angle ,

 

And any Fish eye gives you more than 170°

 

Etc. Etc.

 

The real difficulty is not in the available lens, but to get the light sufficient and still look natural, but that is a totally different story...

Edited May 29, 2020 by c.p.m._van_het_kaar

You need nothing wider than a 17mm lens on full-frame, or an 11~12mm on DX. These will give you just over 90 degrees horizontal coverage - which is enough to take in an entire room from a position in one corner of the room. That's often too wide, giving a perspective that can't easily be interpreted by the viewer. Better to show two or more relatively 'normal' views of the same room, than to present the viewer with something that looks like it belongs in a movie depicting a psychotic episode.

I'd have thought a single 360 deg 'sweep' pano from the centre of each room is 'normal' these days for such things....

 

Shows what I know.....:D

I've certainly stood in the middle of a room and done a panorama (on a phone) for an estate agent - but getting the stitching perfect isn't easy. I've not seen many estate agents with a proper panoramic rig with proper nodal point calibration, but then it's not a market I've followed. I suspect time expenditure is a limited resource, and setting up tripods might be more effort than some are willing to spend. Standing in a couple of corners with a wide lens is a lot easier - and not reliant on viewing software.

 

With a wide rectilinear, the edges will look stretched, but I suspect most buyers would want to check that there isn't a dead zone containing rotten carpet or similar, so there's something to be said for being wide enough for the adjacent walls to be visible, even if it's mostly the middle of the room which people will look at. Exactly 90 degrees isn't enough unless the camera is perfectly in the corner, so a little excess wideness makes sense. You could go less wide with more images, but that's more effort for the seller and more clicks (and ability to get lost) for the viewer.

 

At some point I imagine we'll be capturing light fields and letting potential buyers move around the room, but we're not quite there yet...

 

So yes - other ways to do it. But if your task is to capture a room quickly in the minimum number of shots and ensure that buyers at least feel they've looked into all the dark corners, there are worse ways than standing in a corner with an ultrawide on a pole.

 

I'm kind of intrigued to do the maths for what focal length you need if you stick the camera against the ceiling, pointing out from the wall but tilted down so the ceiling touches the top of the frame. I suspect that's a smaller angle (at some risk of not showing the large stain in the middle of the room...) but my brain is too tired for geometry at the moment.

there are worse ways than standing in a corner with an ultrawide on a pole.

Standing in a corner?

How quaint!

Then you have the issue of hiding yourself. Nope, you just put the camera and tripod in the corner and trigger the camera with a remote, or by Bluetooth from outside the room. Or maybe using the 10 second self-timer if you can run fast!

:-) I'm assuming a degree of haste over perfectionism, based on the last time I was involved in selling a house. It may be unfair to extrapolate to the modern state of the art in real-estate photography! (When I've photographed events from the corner of the room and wanted to show the entire venue, I absolutely just lean against the corner. Or put on a fish-eye and wave the camera on a monopod.)

:) I'm assuming a degree of haste over perfectionism, based on the last time I was involved in selling a house. It may be unfair to extrapolate to the modern state of the art in real-estate photography! (When I've photographed events from the corner of the room and wanted to show the entire venue, I absolutely just lean against the corner. Or put on a fish-eye and wave the camera on a monopod.)

And all, including previous posts, asuming that rooms are allways square.. ;)

Bad news : they seldomly are...

Anyone who knows the London Underground, esp. the old Metropolitan Line, will know they used to be steam powered.

 

There were 'exhaust' steam vents at suitable spacing along the lines in special blow-off points. These were essentially round vertical chimneys >30ft across from rail height to the surface.

 

I had the (un)happy job of trying to record some old graffiti on the inner walls as a continuous image. 28mm PC on a D300. This was some time ago pre sweep panorama abilities on phones etc.

 

No software could manage the feat as it full expected the photos to align in some useful way. The mid frames were fine but the top and bottoms just 'scalloped' horribly.

 

Have to see if I can ferret them out and see if modern software does any better...:)

And all, including previous posts, asuming that rooms are allways square.. ;)

Bad news : they seldomly are...

 

You know, I almost mentioned that. Hopefully you can still cover the extreme angles from a different perspective. If in doubt, go wider... or get a circular fish-eye and put the camera in the middle of the floor.

Anyone who knows the London Underground, esp. the old Metropolitan Line, will know they used to be steam powered.

 

There were 'exhaust' steam vents at suitable spacing along the lines in special blow-off points. These were essentially round vertical chimneys >30ft across from rail height to the surface.

 

I had the (un)happy job of trying to record some old graffiti on the inner walls as a continuous image. 28mm PC on a D300. This was some time ago pre sweep panorama abilities on phones etc.

 

No software could manage the feat as it full expected the photos to align in some useful way. The mid frames were fine but the top and bottoms just 'scalloped' horribly.

 

Have to see if I can ferret them out and see if modern software does any better...:)

 

You didn't manage to get funding for a 6mm fish-eye, then? (IIRC it was used for some pipe inspection purposes.)

You didn't manage to get funding for a 6mm fish-eye, then? (IIRC it was used for some pipe inspection purposes.)

Sadly not! I also discovered that with the full shift of the 28mm, even on a DX body, was very badly smeared. Very NON telecentric...:(

 

Apparently they had big saddle tank condensers for the 'used' steam. Once those approached boiling-point they needed to vent them. Must have been quite a sight in Victorian London!

Anyone who knows the London Underground, esp. the old Metropolitan Line, will know they used to be steam powered.

 

There were 'exhaust' steam vents at suitable spacing along the lines in special blow-off points. These were essentially round vertical chimneys >30ft across from rail height to the surface.

 

I had the (un)happy job of trying to record some old graffiti on the inner walls as a continuous image. 28mm PC on a D300. This was some time ago pre sweep panorama abilities on phones etc.

 

No software could manage the feat as it full expected the photos to align in some useful way. The mid frames were fine but the top and bottoms just 'scalloped' horribly.

 

Have to see if I can ferret them out and see if modern software does any better...:)

MM, i would not even try to grab that in a single picture, but rather create a movie, to film the wal from left to right ....

MM, i would not even try to grab that in a single picture, but rather create a movie, to film the wal from left to right ....

I tried it with 36 x 10 degree (with overlap) images and they wouldn't line up...:(

I tried it with 36 x 10 degree (with overlap) images and they wouldn't line up...:(

Sounds like a job for a 'Circut' or similar swing-lens/curved film camera. As long as parts of the graffiti didn't run around and appear twice! :rolleyes:

I tried it with 36 x 10 degree (with overlap) images and they wouldn't line up...:(

for that youneed your camera on a dolly i think ..