10-17mm fisheye or 12-24mm

[tommy_tjerno]

I am planning to buy a new wide-lens for my K10D. And I am not sure to go for

the 10-17 fisheye or the 12-24 wide. Do anyone have pictures to compare these

lenses? I never had a fisheye before, is it very limited in use because of the

"fish-eye" effect? I have the standard kit 18-55 and 50-200 lenses.

[tommy_tjerno]

I forgot to say, but any ideas and pros and cons about these lenses and similar lenses are welcome! :-)

[renatoa]

Why not Sigma 10-20 ?

[daniel_tong1]

These people provide pretty good input . And a whole lot of us

 

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1036&message=17658788

 

Daniel, Toronto

[tommy_tjerno]

Mark; Do you have any experience with the Sigma 10-20?

[tony_cunningham]

> is it very limited in use because of the "fish-eye" effect?

 

This is personal, but unless you have a specific reason for using a fish-eye lens I suggest you hire one for a few days and decide whether it suits your style. (If you can't hire a Pentax then hire a Canon or Nikon body with the type of fish-eye lens that you think you might need). I did this and decided I could do without one. Then some years later I did purchase a rectilinear fish-eye lens and have used it twice in about 3 years.

[brad_n]

Tommy,

 

I ordered the Pentax 10-17 last summer for a contract shoot of a private collection of corvettes. Unfortunately, it took 6 weeks to arrive so I didn't have it for the shoot.

 

There has never been a lens that I have spent MORE time looking through yet taken SO Few photos! The different effects that you can achieve with it are facinating and vary hugely by the subject and your technique: by adjusting the zoom, having or not having vertical lines near the sides, horizontal lines near the top and bottom, patterns in the ceiling, structured objects with lines and angles vs smoothly formed objects like spheres, faces, ....on and on.

 

Bottom line. I intend to dedicate some days to learning about it but I have yet to use it on a gig.

 

My advice is this.: buy the 10-17 for artistic/creative possibilities; by the 12-24 for more broad-range applicability.

[andrewg_ny]

Agreed, the fisheye is something of a special-purpose lens. The recilinear Sigma 10-20 or Pentax 12-24 are better general-purpose tools. I find that most of the time the 16mm end of the DA 16-45 is enough however.

[steve graham]

A rectilinear, such as the Pentax 12-24 or Sigma 10-20, will tend to get used for a lot more shots than the 10-17 fisheye.

 

I have the Sigma 10-20, Pentax 16-45 and 10-17. The Sigma 10-20 and Pentax 16-45 get about the same amount of use (a lot - they're my two most used lenses) and if I had to guess I'd say between them they get used perhaps a 100 times more often than the fisheye does (it's an excellent lens but quite specialist).

[glivingston]

I got the Sigma 10-20 in November and have used it a few times. My initial impression is that it is a very good lens: solid build, accurate focusing, sharp. It filled a big gap in my lens collection and it's less expensive than the Pentax 12-24. I have a Sigma 15mm fisheye and it's great lens. I have taken some outstanding photographs with it, but it is very specialized and I use it only with film, when I occasionally shoot a roll. I won't get rid of it but it really has a limited use. On my K10D, it becomes the equivalent to 22.5mm which I really doesn't make it useful as a fisheye on the digital camera. I think you'll like the Sigma 10-20 and use it a lot if you get it.

[tommy_tjerno]

Thanks all for a lot of great feedback. It seem most are4 in favor of a rectilinear lens ( not bad, i learned a new word today!). But if anyone want to bring more arguments for the fisheye, that's fine with me. I will mostly be using it for travel photos, for magazines, so sometimes the fisheye effect will become handy. But I am still not sure. Does anyone have photographs to compare Sigma at 10 mm to Pentax at 12? Is there much difference?

[renatoa]

not sigma vs pentax, but 10 vs 12... whohoo... and what a difference...

 

http://www.pbase.com/vernix/image/31541666

[sfcole]

You cannot use a polarizer or other filters (ND etc.) on the 10-17. I did try this lens at a shop

and though it was interesting, I doubt it would be that useful most of the time. Distortion

does decrease with focal length.

[tommy_tjerno]

Renato: That was amazing, i would not think it was such a big difference for 10-12 mm.

[steve graham]

I went with the Sigma 10-20 instead of the Pentax 12-24 because in the UK it's half the price and also a fair bit wider (I got the Sigma 10-20 & Pentax 16-45 for less than I'd have paid for the Pentax 12-24). I'm sure I'd have been happy with either lens though.

[shots worth sharing]

I got the Sigma 10-20 this fall after a fair bit of agonizing here. Like Gary I haven't used it all that much (didn't want to go all "wide-angle wild") but like it. It's a chunky baby.

[mattluther]

Hallo, Tommy,

 

The right question is probably what you have or plan to have as the next lens in the setup.

I have a KM system where the Sigma 10-20 (optically surprisingly good, yes) is reasonably

well complimented by the Tamron 17-50/2.8 (excellent, as been said here too). But when

I recently got into Pentax I went with the 12-24 because I wanted to be able to

compliment it with just the Sigma 28-105/ f 2.8-4 which I knew from Minolta to be a

surprisingly good lens for portraits.

10-17 would in my eyes seem to be a needlessly limited zoom scope, unless you are

specifically into for example architecture or some other very specialized kind of

photography where you know you will always need the extreme wide angle.

BTW none of the mentioned lenses are really fisheyes - they all fill the picture frame to the

corners and barrel distortion is moderate.

 

- Mathias Luther

[james_gabel]

Tommy, I have both the 10-17 and the 12-24. I use the 12-24 all the time, it has become one of my favorite lens. I just haven't used 10-17 that much. By the way I had the Sigma 10-20, but I have sold it, I was not happy with it.