Architectural Photography Lenses
Can anyone recommend a camera lens that's perfect for architectural photography?
My camera is Canon 6D Mark II
My camera is Canon 6D Mark II
All about budget but this one as a starter
Thank you so much! Seems pretty good!
It is under my budget! £1,249 is much cheaper than the Canon 17mm tilt shift lens.
It is under my budget! £1,249 is much cheaper than the Canon 17mm tilt shift lens.
Quote:All about budget but this one as a starter
Laowa gives a lot of lens for the money - excellent build and optical quality.
Thing is, there is really no single lens, in some instances 15mm will be too wide and you may need a 24mm or a 50mm. A lot will depend on what style you are wanting to achieve... A possible suggestion (again depends on your subject matter) could be careful use of a good quality wide angle zoom such as the 16 - 35 f/4 and correct the verticals in post.
Short answer - NO!
How close you have to get tp the subject determines how wide and angle of view lens you need - which varies with the subject.
If you have a high MP camera body you can correct things like converging verticals during post processing and still retain a large file.
As more perspective adjustments are possible with software such as PhotoShop Cloud than with a T&S lens, there is much less need to pay the high price of a T&S lens to get good results than there was 10-15 years ago.
How close you have to get tp the subject determines how wide and angle of view lens you need - which varies with the subject.
If you have a high MP camera body you can correct things like converging verticals during post processing and still retain a large file.
As more perspective adjustments are possible with software such as PhotoShop Cloud than with a T&S lens, there is much less need to pay the high price of a T&S lens to get good results than there was 10-15 years ago.
The closest thing to a magic bullet is a UWA zoom like the sigma 12-24, then crop. Just make good use of the built-in level so you start with no/minimal converging verticals. Accurately correcting verticals when a camera is tipped up to get a building in is more of a chore than a lot of people realise. There's a foreshortening effect so you need to stretch things vertically to get the proportions back to where they should be and that can mess with the foreground. The downside to the UWA approach is a loss of resolution when you crop.
If you are looking at shift lenses for commercial architectural photography crazy wide lenses like 15 & 17mm, even well corrected ones, are extreme tools which can do odd things to geometry unless handled with care. I'm an architect and have seen the deliverables from various Architectural photographers (including some top guys) over the years. For most of them 24mm is the bread and butter lens which takes most of the shots. It is wide enough for all but the tightest of interiors or city streets and, if you need wider in a pinch, you can stitch by combining two or more shifted shots in PS as long as you work off a tripod.
In my own photography, because of my architect background I'm a shift lens geek and I own a few, including the 17mm and 24mm TS-E lenses. These days the most used are the 24mm & 35mm (the latter is an adapted Contax fit Zeiss lens). If I could only keep one it would be the 24mm as it almost matches the Zeiss when using a 1.4x III extender.
As a aside, I’d be very interested to know how the Laowa handles flare, the Canon 17mm absolutely needs a french flag (check Dinkum Systems Compact) particularly for night photography.
If you are looking at shift lenses for commercial architectural photography crazy wide lenses like 15 & 17mm, even well corrected ones, are extreme tools which can do odd things to geometry unless handled with care. I'm an architect and have seen the deliverables from various Architectural photographers (including some top guys) over the years. For most of them 24mm is the bread and butter lens which takes most of the shots. It is wide enough for all but the tightest of interiors or city streets and, if you need wider in a pinch, you can stitch by combining two or more shifted shots in PS as long as you work off a tripod.
In my own photography, because of my architect background I'm a shift lens geek and I own a few, including the 17mm and 24mm TS-E lenses. These days the most used are the 24mm & 35mm (the latter is an adapted Contax fit Zeiss lens). If I could only keep one it would be the 24mm as it almost matches the Zeiss when using a 1.4x III extender.
As a aside, I’d be very interested to know how the Laowa handles flare, the Canon 17mm absolutely needs a french flag (check Dinkum Systems Compact) particularly for night photography.
Quote:
If you are looking at shift lenses for commercial architectural photography crazy wide lenses like 15 & 17mm, even well corrected ones, are extreme tools which can do odd things to geometry unless handled with care.
About 30 years ago when I did cathedral interiors with an Olympus 24mm shift lens and film one problem was curves in a series of arches across the frame became unequally distorted irregular curves toward the edge of the frame.
Today with PhotoShop or similar this type of wide angle distortion, which can look distinctly odd in a row of curved arches across the frame, can be corrected to a good standard.
