Pentax *ist DL - wide angle options?

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Martin Harran - 18 Feb 2006 23:30 GMT

I've just bought a Pentax *ist DL with SMC 18mm-55mm lens. I'm very happy
with the camera and lens but I occasionally have to take photos of room
interiors and could do with a wider angle option. I don't do this often
enough to justify the expense of a high qulaity lens and the quality of the
photos required is not a particularly high standard - they are used mainly
on websites and smallish photos (typically 4" x 3") in newspaper
advertisements.

Any relatively inexpensive way of doing this?

For example, I am looking at a screw on Wide Angle Lens 0.42x / Fisheye Lens
/ Macro Lens on ebay at stg£35 and wondering if that will do the job for me.

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Jeff R - 19 Feb 2006 00:38 GMT

> I've just bought a Pentax *ist DL with SMC 18mm-55mm lens. I'm very happy
> with the camera and lens but I occasionally have to take photos of room
[quoted text clipped - 8 lines]
> For example, I am looking at a screw on Wide Angle Lens 0.42x / Fisheye Lens
> / Macro Lens on ebay at stg£35 and wondering if that will do the job for me.

I bought the Peleng 8mm fish-eye for this purpose, and have found it quite
satisfactory on my *1stDS. I usually crop out the worst of the edge, then
photoshop the rest.

Let the flames begin!

:-)

--
Jeff R.

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Charles Gillen - 19 Feb 2006 01:16 GMT

> I bought the Peleng 8mm fish-eye for this purpose, and have found it
> quite satisfactory on my *1stDS. I usually crop out the worst of the
> edge, then photoshop the rest.

A slightly less radical approach is to get the Zenitar f/2.8 16mm from Moscow
for a bit over $100 and de-fish the image... result is similar to a 21mm on a
35mm film camera. Many serious Pentax DSLR users rave about this lens's bang
for the buck. I have one... works beautifully on Pentax in manual mode. The
free PTLens plugin can turn the semi-fisheye Zenitar into a rectilinear wide
angle.

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Charles Gillen -- Reston, Virginia, USA

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Pete D - 19 Feb 2006 09:05 GMT

The no cost way would be to take two photos with your existing lens and use
autostitch to join them.

> I've just bought a Pentax *ist DL with SMC 18mm-55mm lens. I'm very happy
> with the camera and lens but I occasionally have to take photos of room
[quoted text clipped - 9 lines]
> Lens / Macro Lens on ebay at stg£35 and wondering if that will do the job
> for me.

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Prometheus - 19 Feb 2006 10:34 GMT

>I've just bought a Pentax *ist DL with SMC 18mm-55mm lens. I'm very happy
>with the camera and lens but I occasionally have to take photos of room
[quoted text clipped - 8 lines]
>For example, I am looking at a screw on Wide Angle Lens 0.42x / Fisheye Lens
>/ Macro Lens on ebay at stg£35 and wondering if that will do the job for me.

I have a 'semi-fisheye' adapter which screws in to the filter, it gives
about 100 degrees coverage and will almost fill the frame of my 350D at
55mm. I bought it a l-o-n-g time ago and took a few frames with it, I
could not afford a proper wide angle at the time, and then could not get
one for my camera. I will probably play with it on the 350D until I get
the 10-22mm zoom. Since the distortion can be corrected it should be
usable for small low-res applications.

I wonder if anyone remembers the nearly 360 degree adapters that were
around a long time ago? I was slightly tempted, but it was too expensive
for something I would probably use once in the local park and then put
away.

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Ian G8ILZ

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Paul Furman - 20 Feb 2006 03:37 GMT

I got a Sigma 12-24 which is not cheap but less than the Nikon. It has a
nice rectilinear view but is not a fast lens and at 12mm indoors, the
built-in flash leaves a big freaky shadow at the bottom of the page so
it would be nice to have something a little faster & I kind of regret
cheaping out. I'm not fond of flash anyways. The other reason I wish I'd
spent more is I really like shooting wide angle. It took some getting
used to that view angle but is loads of fun and can be useful for lots
of situations. 28mm was my widest before.

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