Wide Angle For Landscapes

[BW]

On a DX camera I love to use the 10,5mm. Even if you get a distorted look some times, I like to it when you want to show something in the foreground and still get some of the surroundings. This one is from today with the D500. Its not to everyones taste, but I think it would perform well on your D300. Its also very small, light and compact especially compared to wide-angle lenses for FX.

[the solitaire]

I bought my 20mm f3,5 Nikkor-UD back when I still used a D300 as main camera. It was pretty much wide enough for my liking back then, and it happily switched places with my 24mm f2,8 Nikkor-N.C.

Even though I used the two quite a bit, I even started liking them better after buying a D3.

So with all that has been said, I agree with Børge here that a full frame fish eye lens can also be a very nice alternative to a wide angle lens. And with some software, you can effectively defish an image to get something that is close to an image taken with a rectilinear lens. Nowadays on full frame, my 24mm hardly ever comes out of the closet, but the 20mm is with me whenever the 16mm full frame fish eye stays at home.

[David H. Hartman]

I defished a 16/2.8 AIS on my D300s as my wide angle. I think it yields an angle of view similar to a 25~26mm lens on FX. There is some loss width due to the perspective correction's clips. It was OK I guess. I think I mentioned before the D800 gave me back my 105/2.5 and wide angle lenses.

Dave Hartman

[Roland Vink]

A rectilinear 16mm on DX yields an angle of view similar to 24mm on FX. A de-fished 16mm fisheye would give a wider angle of view, probably closer to 20mm on FX.

[Bjørn Rørslett]

One shouldn't compare angle of views for Fisheyes vs ordinary wideangles. The quality loss occurring in the defished images cannot be ignored. Once in a while this can be acceptable, many times  not so. If defishing is not performed, one has to accept the fisheye geometry.

[jhinkey]

One shouldn't compare angle of views for Fisheyes vs ordinary wideangles. The quality loss occurring in the defished images cannot be ignored. Once in a while this can be acceptable, many times  not so. If defishing is not performed, one has to accept the fisheye geometry.

Yeah, I tried the 16/3.5 AI on my D300 and it can be de-fished a bit and still have nice image quality left over (NOT the 16/2.8 though . . .).  Can't get to a true rectilinear image that way.

The only way to get to a rectilinear image with 16mm fish is to stitch images that have been de-fished so that the far corners don't suffer so much, but even then . . .

[David H. Hartman]

A rectilinear 16mm on DX yields an angle of view similar to 24mm on FX. A de-fished 16mm fisheye would give a wider angle of view, probably closer to 20mm on FX.

Perhaps I'm shooting from the hip here. The process of correcting liear distortion cuts deeply into the final angle of view as I recall.

Dave

[Akira]

If you have no plan of moving up to FX, you should not ignore the humble little 18-55/4.5-5.6 kit lenses.  There are several different versions.  The latest AF-P is not compatible wth D300, and the very first version is not really good, but the other ones will work marvelously on a DX body at wider ranges.  I have used 18-55/3.5-4.5II (the second generation) on D40 and the first VR version (the third generation) on D7000.  They worked admirably.  For D300, I would recommend the first collapsible version.  (The second collapsible version is AF-P which is, as mentioned, incompatible with D300 and is only fully compatible with the latest bodies).

[Roland Vink]

Perhaps I'm shooting from the hip here. The process of correcting liear distortion cuts deeply into the final angle of view as I recall.

Correct, converting a fisheye image into a rectilinear image throws away the corners (the rest of the image is then stretched to fill out the corners to remove the barrel distortion, with resulting loss of quality). However, the resulting image is still wider than would be achieved from a rectilinear lens with the same focal length.

[Bjørn Rørslett]

Wider, and possibly with increasingly poor quality off axis. You cannot have both when the image data are massaged in the defishing process.