Lens for Landscapes

Dazb75

Dazb75

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Daz
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Myself and a friend have booked a week on Skye at the beginning of April.

I've only recently moved to FF (a 5D Mk2) and had to sell my trusty Sigma 10-20.

I have a 24-105L. Will the 24 end be wide enough for most landscape shots, or should I consider borrowing a 17-40L.

Are there any other lenses I should consider?
 
If you can, borrow that 17-40. It opens up so many more opportunities. I shoot many landscapes with my 24-105 on a 5D2, but I use the 17-40 nearly as often.
 
Its all about distortion for me, whilst landscapes generally are pretty organic scenes 10mm on that sigma on a crop was pretty ridiculous.
20 is as wide as I'd go on FF, and more often than not 28-35 to minimise distortion as organic as the scene might be.
 
Distortion is easily corrected in PP.
 
I have a 24-70 on mine for landscape work BUT there are many times when I would like to go wider, for that I would say borrow the 17-40 as you will never go beyond 40mm on the 24-105 you have plus you gain the wider perspective should the scene allow it :)
 
I generally find 24 to be wide enough for general landscapes. It's only when I shoot low perspectives or beaches that I need the 16mm.

Even if you don't want to spend yet more money on another lens you can take a shot at 24, then take another image panned left (or right) slightly and then stitch the two images together with a dedicated program like PTgui. .
 
For me, I think the 24mm would be wide enough (I'm not keen on ultra wide landscapes), but it very much depends on your style. If I were looking for another lens for landscapes, I'd probably get something longer than 105mm before I'd get something wider than 24mm.
 
<24 is considered ultra wide angle.
24-35 is considered wide angle.

24 is wide enough for most shots, I also used my 24-105mm for landscape. But 17mm is a lot of fun to use, if you really enjoy your 10mm on crop, the 17mm will give the same effect.

with UWA, you have to get in real close to a foreground object to make the photo look interesting, and to give the photo a sense of scale (eg, Digifrog getting down and close to the beach). with 24mm, you can get away with just photographing a simple scene.

so it depends on your photography style, does your 10mm crop UWA shots look interesting or they all look like snapshots with no sense of scale?
 
17-40 is what you want
 
There are lenses that are almost optically perfect, distortion-wise at least. But none of them will be UWA.

Landscape doesn't automatically mean you need the widest you can get. Some of the best landscapes I've seen were shot on the likes of a 70-200. You get nicer compression, drawing mountains, fields, trees in seemingly closer.

If I ever needed a UWA, it would be for architecture, tight street shots where I wanted to include a lot of the scene, large group shots etc ... but probably rarely for landscape. I find 24mm to be about the widest I like to go there.
 
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