Digital Diversity

I wrote an article a while back about the starter lenses for your DSLR. This was to help you work out what you want to get in the future and also give you a nice range of focal lengths to work with. In that article I mentioned I wanted an ultra wide angle lens for its very wide field of view and the way it distorts perspective.

Ultra wide on a crop sensor like the 500D (1.6x) is about 10-12 mm. This equates to the same field of view as 16-19.2. There are several options of lenses you can choose from. For my Canon 500D these were a few of my options.

• Canon 10-22
• Sigma 10-20
• Tokina 11-16
• Tamron 11-18

I wanted a lens that went as wide as possible so for me that ruled out the Tokina and the Tameron. This left it between the Canon and the Sigma. I read a lot of reviews and the two lenses are fairly equal. Image quality wise, the Canon tended to just about win but when I looked at the price the Canon was £200 more expensive. The image quality difference was small enough that you cant really see the difference without pixel peeping so that really wasn’t a factor. Both were very well built lenses as well. I also really like the finish on the Sigma EX lenses. Seeing as the lenses were fairly equal overall, the price was the deciding factor for me so I went online and ordered the Sigma 10-20 F4-5.6 HSM EX DC.
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