When it comes to wide angle zoom lenses, some stand out much more than the others. These lenses are sharp, contrasty, have excellent colors, and can be the effective workhorses of photographers who demand the ability to shoot wide. Love landscapes? What about architecture? We’ve scoured our reviews index for some of the best wide angle DSLR lenses that we’ve tested. Here are our favorites.
Canon 8-15mm f4 L Fisheye
We’re including a fisheye zoom in this post not only for the very good coloring, but the fact that it’s so unique for sports photographers and others looking for a totally different perspective on the world. For even cooler results, take it out to photograph skaters and add a flash to the scene.
In our review, we state:
“I’m not one to often use fisheye lenses or really want to, but the look and versatility that the Canon 8-15mm F4 L gives me on full frame or APS-C sensors is amazing. I haven’t had this much fun with a lens since testing Olympus’s 12mm f2. The Canon 8-15mm f4 L isn’t just sharp, but it focuses quickly and accurately. Additionally, it’s small and super portable plus renders some wonderful colors. Indeed it is worth every penny.”
Tamron 15-30mm f2.8
It’s a beast of a lens, but man is this lens awesome. With built-in image stabilization and great sharpness and color rendition, you’ll have very little to complain about.
In our review, we state:
“Tamron’s colors are beautifully saturated. They’re not as saturated as Zeiss, Rokinon or Sigma but instead they tend to add just a tad more punch while remaining very life-like. The lens offers less contrast than the others out there and in doing so gives you life-like colors without deepening the blacks to fool the eye into thinking that the image is sharper than it really is when looked at as a whole.”
Sigma 24-35mm f2
As the fastest aperture lens offering on this lens, we’re sure that wedding photographers, photojournalists, Real Estate photographers and street photographers will have the most fun with this lens. It’s biggest strength is the f2 constant aperture and overall for a zoom lens it performs quite well.
In our review, we state:
“Jack of all trades: master of none. We’re saying it again. It isn’t the absolute sharpest lens, but it’s close. It doesn’t have the absolute best colors, but it’s close. Bokeh? Yeah, it’s close there too. See where we’re going with this?
But the biggest strength of this lens is that it offers wide-angle shooters lots of variety in a single lens while providing a fast aperture. More than anything else, this is this lens’s strength–and it does a fine job at that.”
Nikon 14-24mm f2.8
Though we haven’t given this lens a formal review, we’ve used it a couple of times. It’s very popular amongst Nikon users for great reasons besides the fact that it works so well with all of the company’s other f2.8 zoom lenses.