Sony E mount lens for landscapes?

[Senzelian]

So, I'm looking at buying a new landscape lens for my Sony a6000.

 

Kind of hard to find one, tho I was able to find the new Sigma Contemporary AF 16mm 1.4 DC DN for around 400€ which looks pretty interesting to me.

 

I know there is also a Rokinon something something f2. 0 I think. 

 

Maybe got any other suggestions? 

[cc143]

How about that Sony 10-18mm? 

 

What sort of landscapes do you take? any astrophotography stuff?

[another random person]

59 minutes ago, Senzelian said:

So, I'm looking at buying a new landscape lens for my Sony a6000.

 

Kind of hard to find one, tho I was able to find the new Sigma Contemporary AF 16mm 1.4 DC DN for around 400€ which looks pretty interesting to me.

 

I know there is also a Rokinon something something f2. 0 I think. 

 

Maybe got any other suggestions? 

Especially for landscapes 16mm might be a little too tele so maybe look for something from an 8 to around a 14. Also since you would use the landscapes a fast Aperture would be irrelevant as the majority of the time you would have to stop down to around f16 to get everything in focus, at which most lenses are quite sharp.

 

From memory, Rokinons do not have autofocus which means that they would pretty much be only exclusively for landscapes and nothing else, which is that's your plan then its fine byut if you would like to try out other areas of photography then it would be beneficial to get a more flexible lens such as that of the 10-18 Sony OSS lens which has a reasonable but not the largest aperture of f4 but is a zoom which covers ultrawide to standard wide.

 

However if you don't want to spend that much money the Sigma Art prime seems to be a pretty good choice, keep in mind though with sigma's new lines the Sigma dock is a must have so that you can update the lens when sigma pushes new firmware updates. Therefore the cost should also be factored into the total expenditure. 

But if you would like a cheaper and native option there is a 16mm Sony prime at half the cost from memory but when opened up to its widest aperture it is i think around 1 and 2/3 stops slower, which as bad as it sounds shouldn't really affect landscape imagery. 

 

I personally have a Sigma 18-35, which I found out the hard way wasn't natively compatible with my Canon and had to shell out for the dock and spend ages updating and tuning but it seems to be a canon problem so Sigma lenses should work fine with your Sony but do take the advice with a grain of salt. But for proper wide landscapes I still use a 10-18.

[Senzelian]

57 minutes ago, cc143 said:

How about that Sony 10-18mm? 

 

What sort of landscapes do you take? any astrophotography stuff?

 

I'm interested in basically everything

Astro is definitly on my list! 

 

If I remember correctly the Sony 10-18 wasn't exactly the sharpest of lenses when I looked at some lenses on DxO Mark. But I might be entirely wrong here. 

 

54 minutes ago, another random person said:

Especially for landscapes 16mm might be a little too tele so maybe look for something from an 8 to around a 14. Also since you would use the landscapes a fast Aperture would be irrelevant as the majority of the time you would have to stop down to around f16 to get everything in focus, at which most lenses are quite sharp.

 

From memory, Rokinons do not have autofocus which means that they would pretty much be only exclusively for landscapes and nothing else, which is that's your plan then its fine byut if you would like to try out other areas of photography then it would be beneficial to get a more flexible lens such as that of the 10-18 Sony OSS lens which has a reasonable but not the largest aperture of f4 but is a zoom which covers ultrawide to standard wide.

 

However if you don't want to spend that much money the Sigma Art prime seems to be a pretty good choice, keep in mind though with sigma's new lines the Sigma dock is a must have so that you can update the lens when sigma pushes new firmware updates. Therefore the cost should also be factored into the total expenditure. 

But if you would like a cheaper and native option there is a 16mm Sony prime at half the cost from memory but when opened up to its widest aperture it is i think around 1 and 2/3 stops slower, which as bad as it sounds shouldn't really affect landscape imagery. 

 

I personally have a Sigma 18-35, which I found out the hard way wasn't natively compatible with my Canon and had to shell out for the dock and spend ages updating and tuning but it seems to be a canon problem so Sigma lenses should work fine with your Sony but do take the advice with a grain of salt. But for proper wide landscapes I still use a 10-18.

 

I had a 18-55 for my D3300 before I sold the camera. I thought the focal length was alright for most stuff I wanted to shoot. But maybe you are right and a wider lens is a better choice. 

 

At what point would I see obvious distortion and fisheye effects? So in other words, how wide can I go with a APSC body?

 

The Rokinon does indeed not have autofocus, which is why I'm also a bit sceptical on that. 

 

That Sigma Dock is really a downside

 

 

Thanks for the info so far

[xQubeZx]

The sigma 16mm f/1.4 is a good choice. It equals to a 24mm on Fullframe and that is often pretty good for landscape I find. Its sharp and not super large as it is designed for APS-C instead like its FF counterpart, the Sigma ART line for Sony FE. Keep in mind that wider than 24 can often cause issues with lots of things entering the frame that you don’t want too. Its often cool, but a 24 (16 on aps-c) is more allround imo if you are only getting one lens. 

 

As you want to do astro I’d go with this one as it has a fast aparture compared to the f/4 of the zoom lenses mentioned (10-18). 

 

If you want more focal lengts an option is to buy two rokinon lenses, one 12mm and say a 16mm for example. These have no AF though and it is of course always nicer to try and keep your landscape kit light by cutting down on the amount of lenses. 

 

The only native lens that would tick most boxes is the G master 16-35 f/2.8 but its large, heavy and very expensive. 

[cc143]

While I don't like using ultrawide focals as much anymore, I still find it very useful to have, especially when shooting cityscapes etc. I think a 10-18mm is something you should consider, and just buy a used samyang off ebay and use a dumb adapter if you can't find a sony mount when you start doing astro. 

 

Distortion largely depends on the lens, but I find, lines are more essential at a focal under 35mm and facial features and subject distortion is prevalent when shooting close ups with anything under 50mm. 

[historicalpoultry]

2 hours ago, Senzelian said:

 

I'm interested in basically everything

Astro is definitly on my list! 

 

If I remember correctly the Sony 10-18 wasn't exactly the sharpest of lenses when I looked at some lenses on DxO Mark. But I might be entirely wrong here. 

I shoot with an a6500 and I've been in a similar situation like yours. I wanted wide angle so the first thing I turned to was the Samyang/Rokinon 12mm f2. The 18mm ff equivalent is pretty wide but I wasn't too keen on edge sharpness and aberration control. I ended up selling it pretty quickly. The only thing that would make me get another one is the option of using it with a reverse ring for some extreme macro shots...

Here's a sample shot I found in my library

 

So next up I got the Samyang/Rokinon 14mm 2.8 for Nikon and used it with a dumb adaptor. I personally didn't find the distortion too distracting or hard to correct in post, but the 21mm ff equivalent just wasn't wide enough for what I wanted. Image quality is definitely better than the 12mm f2 though. Since I didn't find an affordable alternative I ended up keeping it. This is the 14mm with a dumb adaptor, no distortion correction applied.

 

Fast forward a couple of months I got a Viltrox Nikon to Sony E focal reducer (Yes, I know it's sort of shitty to buy a rip off... But I don't have 600 bucks to spend on a Speed Booster) and using that I am getting a ~15mm f2.0 ff equivalent with the 14mm which is great. I mainly got the lens for astro stuff (I'm not that into wide angle landscapes) and this combination gives me pretty all I can ask for for that little money, compared to anything else out there. 

Sample shot (nothing special, just wanted to try it in my backyard. Was lucky to get the one day a year where there's a clear sky with not too much light pollution where I live). Again, no distortion correction.

 

To quickly touch on the Sony 10-18, I personally just find it too expensive for the image quality it offers. Don't get me wrong, zoom and AF are nice to have, but I can easily get sharp images with the 14mm in some more action centered situations (e.g. skateboarding) since it's dof is huge. And f4 isn't really well suited for astro stuff...

 

So my recommendation would be, get a Samyang/Rokinon 14mm 2.8 for Nikon with a Viltrox focal reducer and a dumb adaptor, giving you essentially two lenses in one, a ~15mm f2.0 and a 21mm 2.8. 

 

Hope this helps. Quickly about the Viltrox focal reducer, it's of course NOT going to give you the same magical improvements that a Metabones will give you (e.g "sharper images than on full frame"). But I find that image quality doesn't suffer much if at all when using it. 

 

Cheers 

[Senzelian]

1 hour ago, xQubeZx said:

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1 hour ago, cc143 said:

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36 minutes ago, historicalpoultry said:

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Thanks guys! You all helped me a lot!

I will see what I can find on eBay and what the prices look like at the end of the month and then decide on a lens. 

 

(Btw. Nice pictures!)

[xQubeZx]

Worth mentioning the Samyang 14 f/2.8 exists on Sony E mount as a manual focus but also as a AF one. The AF is not said to be something amazing but it is good enough. From all I have managed to read the lens elements and all that is identical on both to the Nikon and Canon versions of the lens. Worth noting is that you can’t use screw on filters on this lens. Only reason I haven’t bought it as I often use ND filters which would not be as easy on this lens. 

 

I also agree that I think the 10-18 is to expensive for what it offers and a good prime to je a better option. 

[Senzelian]

2 minutes ago, xQubeZx said:

Worth mentioning the Samyang 14 f/2.8 exists on Sony E mount as a manual focus but also as a AF one. The AF is not said to be something amazing but it is good enough. From all I have managed to read the lens elements and all that is identical on both to the Nikon and Canon versions of the lens. Worth noting is that you can’t use screw on filters on this lens. Only reason I haven’t bought it as I often use ND filters which would not be as easy on this lens. 

 

I also agree that I think the 10-18 is to expensive for what it offers and a good prime to je a better option. 

Thanks!
Didn't know the same lens exists with AF.

I will check it out. I can get around not using filters.

[historicalpoultry]

57 minutes ago, xQubeZx said:

Worth mentioning the Samyang 14 f/2.8 exists on Sony E mount as a manual focus but also as a AF one. The AF is not said to be something amazing but it is good enough. From all I have managed to read the lens elements and all that is identical on both to the Nikon and Canon versions of the lens. Worth noting is that you can’t use screw on filters on this lens. Only reason I haven’t bought it as I often use ND filters which would not be as easy on this lens. 

 

I also agree that I think the 10-18 is to expensive for what it offers and a good prime to je a better option. 

Fair point, I'd still get the Nikon version though for the option of a focal reducer. OP shoots on crop afterall. Not recommending the Canon one because that focal reducer is more expensive.

As for filters, Samyang makes a filter adapter for the 14mm. Too bad it takes 150mm filters though, if I remember correctly . Those aren't cheap. If it came down to it (again, I don't normally shoot ultra wide angle landscapes) I'd go back to stacking if I wanted longer exposures.

[xQubeZx]

42 minutes ago, historicalpoultry said:

Fair point, I'd still get the Nikon version though for the option of a focal reducer. OP shoots on crop afterall. Not recommending the Canon one because that focal reducer is more expensive.

As for filters, Samyang makes a filter adapter for the 14mm. Too bad it takes 150mm filters though, if I remember correctly . Those aren't cheap. If it came down to it (again, I don't normally shoot ultra wide angle landscapes) I'd go back to stacking if I wanted longer exposures.

Yea, if he really wants a focal reducer a Nikon works, but its that or AF. And yea, its 150mm filters. Expensive as hell and takes a lot of space and weight

[cc143]

does the adapter for nikon have AF and aperture control though, an dif so, how good is it? if you end up focuaing manually anyway, just get the MF version, probably cheaper too. 

 

You could also go with the ef-s 10-22mm which is quite excellent optically and only about £250 used. Then buy an MC11 adapter and you are set, as long as you dont mind focusing manually because af is pretty unreliable.

[xQubeZx]

19 hours ago, cc143 said:

does the adapter for nikon have AF and aperture control though, an dif so, how good is it? if you end up focuaing manually anyway, just get the MF version, probably cheaper too. 

 

You could also go with the ef-s 10-22mm which is quite excellent optically and only about £250 used. Then buy an MC11 adapter and you are set, as long as you dont mind focusing manually because af is pretty unreliable.

The AF version only exists for Sony E mount so if you get a Nikon one you will get manual focus eitherway. 

 

[YellowJersey]

Laowa 9mm 2.8? Seems pretty well received. It's manual focus only, but for landscapes that shouldn't be much of a problem. Seems a great bang-for-buck lens.

[Senzelian]

9 hours ago, YellowJersey said:

Laowa 9mm 2.8? Seems pretty well received. It's manual focus only, but for landscapes that shouldn't be much of a problem. Seems a great bang-for-buck lens.

There are so many similar lenses to this.

But because I want to try some astrophotography it's probably better to get something a bit faster. Also, dat sweet bokeh