wide angle lens for national park visit?

[aximrocks]

I'm planning to visit banff national park next month. Currently I have a Tamron 28-75 F2.8 and EF 70-200 F4 on a Rebel XT. I was thinking about getting a good wide angle lens to replace the 18-55 kit lens. My budget is under $1000. Which one would you pick?

EF-S 10-22mm F/3.5-4.5 ($750 from B&H)
Tamron 17-50 F/2.8 ($500)

Any recommendations on a good lens for landscapes?

[TenzoR]

EF-S 10-22mm F/3.5-4.5 ($750 from B&H) gets my vote.

[klam]

I had the 10-22mm when I was on a crop body and it's a fantastic lens. You won't regret it. Going down to 10mm is much wider than 17mm.

[CSAgent]

The 10-22mm is good for wide angle yes, and that's about it. So unless you do a lot of wide angle shots, i'd go with 17-50mm for occasional wide angle and general use. Not to mention, the F2.8 is better than F3.5.

[eelfliw]

Before you buy the lens, ask yourself first, what do you want to achieve with the wide angle lens?

Is it wide field of view? If so, you'll be better off getting a tripod and a pano head and taking multiple shots with a 50mm lens to stitch them together than with a single wide angle lens. That's a lot cheaper than a new lens and the FOV can go as far as 360 degrees. No single lens can do that.

Is it the trademark edge distortion of a WA lens? If so, forget it. You won't get that with a 1.6X crop body. Need to get the 5D or 1Ds series.

Is it the perspective? If so, this is a good reason to get a WA lens.

So, decide on what feature of the WA lens you need before deciding if it's worthwhile getting one.

[DirtyLude]

Autostitch is greate for panorama's.

http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~mbrown/autostitch/autostitch.html

http://www.higginstribe.com/gallery/2007-07-03-French-River/2007-06-30-French-River-01-s.jpg

[Evil Techie]

yeah like eelfliw and DirtyLude said
i would just do stitching on a tripod to achieve that panorama shot

for me, sceneries dont require wide angle lenses at all
in fact, i prefer telephoto because a lot of tourist attraction places have unnecessary or artificial surroundings that u want to leave out by zooming into your subject

[cloud82]

Also consider the Tokina 12-24mm f4 if 12mm is enough for you.

Regarding paroramas, it's an option but does not necessarily replace an ultra-wide angle lens. (I do take a lot of panoramas...)

[Anteros]

Check out the Sigma 10-20mm lens as well. I have one and I love it. It's also much cheaper than the 10-22mm.

[DirtyLude]

Just FYI, but that Autostitch does not require a tripod and trying to align each picture. I also have a Tamron 28-75. You just give it all the pictures and it puts them together automagically.

[Outsider]

Just FYI, but that Autostitch does not require a tripod and trying to align each picture. I also have a Tamron 28-75. You just give it all the pictures and it puts them together automagically.
+1 for Autostitch

When I first started using it, I was a little suspicious of the magic that happens to create the stitch, since most other stitching software requires user input to match up key points in each photo, but after using Autostich a few times, I was surprised at how well it actually does work!

[ShadowVlican]

Autostitch is greate for panorama's.

http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~mbrown/autostitch/autostitch.html

http://www.higginstribe.com/gallery/2007-07-03-French-River/2007-06-30-French-River-01-s.jpg
+1 for Autopano Pro (which uses Autostitch algorithm)