[DeepThrob]

24mm is going to cost more. If you are looking for budget, why aren't you looking at 28. The smc 28 - 3.5 is a wonderful lens for peanuts.

[PPPPPP42]

DeepThrob does have a point on the huge difference between 24 and 28mm.
Actually if 28mm was fine I would recommend the A28 F2.8 which can be had for about $120 in excellent condition from KEH. Its faster F2 brother is about 4 times as much.

[Zen4Life]

DeepThrob does have a point on the huge difference between 24 and 28mm.
Actually if 28mm was fine I would recommend the A28 F2.8 which can be had for about $120 in excellent condition from KEH. Its faster F2 brother is about 4 times as much.

Thanks for all the replies. The only reason I was thinking a 24 was because I wanted something close to 35mm equivalency (and didn't see any 23s). The Sigma super wide II fits the bill and KEH has one at BGN level but the wording is that "should" not affect image quality scares me. Perhaps I will call them. The 2 on eBay are pricier. Interestingly, the AF version gets much higher scores on this site's reviews. Is it not the same optical formula?

I am going to check out an A 28 as an option also.

Thanks

[PPPPPP42]

Regarding the scores on this site ignore them, its all either fanboy gibberish, most of which is from people that haven't used enough different stuff or don't understand what each number means, or unreasonable people that expect impossible lenses for free or are ripping on a bad copy of something they picked up as if they are all like that. Something having a rating higher or lower than something else is often just a difference in who owns it and bothered to rate it, though its worth looking into the different build technologies that went into each different series of lens. Ignore the prices too, they are so far off as to be worthless now.
The real value of it all is to use it as an index because we have really good info there like weight but also including stuff you wouldn't normally consider like how many blades the aperture has (think bokeh).
The rating descriptions themselves, not the numbers the people give are the important part.
There are usually a least a few good reviews for each lens that will explain in detail what they liked and didn't like and you can consider whether those are features that you would also like or dislike since some things don't matter to some people. For example huge heavy lenses are fine to me because it normally means they are fast and high quality and they help stabilize an image with their mass (an object at rest and all that).

[normhead]

Get a 21 ltd second hand and crop a bit.