[moshepupkin]

Still undecided... price is a factor, as this lens is gonna be used very frequently.

The cheapest wide angle lens for Pentax on Adorama for the moment appears to be Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6. Any views on this one?

Is DA10-17 worth $100 price difference?

Is DA15 worth $250 price difference? I am also not sure that fixed focal length is good for landscapes. Is it? If not, my main question would be - DA10-17 or cheaper third party lens (which one?)

[VoiceOfReason]

The 10-17 gets fisheyed when using the wide end, and the Sigma is rectilinear, meaning you don't get the fisheye distortion.

[Canada_Rockies]

As mentioned above, the DA 10-17 is a fisheye lens. That makes it unsuitable for most landscape work. It is a specialty lens. It is an effect that some enjoy, and others, such as me, do not. I have a personal objection to a lens whose controls are reversed. I want to zoom in the Pentax direction. I want to focus in the Pentax direction. And in the wide angle area, AF is not necessarily the best choice. Hyperfocal (I have an app on my phone) and specific zones are the ticket.

My personal choice, bought as a kit with my K10D in late 2007, is the DA 12-24. It is rectilinear. It is not the best lens in the world for flare control. My Flickr site has a set that I did in early 2008 that shows the strength and weakness of the lens. I use it at both ends and almost every point in between. I am not at all sure I would want to go wider. Quite often the foreground accent/background distant effect does not do what I want with a landscape. I quite like the range of the lens. It goes from APS-C slightly wide/street length (24mm) to ultra wide (12mm).which can make spectacular images while still retaining some definition in the distance.

Personally, the price of a lens is much subordinate to what it can do for me. The choice of lens is yours, and yours alone. Good luck in your search. Don't forget to check out the databases on this forum and others for the strengths and weaknesses. You can look for a particular lens when searching.

[bassek]

There is also the DA14/2.8 which I had always thought of being expensive. Then yesterday while visiting Sweden of all places they had a sale on used Pentax gear and also a new DA 14 heavily reduced. My wife urged me to buy it, so I haggled down the price further and left the store (and country) happily.

Seb.

[LeChuck]

Wide angle and ultra wide on Pentax is a pretty sad affair. Very difficult to find a lens that performs properly and is sharp.

Personally I owned both the 15mm and the 12-24 and returned them. The 15mm was sharp in the center but terrible on the sides (not just the corners), bad for landscapes. I know a lot of people love it, but it's an overrated and overpriced lens in my opinion. On a crop camera, it is wide but doesn't get into the ultra wide realm. Advantage is compact-ness.

The 12-24 has an old form factor with a huge front element and hood that barely fits in an average bag, it is also overpriced especially if you compare it to its Tokina twin. Mine was pretty sharp across the frame but its CA was absolutely horrible, beyond the ability of Lightroom to automatically correct for it, and resulting in a lot of artifacts when further corrected by hand.The highest, thickest CA I have seen on any lens that I've owned.

The Sigma 10-20....I owned 3 copies of this lens. My first one worked fine, as in it didn't have manufacturing defects, but sharpness was only average, mostly good at widest position. The other 2 copies were both decentered. It's an ok lens, if you are lucky enough to get a good one.

The Sigma 8-16 basically doesn't exist anymore.

Wish the Tokina 11-16 were available on K mount.

I am loving the Rokinon fisheye that I have (and the fisheye projection can be corrected if needed) and really interested in the new Samyang/Rokinon 10mm. The 14mm Samyang seems excellent, worth looking into. Of course, this is all with manual focus.

[jimr-pdx]

Still undecided... price is a factor, as this lens is gonna be used very frequently.

The cheapest wide angle lens for Pentax on Adorama for the moment appears to be Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6. Any views on this one?

Is DA10-17 worth $100 price difference?

Is DA15 worth $250 price difference?

My answer (on a tight budget) was no, so I bought a 17mm f/4 SMC Fish-Eye (ah the old days, when Fish-Eye had a hyphen ) for about half the DA15's price. I expect it will be great for landscapes, a bit odd for city shots which I rarely do. I'll give it more use this weekend and add a few shots in this thread, and borrow a DA15 for comparison; allowing for distortion the field of view will be similar.

[tibbitts]

As mentioned the 10-17 is not a general-purpose wide angle lens, so it can't be compared directly to the others. You can de-fish somewhat in software, but I believe that sacrifices a good portion of the frame.

I've had two copies of the 10-20mm sigma 4-5.6. The first was decentered; the second is fairly good across the frame, but it's not a perfect lens. It has odd edge distortion that generally doesn't affect nature landscapes, but would probably bother me if I was using it for architecture, because it's difficult to correct in software. For landscapes you often use f11 or f16, so that cures some ills that you might see at larger apertures.

With Pentax there just aren't a lot of good choices in this range, or honestly most ranges in zooms, wide-angle or telephoto, if you want modern lenses. Pentax has limited choices and it seems that increasingly, many newer third-party lenses aren't made for Pentax.

[SpecialK]

Here is a comparison of the 10-17 and 12-24 at overlapping focal lengths.

[Bagga_Txips]

I have the 10-17 and the DA21. In my opinion, the 10-17 is fine at about 15-17 and you can easily defish it without losing much of the frame. But maybe an even better option is to get the 21 and do 2 or 3 shots and stitch them using ICE. Stitching might even be adequate when using a kit lens within its sweet spot, maybe 24mm at 6.3, something like that.

[Sandy Hancock]

I have the DA15 and DA10-17, and love them both for different reasons.

The DA10-17 is *much* smaller then the DA12-24 or any of the ultra-wide Sigma zooms. At 17mm and "de-fished" in Lightroom it gives an almost identical field of view as the DA15


DA15 f/5.6


DA10-17 @ 17 f/5.6

Having the ability to also be seriously fishy at the wide end is a fun bonus.

[waterfall]

Still undecided... price is a factor, as this lens is gonna be used very frequently.

The cheapest wide angle lens for Pentax on Adorama for the moment appears to be Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6. Any views on this one?

Is DA10-17 worth $100 price difference?

Is DA15 worth $250 price difference? I am also not sure that fixed focal length is good for landscapes. Is it? If not, my main question would be - DA10-17 or cheaper third party lens (which one?)

IMHO, the 15 Ltd is great for landscapes. I would not consider a zoom in its place.

[beeldmark]

I have the 12-24, the 10-17 and the 21ltd (in order of acquisition). no experience with the 15mm.

I added links to my set with these lenses, so you can see what the same photographer can do with these lenses.
Pentax DA 12-24mm f4.0 ed al if - a set on Flickr
Pentax Fisheye 10-17mm f3.5-f4.5 Zoom - a set on Flickr
smc PENTAX-DA 21mm F3.2 AL Limited - a set on Flickr

For you I would recommend the 12-24. It's a very competent lens, and the most versatile of the three. I think it's an advantage to have a zoom when shooting wide-angle, even more than for the larger focal lengths. That is because a lot of the background will be in the picture, and mostly (almost) in focus as well. So it helps if you can zoom a bit in or out, to get the maximum effect, with zooming in to just get a disturbing object just outside of the frame. Maybe that's the reason why I use this lens at all focal lengths, by the way, not only the extremes (although a bit more at 12 and 14/15 than the rest).

I decided for a 12-24 and not a 10-20, because I think the 'distortion' of rectalineair lenses wider than 12 is too much (I mean the stretching out of object, necessary to keep the lines straight). For views wider than 100% (12 mm) I prefer the fisheye. But that's very personal.

I hope this helps to make up your mind. And, if you can't choose: get 'em all :-)

---------- Post added 03-25-2014 at 10:04 AM ----------

oh, as for CA on the 12-24mm: that's a weak point of this lens, in some circumstances clearly visible (and the 10-17 mm even more). But not so difficult to erase in lightroom.

[Kayaker-J]

I have the DA15 and DA10-17, and love them both for different reasons.

The DA10-17 is *much* smaller then the DA12-24 or any of the ultra-wide Sigma zooms. At 17mm and "de-fished" in Lightroom it gives an almost identical field of view as the DA15


DA15 f/5.6


DA10-17 @ 17 f/5.6

Having the ability to also be seriously fishy at the wide end is a fun bonus.

Now that's interesting. Tell me if it's my imagination, but with the DA 15, as displayed on my small but hi-rez Nexus tablet, I get an enhanced sense of the overall space by comparison to the zoom shot -- as if I'm standing outside the structures looking in. The zoom take gives me a feeling of standing underneath one more of the overheads (which is out of frame). A more "confined" feeling, in other words. Which raises the question, how much of that is due to lens, and how much to post-processing?

[ChristianRock]

My wife urged me to buy it...

Oh now you're really showing off

So how do you like it?

[bassek]

Oh now you're really showing off

So how do you like it?

The wife is great. Oh the lens? It's nice too!
(show mode off)

Seb