Hi guys.

I am a newbie to photography. I've had a Nikon D5300 with me for a year with a 80 - 200mm kit lens. I've always had trouble taking photos of big groups. One is to fit in everyone and two is to fit in the scenery behind them as well.

So I thought a 35mm prime lens would help. Turned out the 'fit' that I get when shooting group photos got worst and I had to go further backwards to fit in everybody. I thought a 50mm or a 35mm are already what is defined as 'wide angle' lens but I did not get the effect that I want (plus wasted money on lens that I actually dont need)

I recently also read about 5300 being a DX camera, where it crops the photo? I have a small understanding on that too.

I asked a friend and he recommended me to get something like a 14mm - 70mm lens for versatility. But I dont want to make the wrong purchase again

Hoping you guys can help me out. If possible, recommend me an ultra wide angle lens that I could use to take photos without having to go ridiculously further backwards.

EDIT: any shops that you guys can recommend that I can go and test a variety of lens before buying?

This post has been edited by noonies_naruto: Mar 17 2017, 07:40 AM

First things first, I think you have a typo there.. Are you sure it's the 80-200 lens? Because 80-200 is definitely not the kit lens.
However, 18-200 is a kit lens.

If you want something wider than 18mm, you need to look for lens which has a smaller number than 18, for example a 12mm lens which is an ultra wide angle lens. Smaller the number, the wider it is..

Where you read about crop factor, it meant compared to a Full Frame (35mm) sensor camera like a D600, D610, D700, D750, D800, D810 and D4, D5. For the focal length of the lenses you have on your D5300, a DX or crop camera, u have to multiply it with 1.5 to get the full frame equivalent.

For example. Your 50mm X 1.5 = 75mm, which will becomes a short telephoto lens. Good for portraits of head and shoulder shots.

Your 35mm X 1.5 = 52mm, which is a normal focal length. It is wider than your 50mm lens, but definitely not a wide angle lens.


I agreed with your friend's recommendation. Because those range are very useful in day to day general purpose shooting. You can take a look a Sigma 17-50 F2.8, or Sigma 17-70 F2.8-4 if you want a longer reach. They are much better low light capable lens compared to your kit 18-200 lens. But the wider end is only 1mm more than your current set up......

Ultra wide angle can be tricky to use hence it's not for everyone. But if you are sure UWA is what u want, then u won't go wrong with Tokina 11-20mm F2.8 or it's cheaper but older brother Tokina 11-16 F2.8 which are available for both nikon and canon dslr. Hope this help.

This post has been edited by Loseeker: Mar 17 2017, 11:17 AM

Ultra-wide angle lens is the most horrible of choice for group photos.

Use it wrong and people towards the looks like card board.

You want to shoot group photo, put your lens at a reasonable focal length. On crop factor I recommend going no wider than 18 (which is around 28mm) but a good range would be towards 22 to 35 range (which is around 35mm to 50mm) and stand at a good distance, try to keep the group away from the left and right edges.

Ya.. that's the way to shoot group of people , unless the shooter need kinda "special effect" to use UWA lens

what if its a large group with 2-300 people and the hall has limited lenght? have to go max 18?

guess some do not mind as long as they are in the pic?

i use sigma 17-50 f2.8 ... at 17mm (27mm on canon) still not wide enough for me for landscape

.. KLDSLR got used sigma 8-16mm ultrawide.. seems like reasonable price 1.1k

The shorter the focal length, the more distorted it will be when you stand too close to the subjects regardless of sensor size. For wide shots especially landscape, FF (or medium format if you can afford) will be ideal as you can use longer focal to cover wider shot, thus have less distortion compared to using apsc/m43 with shorter focal for similar field of view.

On TS question on what is the "right focal" for group shot without having to stand back too far.......really depends on how big the group size and max distance you willing to stand back. There's is no wrong focal length, there's only the right focal length for what kind of shots you want. So do specify how big is the group, and how close you want to shoot (preferably with a draft photo or something) so the generous lowyat nerds here can give you the correct advice. Depending on situation, it is probably advisable to choose different location so you can step further back than to get a fish eye lens just to fit everyone.

This post has been edited by DaddyO: Mar 18 2017, 04:33 PM

one more thing to consider is a wide angle lens can be fish-eye or not fish-eye. you can get more people to fit in with fisheyes but it will distort the image so i'm not sure if you like that or not.

keep in mind that UWA lenses need a lot of 'care' when using. you dont want anyone to be too near to the edge because of the distortion. then when you correct the distortion in post-processing, those people might have to be cropped out haha.

you will be taking in a lot of stuff from the background, which usually ends up as distraction. so always need to look out for this.

that being said, a well-done wide angle fisheye shot can look amazing

alternative? if you're the active sort of person, consider a GoPro for group photos

just another explanation regarding the crop factor:
- Nikon "FX" cameras = full frame. "DX" 1.5 crop
- So for example if you use a 35mm lens on an FX, you'll get a 35mm view.
- Same lens on DX, 35 x 1.5 = 52.5mm. so you'll get a 52.5mm view on a DX camera. the image is exactly the same if you took the 35mm image from FX, and crop the sides.

This crop factor is thus a downside for DX trying to go wide angle. but on the other size, it's an advantage for telephoto shots because you sort of have a built-in 1.5x teleconverter

This post has been edited by dvlzplayground: Mar 19 2017, 08:16 AM

Hi, I just got a Tokina 11-20mm F2.8 lens for my Nikon D5500. Amazing for landscape as it is an ultrawide angle lens. It is a bit pricey at RM 2,390. You can try Tokina 11-16mm F2.8 II which is about RM1.9k. You can try Tokina 11-16mm first version second hand at about RM 1k, but the first version has no autofocus for D5XXX since no AF motor in the camera itself. There is also Sigma 10-20mm either 3.5 or 4-5.6 (I think).

Sample image below:



This post has been edited by pratap5233: Mar 28 2017, 02:32 PM

Nice photo, but time to clean out the sensor liao

Haha! Yea got one big spot there. Thanks for pointing out. Actually gonna go get lens cleaning kit later today.

Shall remove it via Lightroom for now...

Super Wide Angle lens not easy to handle as distortion is high.

Nowadays can download free software from Sony.
Image data center.
Just shoots with Raw files, even like a fish eye still can be flat like no distortion at all

Some lenses provide additional 1:1 magnification? I got 30mm and 50mm prime, both claim 1:1 magnification.

Only macro lens is it

Yeah my 30mm is a macro