Cheap wide angle help

[swintonphoto]

I do freelance work for a magazine, and they want me to do some interior architectural photos, and I need an affordable wide angle lens. I won't be using it much, I mostly need it for occasional magazine shoots.
I use Olympus cameras. My widest lens is my 14-54mm 2.8-3.5.
The current Zuiko lenses that are wide angle are great, but they are a bit too expensive for how infrequently I would use them.

Any ideas that are affordable?

Any good places to rent Zuiko lenses?

[kelsow]

What about doing a panorama with the 14mm held vertically?
It would be cheaper than buying a lens that you would use so seldom.

[ian408]

You may want to investigate the Tilt Shift world if you are working
with interior shots. Not sure what's available for the Olympus brand of
cameras.

[swintonphoto]

What about doing a panorama with the 14mm held vertically?
It would be cheaper than buying a lens that you would use so seldom.

I don't have a lot of experience doing this - any guidance?

[ziggy53]

I don't have a lot of experience doing this - any guidance?

Stitched panoramas of interiors is tough because there are typically so many straight edges in most households that would have to line up perfectly.

Since it's for a magazine, much higher quality requirements than say on-line real estate or average brochures, it may be awfully hard to obtain with multiple images.

It might be better to sub-contract those shots which require very wide angle of view. Lighting requirements are also going to be difficult with the wide angle of view.

You might be able to do what people used to do before super-wide lenses became readily available and that is to shoot as wide as possible of the "establish" shot and then use insets and detail shots to provide additional coverage of the area.

If you really want to persist in exploring interior stitched panoramas, there are a number of good resources:

http://www.gregdowning.com/HDRI/stitched/
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/QuickTime/InsideQT_QTVR/3Chap/chapter_4_section_4.html
http://www.imagematics.com/Resources/Interior_photo1.htm
http://www.imagematics.com/Resources/Photo_Pan1.htm
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/essays/pano-adventures.shtml

[Arvan]

how bout the sigma 10-20 ? I dont know if its avalible to 4/3 but. A friend has one of those. Works well..but there´s maby not as sharp if you need it for printsize?.

[swintonphoto]

You might be able to do what people used to do before super-wide lenses became readily available and that is to shoot as wide as possible of the "establish" shot and then use insets and detail shots to provide additional coverage of the area.


I think I will just do this. I think I can do a good job with it. At 14mm I get the equivalent of 28mm on my Oly, so I think I can make it work.

Arvan - unfortunately that lens is not yet available for 4/3 yet.