Elizabeth at Eileen Donan Castle.
18mm focal length

My wife and I recently took a vacation, a really big splurge for the two of us. We’ve been married six years now, and we have not taken a “real” vacation since our honeymoon. So we decided to go big. It was kind of a last minute thing, as we have baby #2 coming later this year. So we went on a 15 day trip to Europe. Started in London for one day, went to Edinburgh, Scotland for three days, then to the highlands of Scotland (stayed at a B&B on Loch Ness) for four days, then back to London for three days, then Paris for four days. It was quite a trip, and I’ll never forget it.

But enough of that, let’s get this back to photography, and specifically portraiture. Knowing there would be lots of scenic views to capture, I bought a new wide lens, the Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 to fit on my Canon 20D (yep, still using that old dinosaur, but my new 40D will arrive on Friday).

I gotta tell ya, that lens impressed me. In fact, I used it almost exclusively for the whole trip. You see, I brought a range of lenses: new Sigma 10-20mm, Sigma 28-80mm, Canon 50mm f/1.8, Canon 85mm f/1.8. I brought the primes so that I could do some nice portraits in Europe. But then disaster struck on day one; my all purpose walk around lens, the Sigma 28-80 broke. The aperture blades close down, but won’t open back up. So left with two primes and a super wide zoom, I naturally went for the zoom for flexibility. That lens got a workout, and it was a nice test drive for the next 14 days.

This Thing Is WIDE

Eiffel Tower. 10mm

I mean really wide. At ten millimeters, standing at the base of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, I was able to get the whole thing with frame to spare. The wideness of this lens is great if you’re trying to catch a landscape or suck in an entire London hotel room bathroom (wow…small). Not so great for portraits though. Or is it?

As A Portrait Lens?

Our London room at 11mm

So since my primary lens broke, and the wide lens was my only flexible option, it became my all around landscape/architecture/portrait lens. I quickly discovered one thing about using it at the wide focal lengths: it stretches things around the edges. This is fine for faraway landscapes, but death for a portrait. Let me give you some advice: don’t take a photo of your lady at 10mm, place her off-center, and expect to get away with it. You know how they say the camera adds ten pounds? Well, you’d have to put about 50 Canon 1D’s on your subject to equal the weight this baby puts on at 10mm.

Now, once you get the focal length above about 15mm, you can avoid some of the face stretching. You can put your subject closer to the edge of the frame. The first photo above shows my wife standing in front of Eileen Donan Castle out near the Isle of Skye in Scotland. I took this shot at 18mm, and was able to compose the shot how I wanted, without worrying about stretching. At 20mm, you’re pretty much in the clear except for the very edges.

The Price Is Right

In choosing which super wide lens to buy, I looked at three makers: Canon, Sigma, and Tamron. The Canon has the name recognition and reputation. The Sigma had the price advantage. The Tamron had the largest range of focal lengths. Ultimately, I chose the Sigma because of image quality and price. At the time I purchased the lens, it was more than $300 cheaper than the Canon version. My European test drive proved to me that the image quality is top notch, and I’m glad I saved the dough, since it will go toward replacing my broken lens.

Conclusion

Driving on the left! 10mm

This is a really great lens to have in your bag. I love the image quality (contrast, color, and sharpness) and the ability to go wide when I need to. If you’re a photography generalist, get a lens like this. If you’re a portrait photographer (as I am), then you’ll still find it very useful in your bag.

It’s no portrait lens by any means, but works well in a pinch if you keep the focal length to the longer half of the range, or if going wide, keep your subject dead center in the frame. You’ll find it’s pretty big (much larger than you’d expect for such a short focal length) and somewhat heavy (lots of elements).

While it has the smallest focal length range of the three (10-20 for the Sigma, 10-22 for the Canon, and 10-24 for the Tamron), the cost savings and image quality are significant factors that to me puts it at the top.

To see lots and lots of sample shots with this lens, check out my “Europe 2009″ Flickr set. As of the time of this post I have about the first five days of the trip processed and posted. More to come in the next few days.

Most of all, having a lens this wide is fun! I had a blast playing around with photographic opportunities that were only possible with a wide lens (such as the driving on the left photo above). And when I had too much room in the frame, then let’s face it, nine megapixels is plenty so I just cropped the photo.

Get yours at Amazon.com now.