which new lens?

[JonyTVR]

Hi guys

Christmas is coming up and I fancy enhancing my camera gear. Im still a 'noob' really, got a NIKON D40x, 18-55mm + 55-200mm lenses and thats it. Now I mostly enjoy doing trackday shots but do some car show and landscape if I am away and think this is where I could do with improving? Off to Thailand in Feb so will be taking a lot of landscapes etc should I be looking at a wide angle lens? And if so which would you recommend without going crazy with money?

Thanks

Jon

[4Lmike]

Generally yes you'd want a wide angle lens for landscapes. A lot of people recommend the sigma 10-20...I bought one and think it's ok. Apparently the image quality can vary, so maybe i wasnt so lucky with mine.

I know everyone recommends it as a must have lens, and I'm going to do just that, but a nifty-fifty would be my choice if I had to pick 1! I'd say it's on my camera about 75% of the time. Pretty much unrivalled image quality and great fun to shoot with.

[JDRoest]

Shooting landscapes with a UWA (eg 10-20) is not an easy thing, not as easy as you think.

The problem is that although you get the huge wide angle, it really pulls you back from the detail in the distance. It's a tricky lens to use for landscapes in my opinion, and ironically, the "lowly" 18-55 can do a better job. One reason is that the slightly longer 18mm (vs 10mm) makes you work the composition, whereas in many cases the UWA is just so far away from anything it ruins landscape shots.

As with most things, it composition that makes the shot, and you need to use the UWA carefully to get the best results.

Hope that makes sense as I've just had a bottle of wine.

[RobDickinson]

Yep I shoot more landscapes at 17-20mm than I do at 10-15mm.