SUPERTEST
WIDE-ANGLE ZOOMS
These types of lenses can bring a whole new perspective to your photography. Here are the best buys on the market right now...
You can get decent wide-angle coverage from a standard zoom lens, whether you’re shooting with an APS-C or full-frame DSLR. But a wide zoom can feel like taking the blinkers off, enabling you to fit much more into the image frame. With viewing angles of more than 100 degrees, you can shoehorn much bigger areas into the frame. It’s ideal for the outdoors, especially when you want to capture big skies and sweeping vistas. However, extra-wide viewing angles can be even more vital for indoor photography, when you’re hemmed in by walls and can’t get as far back from your subject as you might like.
A key creative advantage is that wide-angle lenses enable you to exaggerate perspective and inject some real wow-factor into your photos. Get in close to the main subject in a scene and it can take on mighty proportions. Thanks to the large depth of field that you get at very short focal lengths, another bonus is that you can retain excellent sharpness in the foreground and background, keeping scenes well focused from front to back.
When choosing a wide-angle zoom, it’s crucial to select a lens that’s the right format for your DSLR. A couple of millimetres in focal length can make a big for viewing angles, and most wide-angle zooms that are designed for full-frame cameras will give limited coverage when used on an APS-C body. Here we’ve selected three of the best buys for APS-C cameras, and five of the most appealing but sensibly priced options for full-frame bodies.
APS-C
CANON EF-S 10-18mm f/4.5-5.6 IS STM £195 /$299
A real lightweight with a price tag to match, this lens is particularly compact and affordable
C arrying around extra lenses for your DSLR is no fun when they’re big, heavy and cumbersome. This offering from Canon is refreshingly small for a wideangle zoom and tips the scales at less than half the weight of most directly competing lenses. Its 67mm filter thread is also a lot smaller than usual, so filters are quite inexpensive to buy.
One weight-saving feature of the lens is that it has a plastic mounting plate, but it feels reasonably robust. Typical of many recent Canon lenses, it features an STM (Stepping Motor) AF system which is fast for stills, smooth for video capture and almost silent.
Less than half the price of Canon’s old EF-S 10-22mm wide zoom for APS-C cameras, this lens adds the bonus of image stabilization. As usual with non L-series Canon lenses, you need to buy the lens hood separately, the genuine EW-73C costing around £25/$25.
Performance
No lightweight in terms of performance, this lens matched or beat Canon’s pricier EF-S 10-22mm lens for sharpness in our lab tests, throughout its zoom and aperture ranges. Colour fringing is also less noticeable, but barrel distortion is slightly worse at the short end of the zoom range. Even so, it’s easy to correct, during editing or when using the automatic in-camera fix that’s available in recent Canon cameras. For an own-brand Canon lens, it’s a steal at the price.
Photo Plus
BEST VALUE WINNER
SHARPNESS
FEATURES
01
Super Spectra coatings are applied .
02
The 67mm filter thread is a tell-tale sign of the comparatively diminutive build.
03
Sold as an optional extra, the EW-73C petal shaped hood is an essential buy.
04
At 18mm, the longest focal length picks up the baton from ‘kit’ zooms like the 18-55mm and 18-135mm.