lenses for socorro

so with all of your help i have decided to stick with my canon 450d for now. thanks guys. now im going to be going to the socoro islands this fall and was wondering what lenses you would recomend i get for this trip.

Tokina 10-17mm and Sigma 17-70mm cover most subjects there.

Alex

Anything from macro to wide-angle. I have some old film era shots from there taken with a Nikonos RS with either a 50 or 20-35mm lens - I only had those two lenses for that trip. I recently inputted them into my Lightroom library from a Kodak Photo CD. Remember them?

Tom

Here is another. The previous was with the 50 macro, this and the next with the 20-35.

Tom

Uno mas.

Tom

thanks a lot guys my buddy has a cannon 10-22 i can get a good deal on is that a good lense or am i better off with a fisheye?

thanks a lot guys my buddy has a cannon 10-22 i can get a good deal on is that a good lense or am i better off with a fisheye?

If it's a choice between a 10-22 and Tokina 10-17 fisheye zoom, I'd definitely go with the 10-17

If it's a choice between a 10-22 and Tokina 10-17 fisheye zoom, I'd definitely go with the 10-17

thanks a lot loftus. i can see you know what you are doing but being a beginner im trying to understand the pros and cons of everything so why exactly would you take the 10-17 over the 10-22

First let me say I do not own Canon and do not own a 10-22 so the Canon guys can give you input on this. The 10-22 is a rectilinear wide angle zoom, vs the 10-17 which is a fisheye zoom. What this means is that the 10-17 is actually much wider than the the 10-22 even though the numbers look similar. The other difference is that the the fisheye essentially focuses on a curved plane versus the rectilinear lens which focuses on a flat plane. What this means in practice underwater is that for very wide angle lenses like these, the fisheye will work better behind a curved dome underwater in terms of being able to focus both in the center and the periphery of the frame, particularly at close range. As Alex said in his earlier post, for a place like Socorro the 10-17 fisheye zoom and a moderately wide rectilinear zoom like the 17-70 should cover everything you need from large animals close-up like this manta (probably less than 4-5 feet from me here, and I have even closer) to large animals a little further out and fish portraits and even macro (with the sigma).

The only difficulty you will encounter with the 10-17 is that it is so wide that it can be difficult to light with your strobes especially when you are very close. The 10-17 will allow you to get so close that things can be touching your dome. Another issue at very close range, the fisheye distortion will become more evident. I second what Alex said; and if I could only take one lens it would be the 10-17, if I could take two, (which is recommended) take a moderately wide rectilinear like a 17-70.

i have a 350D and have both the 10-22mm and also the 10-17. i have only used the 10-17mm on one trip and IMO it is the lens i will use for most of my wide angle work from now. there are loads of topics on here discussing the 2 lenses, do a search and read through the postings. of course i dont know what dome port you use, i have the sea & sea fisheye dome port and the 2 work great together. the main difference that i have found with the 2 lenses are that the corners are much sharper on the 10-17mm.

stew