Brett Roberts
EF5
I'm a Canon 300D owner and relatively new chaser, and I'm looking to purchase a new lens in the near future with chasing and weather photography in mind. Right now I only have the kit lens (18-55 mm f/3.5-5.6), which I'm very unhappy with, and a Sigma 70-300 mm that has served me well for the price.
Since I'm a broke college student, I'm not looking at anything above $500 really, and I'd prefer to keep it even less than that if possible. I think I've narrowed my search to two options: the Sigma 17-70 mm or Tokina 12-24 mm, which are both fairly affordable and have overwhelmingly good reviews and happy users on the photography sites I've visited.
Now I have to decide which focal length range is going to serve me better when I'm out on the Plains this spring, though. My initial inclination is to go for the Sigma, which would totally replace my kit lens and even add some range on both the wide and tele ends, plus it's cheaper. But on second thought, with the 1.6x crop factor of the consumer Canon models, perhaps the 12-18 mm range of the Tokina would come in quite handy in certain situations. Plus, my main interest outside of photographing storm chases is landscape photography.
So to help me weigh my options here, what focal lengths do all you DSLR users find yourself using most often? Is having only 17 mm on the wide end on my crop camera likely to be severely limiting for "storm structure" photos, or should I be more concerned about covering the 24-70 mm range with a respectable lens (which the kit lens is certainly not, in my experience)? The frustrating thing is that if the kit lens weren't so terrible, the Tokina would make more sense because I could just pull out the kit in cases where I really needed something between 24 mm and 70 mm, but given its poor quality and absolutely worthless focusing ring (which cost me the opportunity for some good low-contrast post-sunset shots during a storm in September), I'd love nothing more than to just ditch it altogether.
Thoughts?
Since I'm a broke college student, I'm not looking at anything above $500 really, and I'd prefer to keep it even less than that if possible. I think I've narrowed my search to two options: the Sigma 17-70 mm or Tokina 12-24 mm, which are both fairly affordable and have overwhelmingly good reviews and happy users on the photography sites I've visited.
Now I have to decide which focal length range is going to serve me better when I'm out on the Plains this spring, though. My initial inclination is to go for the Sigma, which would totally replace my kit lens and even add some range on both the wide and tele ends, plus it's cheaper. But on second thought, with the 1.6x crop factor of the consumer Canon models, perhaps the 12-18 mm range of the Tokina would come in quite handy in certain situations. Plus, my main interest outside of photographing storm chases is landscape photography.
So to help me weigh my options here, what focal lengths do all you DSLR users find yourself using most often? Is having only 17 mm on the wide end on my crop camera likely to be severely limiting for "storm structure" photos, or should I be more concerned about covering the 24-70 mm range with a respectable lens (which the kit lens is certainly not, in my experience)? The frustrating thing is that if the kit lens weren't so terrible, the Tokina would make more sense because I could just pull out the kit in cases where I really needed something between 24 mm and 70 mm, but given its poor quality and absolutely worthless focusing ring (which cost me the opportunity for some good low-contrast post-sunset shots during a storm in September), I'd love nothing more than to just ditch it altogether.
Thoughts?
