Hi
I was hoping posting in this forum can point me in the right direction. Anybody can suggest some prime wide angle alt lens with some feedback on the lens. MF is ok - has to be compatible with canon.
Nikon 14-24mm ? Excellent lens, which is the reason I switched to Nikon. I also used this lens on the Canon 5D with adapter and it works very well.
Zeiss 21mm, I've heard is a good lens.
Not alt, but have u considered Canons own 14mm II prime?
Do you have a focal length and price range you are considering and maybe the application you would like to use it for? There are so many possibilities. You can spend as little as $40 and get a good lens at some focal lengths and you spend in excess of $5,000 for the best lens in some focal lengths. A good place to start is the Olympus primes including the 18mm f/3.5, 21mm f/3.5, 24mm f/2.8, 28mm f/3.5, and 35mm f/2.8. All of these are small and the 24 through 35mm ones are very inexpensive. These are great for landscapes, but there are better lenses usually at a higher price, however. They also are fairly easy to adapt to use with a Canon camera. So that is a place to start, but if you tell us more I am sure people can be of even more help.
I've the Contax Zeiss 21/2.8 Distagon, complete with focus confirmation Canon adapter, but I was going to price it more towards the Contax collector market.
Thanks Steve. I think 24mm and lower. and budget is $1000 (almost pulled the trigger on a 24L). But clearly Im thinking this is too much money and hence decided to research the alt space a bit more to see if there are some gems.
At 24 mm the Olympus f/2.8 is a nice lens and would cost about $200 or so. It is also easy to adapt. On the opposite end of the price range some might like the Zeiss 25mm f/2.8 ZF better (this lens is in a Nikon mount) and you should be able to get it with a good adapter for about $900. Looking wider the Olympus 21mm f/3.5 is probably the best choice in your price range. It would cost about $500 and like all the Oly lenses would be pretty easy to adapt. Going even wider you might consider the Oly 18mm f/3.5 which runs about $900. I hope this helps.
I feel like the Minolta wides are overlooked. True, they need converting to EF mount, but some are, at a minimum, competitive with the corresponding Olympus.
The 24/2.8 and 28/2.0 come to mind. They both have floating element designs and the 24/2.8 design was adopted by leica for their own R 24mm offering. I found the 28/2.0, at the most, 2 stops behind the Elmarit R 28-latest, in corner sharpness. Neither, had any lateral CA to speak of. These 2, I sold for in the $250 price range, and no fussing with adapters.
The Olympus 24mm f/2.8 was never tested by photodo and the new Z series 25 Zeiss lenses weren't either. Here is a very nice comparison of the Olympus 24 f/2.8 and the Canon 24 f/2.8 from the 16.9.net site which is run by one of the members here (hubsand).
If you follow the test you will see the Olympus in this test performs quite a bit better than the Canon. If you want autofocus, however, the Canon has it and the Olympus does not.
and hence decided to research the alt space a bit more to see if there are some gems.