Best lens for landscape photography on a crop-sensor body (APS-C)

Question

Recently I've been studying Elia Locardi's work and I've noticed he shoots on a Nikon D810 (full frame) with a 14-24mm lens. Even though 14mm is really wide especially on a full frame body, it doesn't seem too wide (like a fisheye). As a Canon 750D owner I was wondering, is there some kind of lens out there which gives you high quality shots and doesn't distort like crazy (and doesn't cost a kidney - I'm looking at you Canon L lens)? Where is that edge of where it becomes more of a fisheye? I've googled on this but there was nothing specifically to find about apsc in this context and I can imagine there is no right or wrong answer here, like most of the times. But I am curious as to what you think about this.

Cheers

Edit: I'm aiming for good wide angle lenses. I have a sigma 16-50 f2.8 on my apsc body, but I feel like I still could make a step up from there in terms of quality and possible a little wider as well. Just not fisheye, that doesn't really float my boat

'Best' is always going to be subjective - some people take really good landscapes with a telephoto. Perhaps 'lens type recommendation in order to emulate the style of xyz on an APS?' — Tetsujin, Oct 14 '17 at 12:37
The word you're looking for, btw, is rectilinear - Not a recommendation [& can't be an answer] but Google turned up the Laowa 12mm f/2.8 & this PetaPixel review ...though I've now got my eye on their 60mm 2:1 macro [never stop spending in this game ;) — Tetsujin, Oct 14 '17 at 12:51
@Tetsujin ah yea I forgot about that zero-D lens, but it as well is pretty pricey (not Canon L pricey though) — Sten Martens, Oct 14 '17 at 12:53
As @Tetsujin says, you should look up rectilinear lens vs fisheye lens. The focal length doesn't determine this. — osullic, Oct 14 '17 at 12:54
Also How wide can a lens be before it begins to produce distortion? — mattdm, Oct 14 '17 at 13:35
Panoramas in post processing and large format film are alternative ways of creating wider and/or more detailed landscape images. The search for a new lens may be an XY problem. — , Oct 14 '17 at 14:33
Related: Does wide angle equivalent in crop sensor skew image?, including the comments to this answer — Michael C, Oct 15 '17 at 01:17
Putting the camera system into title or tags would be useful. — Gerhardh, Oct 16 '17 at 06:01
Related: Understanding Lens Viewing Angle and Focal Length Relationship — Michael C, Nov 19 '17 at 21:14

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 14 '17 at 15:24

A fisheye lens is a fisheye lens. It is constructed that way. The opposite of that is a rectilinear lens and that is also constructed to be rectilinear.

The Nikkor 14-24mm F/2.8 is one of my all-time favorite lenses because it one of the widest rectilinear lenses with a constant aperture available. It was for a long time but there are other options now. On my site, you can easily search for such a lens. Here is a link to all Canon EF-compatible full-frame rectilinear zoom lenses that go wider than 15mm. This is a live link, so more results will appear as new ones get announced.

The Canon offering is the EF 11-24mm F/4L. It is extremely wide and probably high quality but I have not tested it yet. The Sigma Art 12-24mm F/4 DG HSM is an excellent performer for roughly half the price of the Canon! It is very sharp and shows little distortion, although a fair amount of vignetting. The Tamron SP 15-30mm F/2.8 is one of their better lenses, although far from being as wide as the Canon and Sigma offerings.

At this point in time, APS-C cameras are at a disadvantage. There is no comparable rectilinear lens to the ones mentioned above. To get only a 15mm equivalent you need to have something that is wider than 10mm on an APS-C camera, even more so with Canon's 1.6X crop. Still here is a similar search for Canon EF-mount APS-C rectilinear zoom lenses that are at least 10mm wide.

When you see Elia Locardi's images (I am also familiar with his work), the wide-angle is one thing that gives them the striking perspective. There is also a huge amount of processing but that has nothing to do with the lens. To get a similar perspective on an APS-C camera, the only choice is the Sigma 8-16mm F/4.5-5.6 DC HSM. Its quality is fairly good with excellent sharpness but it has strong barrel distortion (which is not the same as fisheye projection) and really heavy vignetting. It is a lens that I often considered but ended up deciding it is better to change sensor formats (Even all 7-14mm lenses for Micro Four-Thirds are much better performers). People do correct some distortion in software but beware that it always reduces image-quality and it will affect your framing, significantly so if there is a high amount of barrel distortion.

It is there in the search results, among several 10-Xmm ones, but it isn't much good. The difference in angle-of-view between 8mm and 10mm is significative too. — Itai, Oct 14 '17 at 18:55

Best lens for landscape photography on a crop-sensor body (APS-C)

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