Need help to chose the right lens

[FLICK]

Hello all,
I am new to all these so forgive me if this post is long and if I do not use the exact technical terms in my post.
I need your help because I am building a website for my business and I need to find the right lens in order to take decent pictures of my rugs and carpets for the website.
The rugs that I need to take picture of are all kind of sizes, from 3' x 5' up to 9' X 12' or even 18' X 13' after doing a research and talking to some others I found out the best and proper way to do this is to install a camera close to ceiling facing the floor at the 90' angle, connect the camera to a computer and take my pictures by tethering but when everything was done I found out that still I can't take my pictures because I need to have a wide angle lens to cover the large desirable area of the floor.
I am using a Canon Eos 50D and I also have a Nikon D3100 and I need the right lens for both cameras
The distance from the ceiling to the floor is 15 feet high so my question is what would be the best lens to cover at least an area of 22 X 16 from that height?

please advise,

thank you

[Tringa]

Hello Flick and welcome to CiC.

I can't vouch for the accuracy of the calculation but have a look at the fourth calculator in this link - http://www.tawbaware.com/maxlyons/calc.htm

Dave

[jcuknz]

Another approach is to stitch two or more parts of the larger carpets together as if you were doing a panoramic photo .... IMO better done in your editing programme with layers but I gather that there are better stitch programs these days which I have not bothered to catch up with. Depends on if your time is more valuable than the cost of another lens.

[Manfred M]

The other reprophotography technique that also works is hanging things from the wall and shooting from the floor. This is certainly more of an option for the smaller sizes. The one issue to do have to deal with is getting good, even colour balanced lighting, regardless of how you shoot. You will want the colours to look right on your website

[tclune]

The one issue to do have to deal with is getting good, even colour balanced lighting, regardless of how you shoot.

Good point. Also, for ultra-wide angle lenses (which would be required under the larger rug conditions specified in the OP), the lens stretches in the horizontal direction (assuming landscape orientation). This is an inevitable consequence of the affine projective geometry needed to accommodate a rectiliear projection of extreme angles. The far left and right of the photo will be stretched relative to the part of the rug that is in the middle of the photo. Perhaps that isn't a big problem with the rugs, but it will be a systematic misrepresentation of what they look like in reality. FWIW

[SUSOM]

A tilt-shift lens would work very well in this application, but they are $$$$ and probably not transportable between Canon & Nikon bodies. I've heard of adapters that will allow you to use a Nikon lens on a Canon body, but not the other way around.

When it comes to TS-E lenses, the Canon 24mm f/3.5L Mk ii is probably the best around. The only problem I've seen with it is the $2,000 tag.

These lenses are also ideal for creating pano images by using the shift function

[Manfred M]

A tilt-shift lens would work very well in this application, but they are $$$$ and probably not transportable between Canon & Nikon bodies. I've heard of adapters that will allow you to use a Nikon lens on a Canon body, but not the other way around.

When it comes to TS-E lenses, the Canon 24mm f/3.5L Mk ii is probably the best around. The only problem I've seen with it is the $2,000 tag.

These lenses are also ideal for creating pano images by using the shift function

A shift-tilt lens is overkill for this situation. If you wall hang the rug, getting on a step ladder yo shoot is a much cheaper alternative. Likewise, any distortion that you might get shooting from ground level is easy to fix in PP. After all, these images are destined for a website.