One of my passions as a photographer is landscape photography. And one thing that never hurts to have in your bag if you enjoy shooting landscapes is a wide-angle lens.

Unfortunately I’m also a poor/cheap photographer. So, a really nice wide-angle lens has been out of my reach leading me to hunt for the elusive bargain basement variety. Now, don’t take this the wrong way – I really love shooting with odd, abandoned and sometimes more shady lenses. Because they can sometimes give you that unique look that you don’t get with really good glass.

Of course I wouldn’t normally suggest you take along your gaggle of misfit lenses on that very important shoot for your top client. Ticking off your client with artistic visions with screwy glass might not work out so well.

Promaster 28mm Video

So, on the hunt I went. I spent days looking through sites like Ebay and Flickr making comparisons between what I found and what some of the shots looked like with different lenses. Making notes, getting shocked by prices that sort of thing.

I ended up bidding on a Promaster Spectrum 7 MC 28mm 1:2.8 lens, winning for around 18 bucks. That’s pretty good don’t you think? From what I can discern the Promaster is actually a re-badged Sigma Mini-wide II.

Some observations.

• The Promaster offers a 28mm viewing angle on a traditional SLR sensor
• On a dSLR 1.5 cropped sensor it offers a 42mm viewing angle
• The Promaster offers a MC (Macro) feature
• Some models have the Ricoh pin which will need to be removed when attached to a Pentax-K mount
• Mostly plastic body construction
• 6 blade aperture