I have the D5000 with stock 18-55 lens. I’m looking for a wider angle, to take pics of groups of people, working together, round a table etc. so not fish eye but a bit wider, any ideas recommendations?

Maybe this?
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nikon-NIKKOR-10mm-Lens-White/dp/B005NFW94M/ref=sr_1_17?s=photo&ie=UTF8&qid=1369898620&sr=1-17&keywords=nikon+nikkor

Are Tamron lenses any good?

The lens you linked to is for the Nikon 1 system cameras so won’t fit the D5000 AFAIK (might do with an adaptor though).

I havn’t used one but a few people in my local club speak highly of the Sigma and Tamron 10-20mm lenses. There is also the Nikon 12-24 DX lens f2.8 but these can be expensive, usually £400-£500 second hand. The Tamron and Sigma lenses can be bought new for around £300-£400

Ooh i was hoping to get some thing decent for about 200, even fixed / prime

Wide lenses tend to be expensive. Samyang 14mm?

Have a look at Samyang wide angle primes – almost in your budget… I just bought a 14mm one for my full frame cameras. For your crop sensor, either the 14mm or the 8mm would work well. The 8mm is almost fisheye though!

I do have a Sigma 10-20mm which I’ll be flogging a bit cheaper than usual as it has a teensy, shallow chip on the front element. Let me know if you’re interested.

Taken on my FF camera (IR converted) with the Samyang 14mm a few weeks ago… On your crop sensor camera, the angle of view is going to be a lot wider.

And one taken with the 10-20mm lens which I’m about to sell (sorry I’ll stop going on about it now)

1.6x crop would be narrower, no?

Typo I guess. It’s 1.5 crop, only canon use the smaller 1.6 sensors for apsc.

Yes, sorry, narrower. Brain fart. 14mm on crop will be around 21mm. 8mm about 12mm.

Can’t but s/h. It’s not my money.

New Samyang off eBay then.

You might be able to get a S/H Sigma 10-20 for less than £250 if you look around. I bought a few primes for their optical quality…I’ve ended up only using them for video work, as I still like a zoom when on the side of a mountain or in a forest, where you can’t always take a few steps in the required direction. You could have the same problem if you’re taking images indoors.

EDIT: Sorry, just saw this “Can’t but(y?) s/h. It’s not my money.”

Groups of people can be hard with wide angle. You can end up with some big people and some small people, can look weird. Panoramas or multiple shots may get your point across better.

I find wide angles make rubbish pictures when the subject is simply a wide field of view. The good wide angle pictures are when there’s a wide range of things in the front to back axis. So stuff in foreground and backround, like user-removed’s lovely shots above. Except for the pool shot, where all I can see is a bloke’s disproportially large back and tiny hand 🙂

User removed. Is that the d1x conversion. Fancied doing that to the old beast OK he day.

I’ll second the point of groups with super wides can be very tricky when they fill the corners of the shot especially.

Oh! I see what you mean now. I originally thought he had taken a shot of young Jeremy Beadle