Best wide angle lens and filters?

I'm just starting out and i want a wide angle lens preferably a fish-eye but i don't know what to get. Nikons 10.5mm fish-eye is good but its goes for around $700 and others like sigma etc go for like $300-400 but i want to know what would be best for me. I will have a NIKON D7000 i want a lens that is user friendly and a lens that i can use to get more acquainted with my camera and f stops, etc. I also want to know what is the best Filter Brand. Some say Hoya, others Tiffen, but i want not just a UV Filter but also a polarized and graduated filter. Any suggestions? And if you can show where you can buy them. For example Amazon, Best Buy, etc.

The fisheye is probably one of the last lenses you should buy. It's a specialty lens that you will likely use very little. You have a really good camera in the D7000. Unfortunately a good lens costs a lot of money. Perhaps you can get a 50mm f1.4 (not 1.8). That's a lens at the professional level and not too expensive. If you can't get that lens you can learn just the same with any lens.

There's no "best" when it comes to photography. At certain levels all of the items are going to be good. You can't buy a good filter cheap. You don't need a UV for anything. A polarizer is great but a good one is going to be around $200. Some top brands are B+W, Schneider, Tiffen and Hoya. Don't buy a cheap filter, just wait until you can get a good one. Grad filters are not that necessary because you can accomplish a very similar look in the computer. I haven't owned a grad filter in years. I suppose if I had them in my bag I'd use them once in a while but I shoot people, not landscapes and a grad filter ends up hitting the model's face in most cases. Get used to buying your gear from Smay's CAmera in LA or BH Photo in NYC.

If you are after the best picture quality, the Nikon fisheye is the only choice. From there, it's all downhill, may it be Sigma (which is still expensive) or a $50 semi-fisheye screw-in adapter.

For filters, Hoya and Tiffen are good and so is Cokin. For all your photography needs, window shop at http://bhphotovideo.com/...ovideo.com.

Fisheye lenses come with internal filters.

Before you buy a rarely used fisheye, you may want to get a lens like the 10-24 mm wide angle zoom lens.

Here is how you can get to know how to balance the ISO, lens aperture and shutter speed.

http://camerasim.com/camera-simulator/

Tiffen, Hoya and B+W filters are the best and easiest to find in the States

The polarizing filter really only work well on medium wide angle to medium telephoto lenses. They can do two things. * remove reflections from pools of water, windows and other nonmetallic reflective surfaces and * enhance the northern and southern sky when the camera is aimed at 90 degrees to the arc of the sun The filters used on wide angle lenses are special thin filters designed to prevent any vignetting that can be caused by standard filters

Graduated and filers are mostly used when photographing landscapes and then only rarely.

Last spring I bought a tameron 10-24mm lens for a trip to Italy. Let me tell you, this lens is amazing! You can get a really nice effect when the lens is at 10mm or a regular look at 24mm
Here are some pictures I took with the lens…

I believe that it cost about $400 or $500 but it was worth it. I use the lens all the time and you can buy it with an adaptor for canon or nikon, whatever you have.

The only downside to this lens is it distorts objects near the edge sometimes. If you are taking a picture of a person and there head is on the side it may destort it and give an unflattering look. I would stick to scenery shots and basically anything without people unless they are in the middle.

Good luck and I hope this helped.

Oh and B and H photography is a great place to buy camera accessories and equipment.