Wide angle lens

[mike3767]

Santa came early. Any quick tips on taking wide angle shots? What's going to be an easy subject to build my confidence up with this new lens?

 

[Bram]

Your house? Stand in a corner and see if you can get the entire room in one shot? The row of houses, stand on the road face your house, and get as many houses in as possible. It's nothing exciting but it's practise. If you don't mind me asking how wide angle is your lens?

 

[pgriz]

Wide-angle lenses have three key properties:
1) the wide angle (duh)
2) a very deep depth-of-field
3) distortion of the subjects and horizontal/vertical lines.

Wide angle lenses also have a way of creating distance between the foreground and the background (in contrast to telephoto lenses that compress the distance). Therefore, artistically, you can use the wide angle to create an image where something is in the foreground, possibly distorted, with the background appearing to be very far away, and still sharp.

Due to distortion, having people's faces (or bodies) at the edges of the image is not recommended as they WILL be distorted, and such distortion is rarely flattering.

With a wide angle lenses, placement of the horizon becomes very important. If you tilt the camera down or up even slightly, you'll see vertical lines start to converge, giving you buildings that are falling over...

Used creatively, wide angle views can be very intriguing, but you have to see beyond the "wideness" of the angle of view to really make use of this type of lens.

 

[sobolik]

USE IT A LOT!

I did one wedding almost exclusively with my 12-24mm lens. (some 2500 shots) The incredible depth of field, light gathering ability, cropping out compositions from a much larger composition are invaluable aids. USE IT! I love to use mine.

You did not post what lens you have specifically.

 

[Village Idiot]

What lens?

I like to do wide angle portraiture.

 

[sobolik]

What lens?

I like to do wide angle portraiture.

"My name is God. You may call me Allah.
-Yahweh"

Interesting. Never once did Yahweh say his name was Allah or say we could call him that until the Village Idiot came along to decree it. Never once.

 

[Village Idiot]

What lens?

I like to do wide angle portraiture.

"My name is God. You may call me Allah.
-Yahweh"

Interesting. Never once did Yahweh say his name was Allah or say we could call him that until the Village Idiot came along to decree it. Never once.

No clue what you're talking about.

 

[mike3767]

I ended up getting the Tamron 10-24. I was torn between the cannon but the cost difference was a huge difference and for the weekend warrior that I am, I didn't think I would see the difference. Thanks for the help. I'm helping a friend out by doing a wedding tomorrow and he knows I'm just starting out but thankfully, it's not a big wedding and they weren't planning on having a photographer so I was just an added bonus so I will post some work of my wide angle shots this weekend.

 

[Geaux]

Ah yeah, I was debating a Tamron 10-24. Reviews are all over the place when it comes to 3rd party wide angles, minus the Tokina 11-16.