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Wide-angle lenses are a great tool for adding some WOW! to your photogaphs.
These lenses can impart stunning drama and a prominent sense of three-dimensionality
to your images. They can also be finicky to use: a small shift in camera position
can make or break a shot, and one must beware of distortions, vignetting, and
other potential problems.
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A 24mm lens offers a wide-enough view to take in the entire Laurel
Falls cascade at Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
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When used on a 35mm camera, wide-angle excitement appears with focal lengths
of 28mm and below. Because most consumer digital SLRs utilize a sensor that’s
smaller than a full 35mm film frame, there’s a cropping factor that results
in 1.5X or 1.6X increase in the effective focal length of any lens. Thus, a
28mm lens designed for 35mm use will frame like a 45mm lens when used on a digital
SLR with a 1.6X multiplication factor. That’s why most photographers invest
in an ultra-wide lens after purchasing a digital SLR.
Most wide-angle lenses are rectilinear in design, meaning straight lines appear
as such in your photographs. Less common are the fish-eye lenses, which have
significant “barrel distortion” where real-world straight lines
bow severely outward from the center of the frame.
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A wide-angle lens captures Comet Hyakutake in the night sky.
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A
wide-angle lens makes this small waterfall prominent, and diminishes
the size of the background trees.
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Emphasize a Foreground Element
When using wide-angle lenses it’s important to consider how they can affect
the look and feel of a photograph. Sometimes you just want to use the wide view
to gather in an expansive scene. The risk with this approach is that you may
end up with a visual jumble, without an aesthetic focus to rivet a viewer’s
attention. You’re often better off emphasizing a strong foreground element.
When the camera is positioned close to an interesting foreground subject, the
scene is often imbued with a feeling of depth and an impressive sense of three-dimensionality.
This is the look and feel of wide-angle photography at its best. This incredible
sense of depth is what makes wide-angle photography so dramatic. Strive for
a surprising visual interplay between foreground and background to spark the
viewer’s interest.
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Wildflowers
in the foreground create interest in this wide-angle forest scene.
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An exaggerated sense of depth can be conveyed not only in the scene as a whole,
but also in the foreground subject itself. That is, you can make the foreground
object appear stretched away from you as if pulled on a rubber sheet, adding
yet more visual tension to your image. One common example of this is the human
face viewed up close with a wide-angle lens; it will have an immense nose and
miniature ears. Remember, all it takes is getting close, close, close.
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A low position with a wide-angle lens accentuates these snow cups.
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Greater Depth of Field
Complementing the sense of depth created by wide-angle lenses is the fact that
these lenses inherently provide more depth of field than longer lenses. For
example, a 24mm lens at f/4 can sharply render everything from seven feet to
infinity; stopped down to f/16 it can make everything sharp beyond 24 inches.
By getting close to the foreground, enhancing the sensation of receding space,
and allowing great depth of field, wide-angle lenses can get you some dynamite
shots. This proximity to the foreground, however, can make these lenses challenging
to use. When you are close to a foreground subject, even an inch of camera movement
can significantly change the visual arrangement of the near and far elements
in your composition.
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Above
top: An attempt to relate the foreground shrub with the mountains
in the background with a 50mm lens.
Above: Switching to a wider 28mm focal length gives more energy
to the image.
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Avoid Vignetting
Besides the care demanded in positioning the camera, wide-angle photography
has other pitfalls to be avoided, lest your dynamic image be ruined by a technical
flaw. The angle-of-view with short lenses can be wide enough to encompass the
ring on a lens-mounted filter. In this case the dark image of the ring creeps
into the corners of the frame and creates vignetting. The shorter the focal
length and the thicker the filter, the greater the risk. With 24mm lenses and
shorter most conventional polarizing filters are too thick; you need a special
thin-profile polarizer to avoid vignetting. In any case, the practice of stacking
filters is out of the question.
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A
field of wildflowers appears to go on forever when using a wide-angle
lens.
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The
Indian Paintbrush is large enough to dominate the composition
by getting close with a 24mm lens. The scenery flows into the
distance with a feeling of depth.
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Another risk is the possibility of flare—that unwanted light in a photograph
from a bright light outside the frame. Most problematic is the sun. A lens hood
is normally used to shade the front of a lens from stray light, but a wide-angle
lens hood has to be so shallow to avoid vignetting that it’s virtually
useless. It’s all too easy for sunlight to strike the front of the lens,
ruining the shot (even when the sun itself is not in the picture). If possible,
shoot from a shaded location or pointing away from the sun. If flare seems to
be a hazard, you can shade the front of the lens with your hand (or other object)
to block the sun. Just be sure to study the viewfinder carefully—it’s
easy to get your hand into the picture!
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The
graceful S-curve of this stream is elongated by using a 28mm lens.
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The wide-angle shooter must also beware of distortion at the edges of the
frame. Rectilinear lenses can stretch circles into ovals at the periphery of
the image. This doesn’t create too much trouble in nature photography,
where the world comes in unpredictable shapes anyway. But recognizable objects
for which we have visual preconceptions, like buildings or people, can be warped
to the point of annoyance. If you are photographing people, try to keep them
toward the middle of the image.
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A
wide-angle lens and relatively slow shutter speed accentuates
this cascading water.
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Converging Parallel Lines
You must also be alert to converging parallel lines in your wide-angle imagery.
If you are shooting anything with strong parallel verticals, and you tip the
camera up or down in your composition, those parallel lines will converge. The
same goes for horizontal parallels. The result can look skewed, although technically
it’s a faithful rendering of the scene. A classic example is tipping a
camera up to photograph a tall building: the building’s top will appear
narrower than its base, conveying the impression that the structure is toppling
over backwards.
You can introduce dramatic foregrounds and tremendous depth into your photography
by trying wide-angle lenses. You need to exert some care when using them, but
the results can be red-hot. Go ahead—ignite your creative fire.
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