Recently a fellow contributor to Apartment Therapy bought herself a new wide angle lens and asked if I had any advice before setting out to shoot one of her tours. Shooting with a wider lens, especially if you're coming from a fixed lens such as a 50 mm, is astonishing and fun. There's just so much more picture in your picture! Here's my take on a wide angle.
• Now, more than ever, it's imperative to get your camera with its wider lens onto a tripod. With a tripod, you're much more likely to get the nice parallel lines and prevent distortion while making your images look super professional. You can fix a lot in post production, but it's much better and more reliable to take your time and shoot properly. If you decide to fake it because you can't get your hands on a tripod, use walls and furniture to reduce blur and get crisp photos.
• Keep people and major subjects in the center of the frame with a wide lens, as the sides tend to get a little distorted — no one wants a giant forehead because they are at the side of the image and their face is getting stretched. (This happened to me in some of my wedding photos; not pretty!).
• Usually, wider lenses have a higher f-stop, so if you're working in manual mode, crank your f-stop all the way down to 3.5, 4 or 5.6 and push your ISO a little high, around 400-800, to get maximum light sensitivity. Shutter speed can be at 80-100. This balance is critical when you're indoors shooting interiors — this is just a rough suggestion here though. You may be in different conditions, such as bright, sunny room or a dark basement, where your settings will be very different.
• A wide angle lens can be tough for photographing vignettes/details. I suggest switching to your kit lens or a fixed lens for those types of photographs, as they've got that lower f-stop for maximum depth of field, and it's easier to isolate the subject.
• Lastly, enjoy the full frame! Use every inch! Things can really get dramatic as so much information exists on one picture plane. I love this about shooting with a wide lens — pay attention to the figure/ground relationship, because there's a whole lot more foreground when shooting this way.
xoxo,
Leela the Photo Magician
(Images: Leela Cyd Ross for Apartment Therapy and The Kitchn, all shot with a wide angle lens)
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oh leela, photo magician, i want one of these so badly. i am waiting for the craigslist gods to offer one up for a decent price. thanks for the tips in the meantime....
This is a great list. It's tough to compile a list like this because of so many variables in camera types (spacePhones to dSLRs) and so many different needs (folks who just want a shot of the dog vs. an aspiring ansel adams). Here's a few more that might help:
1: Think about the camera position within the space (linked to the tripod tip). When you're shooting architecture with a wide lens, you'll notice converging and bending lines much more. Raising (or lowering) your camera to be roughly in the center of the space (height-wise) will make the photos look more natural and be easier to adjust in post production ("post" or... "Photoshop" these days). Try it. Step into a room with a 10 foot ceiling and shoot at the 2-foot, 5-foot and 8-foot mark. Notice how the geometry of the image changes... Note, too, that the effect of the low perspective or the high one might be useful one day even if the adjustment wll be harder and/or less natural.
2: Spend-wisely: You'll find a great diversity of lenses in this range and you'll find the more expensive one might not necessarily be "brighter" (lower available aperture), but the distortion will be lower. Wonder if the Hasselbald 40mm lens (very wide for this format) is worth it at $7500? Well, it sure has a lot less distortion than the PhotoJoJo wide angle lens for sure. This doesn't mean, though, that expensive is always better... Look to the "off brands" as well. Sigma, Tamron and Tokina make some nice lenses. I have a Sigma 10-20mm/f3.5 which I love. I also use -- more than any other combination -- the Canon wide-angle adapter on my Canon G9... which leads to...
3: Some camera add-ons are garbage and some are wonderful. I never thought I'd get as much use out of the Canon adapter (WC-DC58B -- now discontinued). It wasn't a cheap addition (there were cheaper off brands), but far less than a new lens and it's amazingly distortion-free. However, I've had some other add-ons (close-up filters, etc) through the years that never really performed well. Do some research and -- if you can -- buy from a shop with a good return policy (which is probably not that Hong-Kong eBay seller). You might also think about "extendability" when purchasing a camera in the first place. dSLRs are amazingly modular, but even some point-and-shoots can take a wide variety of accessories. The Canon G-series is a good one, as is Panasonic's LX series. Generally the ones made with hot-shoes are of this variety.
4: Shoot and "develop" in RAW is possible. There's so much more you can do in post when you start with a RAW file with both exposure, as well as distortion (both physical and color-distortion, fringing, aberration, etc.). This might be the deciding factor between camera A and camera B. Many great point-and-shoots are now offering RAW file output, but some are mysteriously absent.
Happy snapping.
I finally purchased a wide-angel lens last fall, and I LOVE it. My one one suggestion would be to take your time, and really pay attention - not only to your subject, but to everything in your frame. With digital photography, it is so easy to just snap a million pictures, but with a wide lens, all kinds of things can creep into a corner of your picture if you aren't paying attention.
I would love a wide angle lens for my Oly EPL2, but they're sooo expensive! Almost as much as the camera itself cost new. I got a Polaroid wide-angle extender off Amazon which works surprisingly well, but it is what it is (cheap). I'll keep saving.
This is a good article and it is mostly about using a wide angle to either shoot in tighter areas or to fill in a frame well. There are other reasons to shoot with a wide angle, like forcing perspective. I hope you cover those subjects as well in the future.
What lenses were used for the photos in this article? Thanks!