The Ultimate P52 | Week 37 | Wide Angle

What better month than September to tackle wide angle? Those of us in the Northern Hemisphere are zooming into fall with all the rich colors that come with autumn, and our friends below the equator are casting off their sweaters moving into spring. 

Wide angle photography is something that doesn’t come naturally to a lot of people, and it has its own set of challenges. Typically 35mm or wider (smaller number) is considered to be wide angle; moving below 24mm gets you into ultra-wide territory and anything under 14m or so is typically a fisheye lens with its own unique look. I don’t personally have any fisheye lenses so cannot show you examples of that, but in general those of you with a 24-70 zoom will want to work at the wide end. If you do not have any lenses that are wider than 35mm you might want to consider using your phone for this week, even if the image quality might not be up to your normal standards; on the iPhones, the standard wide angle lens is a 26mm equivalent and the ultra-wide is a 13mm equivalent. Either of those lenses will be appropriate for this week if you decide to use a phone (if you use something other than a newer iPhone model, you’ll have to google your phone model to see what is best for you).

One of the biggest issues you’ll encounter when shooting wide angle is the edge distortion; this becomes more prevalent the wider your focal length and the reason that past 14mm you get into fisheye territory. If your scene has a lot of trees or buildings, you will find that the closer to the outside of the frame you go, the more angled into the center those lines become; they are no longer upright as they are in a normal or telephoto lens. This can make compositions tricky as you don’t want the distortion to overwhelm your subject. This distortion is why many architectural photographers use tilt-shift lenses, as they can keep the wider view while correction for the distortion.

Notice the difference in the two images below; the bottom version I applied the Auto-Transform command, and you can see how much the trees on the sides of the frame straightened out. This also cropped off part of the bench that Halley is sitting on, but it makes for a cleaner image overall.

If you are shooting with a 35mm lens you will likely see little distortion at all, particularly if you are mindful of keeping your horizon perfectly straight. Most modern editing programs now have a Transform option that will correct perspective distortion for you, and you won’t lose much of your frame. Again, the wider your focal length, the more severe your distortion will be; sometimes you can correct it in post, but you might lose a good deal of the image in the straightening process. Other times you might just ignore it and let the wide angle look be a part of the story.

I often shoot with a 35mm lens when traveling or when I want to carry only one lens on a day trip. I adore the 35mm length and find it is a great storytelling lens. I do have a 14-24mm lens that I don’t use nearly enough but when I do use it, I am amazed by what it can do. I took a photo walk this morning with that lens and found it super fun. Wide lenses also typically allow for fantastic sunbursts and they are great on sunny days (which this morning was not, so no new sunburst images from me today). We will cover sunbursts next month, so if you happen to get one this week, great, but if not, we’ll spend a week hunting for them later.

Wide angle lenses are great in the city as they allow you to capture tall buildings. I also love them on the beach to make my family small and fade into a vast expanse of sand and water. The “making things small” part is another challenge of wide-angle lenses because you don’t want your subjects to just become specks in the frame that are hard to discern. If you have a prominent subject (rather than just a generic landscape), get as close to it as you can to give it weight and importance in the composition. Horizon lines are extremely important to watch as the natural distortion will emphasize a crooked horizon. Wide angle is also great when you want to emphasize skies.

I hope you guys have fun this week; although I usually shoot longer focal lengths in my day to day imagery, it’s always fun to walk around with something much wider for a day and see just how much you can get in the frame and what new stories you can tell.