You might be familiar with Wide Angle Lens and wide-angle lens photography because nowadays, every camera and almost every phone is equipped with a wide lens to capture stunning perspectives. Wide-angle lenses help to cover more area in a frame, and they can shift a view to a whole new level. If you are new to wide-angle photography, then this guide covers everything about wide-angle lenses and their uses.
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Let us discuss everything about these lenses in detail, along with their suitable use to capture some attractive shots.
When should a wide-angle lens not be used?
Put away your wide-angle lens if you want to avoid distortion when shooting portraits. Wide-angle lenses can make your subject’s face appear larger, resulting in ugly or undesirable photos. Hence, it is not really suitable for portraiture photography.
What Is a Wide Angle Lens?
A wide lens has a larger FOV than our vision, according to the most frequent definition. A wide angle camera lens is one that has a focal length between 35mm and 24mm. An extremely wide angle lens is one that has a focal length between 24 and 18mm. Such lenses are one of the most appealing types of lenses available to photographers.
When employed correctly, the extremely wide perspective creates a large depth of field, which draws the viewer’s attention much more than normal. In reality, wide-angle lenses are excellent for a variety of shooting styles.
Wide Angle Lenses Types
Generally, a wide-angle lens is defined as one that has a focal length less than or equal to 35mm. The diagonal field of vision is approximately 65 degrees. These lenses are divided into three basic categories.
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Standard Wide-angle lenses
“Standard” refers to focal lengths ranging from 24mm to 35mm. This is an excellent range for broad pictures with little distortion. You might want to go wider if you want a lens that truly opens up compact situations, such as cityscapes or small rooms.
Ultra Wide Angle Lens
Fish-eye lenses are ultra-wide lenses with a complete 180-degree field of vision, giving them a characteristic, round, distorted appearance. Under 16mm focal lengths are regarded as specialty lenses, and they’re only utilized in specific situations, such as astrophotography settings.
Wide Angle Lens
These lenses, which range in size from 16mm to 24mm, are wide without becoming fish-eye, which causes excessive stretching of the frame. The sweet spot for most landscape photography is between these focal lengths, although this range can also be used for other purposes.
Purpose of a Wide Angle Lens
Wide-angle lenses may capture more in a single shot than normal and telephoto lenses; this is perhaps the most straightforward explanation you’ll ever discover. Simply defined, they have a shorter focal length, which gives them a larger field of view. To gain a better understanding of wide lenses, consider how they relate to other lenses, both technically and visually.
Wide-angle zoom lenses and fixed prime lenses are both available. Now, to get a little deeper into the discussion, wide angle lenses can distort objects in two different ways. There is a sort of distortion that makes items close to the lens look much larger than they actually are, while objects further away from the lens appear much smaller. As a result, even if a majestic mountain from afar may appear big to your eyes, it will likely only take up a small portion of the frame in your photographs.
By positioning items near enough to your lens, you’ll be able to accentuate even the tiniest and most insignificant details. To avoid distortion, place the horizon in the center of the frame. Otherwise, you might attempt to rectify the distortion later in post-production.
Focal Length Of A Wide-Angle Lens
Wide-angle is commonly defined as anything less than 35mm. However, there is still a lot of opportunity for improvement. Wide-angle lenses with focal lengths of 35mm to 24mm are considered typical. When we say wide-angle, we typically mean something between 24mm and 16mm. Ultra-wide angles are defined as focal lengths of less than 16mm. The camera you use has an impact on how your lens ‘looks.’
The center of any lens is cropped out on smaller sensors, resulting in a narrower field of vision. All focal lengths stated here are full-frame equivalents for simplicity. Divide them by 1.5 (APS-C) or 2 (M4/3) to see how they translate to your camera. The widest lenses available are 10mm (rectilinear) and 8mm (aperture). Generally, 16-35mm is the most common wide-angle zoom range.
When Should A Wide Angle Lens Be Used?
Wide-angle lenses are typically utilized to capture as much as possible in a picture. Wide-angle lenses are commonly used in landscapes. To work successfully with a wide-angle lens, be aware that you must be very attentive to your composition. It’s easy to slip into the trap of revealing too much information. A fish-eye lens, which catches even more of the image, is mostly employed for artistic and creative purposes. They’re broad enough to capture the two-worlds scene that we’ve all probably seen and appreciated.
To explain things better, we are going to discuss where and when a wide-angle lens can be used.
Photographing on the Street
A wide-angle lens can be useful to capture the depth of a street. Consider yourself in a busy street where there are lots of shops and people moving around. Now it will be hard for you to focus on one individual subject, which is why you can go for an alternative of capturing the whole area at a wide angle. This will allow you to get more views and a broader range of colors in a single frame giving more advanced shots than you would imagine.
Using Wide Angle Lens While Traveling
You can use a wide-angle lens when you are traveling somewhere, and you need to capture more area in your shot. It is generally not easy to capture a lot of view in a single shot when you are traveling with a standard lens. And when traveling, you don’t want to bring too many lenses with you. Lighter gear allows you to carry more and travel more conveniently. As a result, most photographers opt for a conventional zoom lens with an additional telephoto lens.
But we recommend bringing at least a reasonably wide lens if you’re heading to an area with a lot of monuments or large vistas. It could be plenty if your kit lens goes down to 24mm.
Capturing Natural Environment
Capturing the foreground with an ultra-wide-angle lens is by far the greatest method to follow, especially in places where you want to get as much information as possible in the foreground, such as meadows or beaches. You may catch enough of the landscape to give the viewer a feeling of location by angling down your wide-angle lens. A snapshot of the sky may be taken everywhere on the planet, but the terrain in front of you is unique.
Capturing Buildings
A flexible, crisp, and wide lens is required to capture long or tall buildings. You’ll need a wide lens for these specialized tasks. For interiors, an ultra-wide lens is suggested. Aperture and build quality aren’t particularly important in this case. For a premium price, they provide superb image quality, comprehensive settings, and distortion-free outcomes. Consider capturing some of the indoor shots along with outside views with a wide-angle lens.
Use Ultra-Wide-Angle Lens for Portrait
Taking pictures using ultra-wide-angle lenses can provide either profitable or horrific results, depending on the arrangement of the camera and subject. The finest piece of advice is to never put an ultra-wide inch in front of your subject’s face since the outcome will be very funky. But at the same time, it’s fascinating to see that shifting the camera location by an inch or two may make or break the composition.
In addition to maintaining a proper distance from the lens, you must always place your subject in the middle third of the frame to prevent distorting their features.
Photographing Landscapes
A wide-angle lens would be best for landscape photography. You can go out into the meadows or find mountain ranges to capture the perfect wide-angle shots in a single frame. The aperture isn’t a big deal if you will be shooting from a tripod. You just have to pick the ideal image quality and prepare your camera for weather sealing to tackle every kind of landscape with a different atmosphere.
Event Photography
Wide-angle lenses are among the most popular landscape photography accessories, and with good reason. You may increase the size of a gorgeous foreground and make a shot that feels three-dimensional since they allow you to get so close to your subject. Fast and wide lenses are required in event photography, among other things. You must be prepared for a variety of lighting and action scenarios.
When you need to capture an all-encompassing view, use wide angle lenses. Also, these devices are multifunctional, well-built, and give sufficient image quality, but they are all significant expenditures. A wide-angle lens might also be the greatest method to catch everything if you’re capturing a broad vista with plenty of stunning subjects during any event or happening.
Note: Wide-angle lenses are difficult to operate. They tend to fill your compositions with a lot of negative space, which isn’t always desired. They also reduce the size of your backdrop in relation to the remainder of the image, making it less important. Many photographers utilize wide-angle lenses wrong because they are so different from our regular perspective on the world.
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Wide Angle Lens Considerations To Remember
Here we will like to add a few considerations to keep in mind while doing wide angle lens photography.
Composition
Wide-angle lenses might entice you to point and shoot at the whole subject, resulting in an image devoid of a focal point or effective composition. Simply because you can fit the entire area into one wide sweep does not guarantee a great photograph. Composition is really important with a bigger field of vision because you must arrange more pieces, leaving greater space for mistakes in the details.
Distortion
When using a wide-angle lens, the further you go, the more you’ll notice distortion where straight lines appear to bend outward. The important thing to keep in mind is distortion, which should be avoided. Keep this in mind when photographing individuals, and keep an eye out for anything at the boundaries of your frame.
Sensor Conversion Cropped
The angle of vision is not proportional to the focal length. The size of your camera’s sensor determines how much you can fit in the picture. On a full-frame camera, a 24mm lens, for example, converts to around 84 degrees of vision. But, if you used the same lens on a limited sensor camera, such as an APS-C, the focal length would be reduced to around 38mm, and the field of vision would be reduced to about 61 degrees.
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What Issues Do Wide Angle Lenses Cause In Photography?
A wide-angle lens is expected to excel when it comes to high-quality photographs of tiny places. But there are a lot of issues that normally people notice with these lenses.
- Wide focal lengths can cause visual distortion. Higher-end models have improved significantly over the years, although the corners will always be less sharp than the center, and the lines on the exterior of the lens will tend to curve.
- Another problem is that the curvature of the lens becomes significantly more obvious while photographing metropolitan streets.
- When you get near enough to a park seat to frame your shot, the central piece of the back may be slightly curved in an odd form. You can sit there for hours getting things just right, but even little changes in your posture will cause irreversible problems.
Buying a high-quality wide-angle lens for your single sensor camera is a terrific way to stretch your money and get the greatest image quality out of your setup, but bear in mind the crop factor while you purchase. If you’re looking for a mirrorless camera, keep in mind that you’ll need a lens that works with the camera’s mounting mechanism. Remember that you can always purchase a lens converter and utilize DSLR lenses with your mirrorless camera.