Most folks think a wide-angle lens should just be used to capture big scenes that normal lenses can't take in. In part this is true, wide-angle lenses do have large angles of view, and they do capture large chunks of property. The problem is that to fit all that real estate onto a piece of film or digital sensor requires that indi
vidual details are very small, so small that they often go un-noticed
in the final image.
The key to successful use of wide-angle lenses is to get close to your subject… the closer the better. The closer you get, the bigger the subject will be in the frame and the more impact the photo will have.
For example, in Photo 1, I used a 15mm fisheye lens to photograph
Anita running a team of sled dogs in the Yukon. I wanted the dogs to be the photographic center of attention in the photo. A fisheye takes in 180-degree angle of view, a really wide view! Even at 2 or 3 feet away the dogs become
tiny specs in the big scene. I needed to get really close, and then get even closer. To achieve this I lay between the musher’s legs on a sled in front of Anita’s team and enticed the dogs close to the lens with some ‘kibble’ (moose-meat) taped to the camera hotshoe. In this shot the closest dog is about 8 inches away from the front of the lens (its breath actually was fogging the lens)! Every time we hit a bump my head slammed into the crotch of the driver. Needless to say,
I only got a few frames before the driver decided my unique angle wasn’t worth his agony.
“Great” you say, “but I shoot scenics not animals”. “Right now I am on the lip of the Grand Canyon, if I get any closer to my subject I will be dust on the canyon floor!” True… but still, the same rule applies. Use your wide angle as most folks do and you’ll get a photo of a big hole (the canyon) with very little detail for the eye to rest on.
For a more successful shot you need something close (on the canyon lip) t
o use as a foreground to provide an ’anchor’ to your image; something that gives a sense of scale to the scene (a tree, a flower, a rock, or a person). By using something that most folks know the ‘true’ size of, you can use the near-far exaggera
tion of perspective to successfully create an illusion of distance.
Objects close to us are big in our experience as humans; objects far away are s
mall. To increase the apparent size of the Grand Canyon, just get close to a cluster of flowers on the Canyon lip, make ’em fill the frame, and the Canyon will look even more distance and deep by comparison. It is important in grand landscape photography to always have a strong foreground to help you establish an understandable spatial relationship between foreground and background (see Photos 2 and 3)
Get focused but stay hyper
Generally, you will nearly always want to get the most depth of focus you can from your wide-angle lens. You will most often want the image sharp from the foreground all the way to the background. Fortunately wide-angle lenses have the capability of giving you acceptable focus from one or two feet, all the way to infinity.
“Hey, wait a minute, I can focus on the flowers, or the middle distance or the far background, but my camera doesn’t let me focus on all three at once!” Not true, when you look through your lens, you are looking at the depth-of-field at the widest aperture setting. This is what you would get if you set your lens at f2.8 (or whatever the smallest number on your lens is). But if you shoot at f11, f16, or f22 you will get a much different look (more of the scene in focus).
To get the absolute most depth-of-field (apparent sharpness) across the frame, you need to know where to focus your lens. To do this, you need to calculate hyperfocal distance for each lens at each aperture you plan to use. Unless you have a degree in Quantum Physics, I suggest you get some help with this. I used a nice software solution from ProFotoSoftwarecalled the Hyper Focal Calculator. For my 20mm lens, if I set the aperture to f22 and focused my lens at an object 2 feet away, everything from 1 foot away to infinity would be in focus. So whenever I use my 20mm lens I know that as long as I don’t get closer than one foot away from anything, I can keep everything in my frame in focus if I set the camera to f22 and focus the lens at two feet away (use manual focus for this). Now I just gotta search for great foregrounds!
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