Introduction
This Beginners Guide is designed to give
you a feel for what wide angles are, what subjects they are good for,
and characteristics of photographs taken with them. While aimed at users
of SLR cameras, the comments apply just as much to Point & Shoot
cameras with wide angle lenses as well. What is written here is based
on information in the Guide to Lenses, which you should read before
this.
What is a Wide Angle Lens?
Theoretically a wide angle lens is any
lens with a focal length of less than 50mm. However, any lens of 35mm
or more shows little difference from a 50mm, so we will define a wide
angle lens as any with a focal length of less than 35mm. A 28mm lens
is considered the typical wide angle lens, but focal lengths go down
as far as 6mm. As the focal length decreases the effects noted below
become more and more strong. A focal length of 20mm or less is quite
extreme. Focal lengths of 14mm or less are called fisheyes because of
the way they look and their ability to make straight lines appear curved
because of their angle of view. The society owns 28mm and 14mm lenses
in Nikon fit along with cameras to go with them which you can borrow.
Like all lenses, wide angles come as primes
and zooms. A typical standard zoom will go down to 35mm or 28mm, which
is wide enough to make use of the techniques explored here. Beyond that,
prime lenses predominate, typically with f2.8 apertures.
The Wide Angle Effect
Wide angles are called such because their
angle of view is greater than a 50mm lens. A 50mm lens has an angle
of view of 46 degrees, compared with 75 for a 28mm, and 94 for a 20mm.
This basically means that if you take a photograph from the same position
with 28mm and 50mm lenses, the 28mm lens will show more of the scene
infront of you. As this has to go on the same size of negative, the
magnification of the image will be less on the 28mm lens. That is the
only effect of wide angle lenses. To consider the effect of the larger
angle of view, conside the shot below. It was taken with a 20mm lens,
and the angle of view is great enough to show the snow at the photographers
feet looking down a slope and the sun which was fairly high in the sky.
Some people say that wide angle lenses
affect perspective. Strictly this isn't true. The only thing that changes
perspective is the camera moving. To prove this, consider the following
two images. The first is take with a 24mm lens, the second with around
70mm and the third is an enlargement of the central portion of the first
image. The perspective in all the images are identical, it's just the
angle of view and magnification that has changed.
What does make a difference is the camera
position. Because the wide angle lens has a larger angle of view, and
less magnification, we have to move closer to the subject to get them
to be the same size in the frame. Bu the things behind them still appear
smaller than they would with a 50mm lens, so the subject looks larger
relative to them. It is this apparent difference in size that causes
the greater sense of perspective that you see in a wide angle shot.
So to make the most of a wide angle lens
effect we must get close to the subject to show the effects of perspective.
In general, wide angle shots work best when there is a strong, close
subject which fills at least a third of the frame. Otherwise the foreground
looks empty, and there is little to distinguish the shot from another
take with a longer focal length lens from further away.
As well as altering perspective, wide angle
lenses tend to emphasis lines and curves within a photograph. With a
50mm lens it would not have been possible to include the path and the
trellis above it in the same shot without moving further back, and losing
the shadows on the path. Notice also the large amount of depth of field
present in this and the other shots on the page. A characteristic of
wide angle lenses is that for a given camera position, focal point,
and aperture a wide angle lens will show more depth of field than a
50mm lens. This can be used to the photographers advantage by making
everything from the strong foreground mentioned above to the far background
in focus at the same time, so the viewer can explore each section of
the photograph and feel that they are actually there.
A technique called hyperfocal focussing
can help in this. The idea is to make sure that the depth of field just
extends to infinity, but the actual point of focus is further forward,
thereby maximising the depth of field. Lenses usually have markings
on them showing depth of field. On the lens below, they are the red
blue and yellow lines, which equate to the coloured aperture numbers
22, 16 and 11 respectively. On other lenses the lines are actually numbered
with the apertures themselves. When the camera is focussed on a particular
distance, here just under 0.7m (around 2.3ft), the depth of field for
a given aperture extends to the pair of lines indicated. In this case,
if an aperture of 22 was used, the depth of field will go from just
under 0.8m to under 0.6m. This means that all points within that range
will be acceptably sharp. If we move the infinity symbol on the focussing
ring to the line representing the aperture we will use, we will get
everything from infinity to the other line in focus. With a wide angle
lens, that might allow everything from about 1m away to infinity to
be in focus at the same time.
What to use a wide angle lens on?
You can use a wide angle lens for just
about any photography where you can get close to the subject. However,
it is best when you want to show the subject within it's surroundings
and the subject isn't going to adversley affected by the strong feeling
of perspective. Here are some ideas:
Buildings are a good choice of subject,
simply because often you cannot get far enough back to fit them in with
any other lens. However, the strong perspective means that often you
will get converging verticals where the parts of the building further
away from you (often the top) appear smaller, as in the above photograph.
To avoid this problem, avoid tilting the camera up. Unfortunately this
means that you will get lots of foreground, so find something good.
Landscapes are perhaps the use of wide
angle lenses that immediately springs to mind. However, you still need
a strong foreground to make them work, otherwise all the viewer will
see is empty space and something small in the distance. Often a telephoto
lens is a better choice to isolate a section of the landscape. The other
problem with wide angle lenses in landscapes is that they usually show
a lot of sky. This is fine if the shot is taken in bright sunlight with
a deep blue sky, but not so good is the sky ends up white or grey. Filters
can help with this, but the best solution is to point the camera down
so that there is less sky in the shot. This of course requires that
you have some good foreground to point down to.
Action photography is actually possible
with a wide angle lens, but you've got to be close, real close. Wide
angle shots tend to draw the viewer into the photograph and make thm
feel as if they are actually there. They also give the opportunity to
show the surroundings around the action as well. The shot on the left
was taken with a 200mm lens, and is a fairly boring action shot from
a distance away, like most football photography for example. The shot
on the right was taken with a 24mm lens within a couple of feet of the
skier. It has much more impact.
Wide angle lenses are also good or indoor
and low light photography. There are two reasons for this. Firstly,
you may remember that camera shake will result when you don't use a
tripod at slow shutter speeds. Previously a figure of 1/60th of a second
was given as the slowest that you can hold a camera sucessfully. In
fact the limits of hand holding are related to the focal length of the
lens. As a general guide, you hand hold a camera steady at 1/(focal
length). In other words, while you can only use a 50mm at 1/60th or
faster, a 28mm lens could be held at 1/30th. This is especially useful
if you are out taking photographs with a zoom lens because the widest
aperture on the lens at the shortest focal length, and you can hand
hold it at longer shutter speeds. The second reason is that prime wide
angle lenses tend to have aperture of f2.8, not as good as a fast prime
50mm lens, but faster than most zooms.
Another good use of wide angle lenses is
in candid or street photography. Most advocates of street photography
use a telephoto lens, so they can stand back and take photographs from
a distance, hopefully unseen. With a wide angle lens two possibilities
are available. Firstly, because of the greater depth of field it is
possible to prefocus the camera to some medium distance and very quickly
take photogaphs without focussing. We can use the hyperfocal focussing
technique to render everything from a certain distance onwards in focus,
and by using fast film, ensure that we use narrow apertures to maximise
depth of field. The second technique is to shoot from the hip rather
than bringing the camera to eye level. This is useful if you think the
subject will be affected by you obviously photographing them (i.e. they
might want to put the camera somewhere unpleasant). Because of the wide
angle lens, we don't need to point the camera exactly at the subject,
we simply shoot and crop the photograph later.
It is possible to do portraits with wide
angle lenses. They tend to work best for full body photographs, as any
closer and the heightened perspective tends to make whatever is closest
to the camera look big, and whatvere is further away look very small.
Usually the closest thing is the nose, and the furthest the ears, which
isn't ideal. In the studio shot above, a high camera position was chosen
to make Frank taper away towards the bottom and make the top of his
head look larger.
Beginners' Guide to The
Studio :: Beginners' Guide to
Enlargement :: Beginners' Guide to Film
:: Beginners' Guide to Exposure
:: Beginners' Guide to Lenses
:: Beginners' Guide to
Wide Angle Lenses
