The Wide Angle Lens

The Wide Angle Lens

by William Lulow

Most people love wide angle lenses because they can include more of a scene. People think it’s a great “all-around” lens because it’s small and when we are touring or making landscape images it seems to be just right. But, like all photographic equipment, it needs to be used correctly. Characteristics of all wide angle lenses include:

1. They cover more of a scene than normal lenses
2. They include more depth-of-field rendering the image sharper front to back
3. They are smaller and lighter in weight, making them easier to carry
4. They include more of a scene by making the actual image smaller 

Lenses can be categorized roughly with these measurements:

Wide Angle Lenses:      18mm to 35mm

Normal Lenses:      45mm to 60mm

Short Telephoto Lenses:      75mm to 100mm

Longer Telephoto Lenses:      120mm to 150mm

Extreme Long Telephoto Lenses:      150mm to 600mm

It’s useful to remember that most all telephoto lenses are considered “specialty lenses,” because they are only used for very specific purposes. The average photographer really doesn’t need them. NORMAL lenses for standard 35mm formats are around 50mm long. Measurements of lenses are taken from the front of the lens to the spot behind the lens at which the image is in focus (what is called the “FOCAL PLANE” or the “film plane.” Or, the spot behind the lens where the strip of film would be or, in digital cameras, where the SENSOR is located. It is indicated on cameras as a circle with a line through it:

If I am just touring or walking around a city, town or other locale, my lens of choice is my 20mm f/2.8. This is a slight wide-angle lens for my digital cameras. If you think of a traditional 35mm film camera, like an old Nikon F, for instance, they were designed to work with lenses that covered a piece of 35mm film which was approximately 36mm long by 25mm wide. This is now referred to in the digital world as “full frame.” Today’s “cropped sensor” cameras are designed to cover a smaller size than that, roughly 22mm instead of the normal 36mm. So, a 20mm lens will actually cover more of the cropped sensor than a full-frame one would. Therefore, it acts more like a 32mm lens than an actual 20mm one. Since many digital cameras these days are of the cropped sensor variety, you need to know about this before you decide to buy either a camera or a lens.

I now have switched to mirrorless cameras, but they are still of the cropped sensor variety. So, this 20mm lens still acts like a 32mm would, but I like that it’s a bit “longer” than a real 20mm lens because it gives me a little bit closer view of what I include in the frame while still including more than a “normal” lens would. If a lens is a bit wider angle (like an 18mm or less), it can insert a bit of distortion that I don’t want in my landscapes. So, a little “less wide” fits my shooting style better. Also, this particular lens is actually made for my older DSLR cameras, so it needs an adapter to use it with my mirrorless cameras.  

One of the reasons I like this wide angle lens for touring is because I can compose a landscape, say, with the knowledge that I can crop it even tighter in post production and otherwise alter its field-of-view somewhat while still retaining the characteristics of the lens itself. Here is an example:

This is a view of some row boats in Maine shot with my 20mm f/2.8 lens. In post production, I cropped the image so that it would resemble an image made by a more “normal” lens for a 35mm size camera. Everything, though, is rendered sharp from foreground to background, which is one of the characteristics of a wide angle lens. These lenses have the ability to provide greater depth-of-field which means that most everything in the frame will be sharp. That’s the main reason that I carry this lens attached to one of my camera bodies almost all the time, if I am just walking around looking for images.

Whenever I am looking for great depth-of-field and clarity for my product images, my go to lens is the 60mm macro. (I wouldn’t use the wide-angle lens because of possible distortion on close-ups unless the subject was large enough to warrant its use. In which case the camera-to-subject distance would eliminate any real distortion):

This view of the Governor Mario Cuomo bridge in Tarrytown, NY is a great example of how the 20mm lens renders subjects: close enough to render details with great sharpness, wide enough to include most of the scene. 

Wide angle lenses are the best for shooting interiors, but with digital cameras there is no good way to make sure all vertical lines in the shot remain vertical. We used to be able to corrects for camera angle distortion by making sure the rear standard of a view camera was parallel to the walls. Now, with standard wide angle lenses, it’s harder to do this without a specialty lens. So, my solution is to find the exact center height of an interior wall and place my camera so that I don’t have tilt the camera at all to render the scene. Here’s one example:

Here, most of the necessary vertical lines are vertical or close to it. 

Within the last few years, I have been shooting a lot with the 20mm f/2.8 wide-angle lens and I find that with the new sensor technology, images are clear enough to make good enlargements from smaller portions of the file. Here’s an example:

I have done larger blowups than this with very little loss of sharpness. Original settings for this exposure were: ISO 400, F/8 @ 1/100th of a second. Canon 20mm f/2.8 lens. So, the shooting technique can change when using these wide-angle lenses. You can incorporate more of the scene in your initial exposure with the knowledge that you can crop it later to include just the details you want. Sometimes, I go looking for light and images with just the one lens with this change in how you think about the pictures and what you can do with them in post-production. Since I shoot with just prime lenses these days, I may pack a medium telephoto lens just in case I see something that I might wish to be a little larger in the frame. But mostly, it’s the 20mm that I carry all the time. 

Since wide-angle lenses encompass more of the frame by reducing the size of objects in the frame, it’s important to realize that effective use of them requires that you concentrate your compositions on the foreground since that will be the largest thing visible in the picture. Here is an example:

In this image of the beach at Positano, Italy, note how I placed the boat front and center in the composition. Also notice how it leads the viewer’s eye into the rest of the frame. Here’s another example:

This scene of some grasses in Nova Scotia, attract the main attention while the rest of the scene is even a bit soft. But the trees in the background are so far away that it really doesn’t matter. 

This scene of a harbor focuses on the foreground while the rest of the details are too small to really make a difference in the overall impact of the composition:

With a wide-angle lens, the foreground is the most important object in the composition. Keep this in mind when you are shooting with this lens and your images will improve almost overnight.