Understanding the Value of Wide Angle Lenses

Author: Neil Galloway
Wide angle lenses are, in my opinion, the most overlooked "next step" for amateur photographers. Everyone has the "kit" lens that was packaged with their camera and then they go buy the 75-300mm zoom and then they are done. I knew I wanted the 18-200mm when I purchased my camera, but was on a waiting list, so the first lens I bought was the 10-20mm Sigma wide-angle. Wow. It gave me the opportunity to see the awesome potential of wide angle lenses (and their limitations).

Why Do I Need One?
If you are trying to capture landscape shots or just the "size" of a scene, then wide angle lenses will help you. Think of the angle of how light enters the camera lens. As this widens, it allows more detail to be focused on the film/sensor.

Ask yourself this. Have you ever been in a room taking a group photo or photo of something in the room, but you could not zoom out enough and you could not back up enough without leaving the room? This is where wide angle lenses come in. They will distort the image slightly, but it still lets you take a photo that is otherwise impossible.

One of the neat features is composing a picture with a subject close up with a wide swath of detail in the background. When you first look through these lenses, everything seems far away though. The trick is getting your main subject as close as possible to the camera (sometimes you can be inches away from it) and the rest of the background will fill the frame.

The main article has some photo examples.I created them myself. For one, I pointed my camera in the mirror. I zoomed in at 20mm first. I then zoomed out to 10mm, but I made sure the camera lens still maintained the same size in each photo. Look at how much more background was included because of the angle light was allowed in at. Also notice how much farther away even my head looks, though I am looking through the viewfinder just as I was in the first photo. My hands are also distorted in a cool way.

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