Wide Angle Versus Telephoto Lenses for Beautiful Landscape Photography

By: Will Crites-Krumm 

An easy assumption to make, when shooting landscapes, is use a wide angle lens. After all, most landscape photographers favor wide angle lenses for a reason, they naturally give you the widest view and allow you to get the full landscape into the frame, from the foreground to the horizon. They have the widest depth of field, so you get the whole landscape in focus too. Their distortion enlarges objects in the foreground, letting you show off close-up details. The same distortion also emphasizes leading lines, enhancing your composition, and giving your image a more dynamic feel. But when you default to wide angle, you miss many hidden opportunities offered by telephoto lenses.

Field of View: The Whole and its Parts

This is the most basic difference between the two lens types: wide lenses give you a wide view, telephoto lenses give you a narrow view. And while landscapes look great in their entirety, it’s a good habit to take a moment and look for details. These are beautiful elements of the landscape that might get shrunken, or ignored in the expanse of a wide-angle image. This is where your telephoto lens comes in. Its narrow field of view is perfect for trimming off the extra elements, and focusing right on small, beautiful scenes like the curve of a mountain, a reflection in a far-off pond, or the silhouette of a tree.

In the two images above, you can see this in action. They were both taken from Olmstead point in Yosemite National Park, one with a wide angle lens and the other with a telephoto. In the first image, the wide angle shows off the total landscape. It includes both sides of the valley, the up-close textures of the rocks and the far off peak of Half Dome. In the second image, the telephoto lens brings the eye right up to the mountains, showing off their shapes and the details of the geology.
Another pair of images (below), shows this effect even more dramatically. The first image is not just wide-angle, but an aerial shot as well, taken from a small airplane over the Okavango Delta in Botswana. From this vantage point all of the individual elements of the landscape become incredibly small, and your eyes pay more attention to their arrangement than their individual shapes. In the second image, also from the Okavango area, but this time on the ground, a telephoto lens is used to draw attention to the beautiful curves of a single Acacia tree.

Depth of Field: Focusing the Eye

The second major difference between wide angle and telephoto lenses is the innate size of their depth of field. Put succinctly, the higher the focal length, the narrower the area of focus. In practice, this means that when shooting wide, it’s much easier for you to get everything in focus, from the grass at your feet to the ridge on the horizon. This is especially true when you’re trying to use your lens’s sharpest apertures (the so-called sweet spot). However, a narrower depth of field is much better for isolating your subject from the background, and this is where your telephoto lens comes into play. Try shooting a close-up detail at a low aperture, using the landscape as a nice creamy bokeh backdrop.


The two images above are perfect examples of this effect. In the first image, the wide angle lens brings the whole landscape into focus, from the close-up sunflowers to the far-off mountains. In the second image, shooting with a telephoto blurs out the flowers and mountains in the background, turning them into a nice soft background for main sunflower.

Depth Compression: Playing with Size

It’s no secret that wide angle lenses expand the sense of depth in an image, by enlarging elements in the foreground and shrinking those in the back. This is great for creating images that make you feel like you could step right into the frame. On the flip-side, you run the risk of making towering, awesome mountains in the distance look like puny hills. Telephoto lenses, on the other hand, compress depth, causing objects near and far to appear more similar in size. A compressed sense of depth is great for abstracting a scene, and bringing out its graphical qualities. Colorful forest canopies, layered mountain ridges, and curving sand dunes, are all great subjects for this kind of shooting.

In the first of this pair above, notice how the wide angle lens exaggerates the size of the flowers in the foreground at the expense of the mountains in the background. The mountains are so tall that they’re shrouded in clouds, but the lens keeps them from looking quite as grand. But pull out a telephoto lens and you can zoom straight in on the mountain, showing off the contrast between the rugged outline of the peak and the soft wispy form of the cloud.


Here are two more images, both taken at the same location in Big Bend National Park, that show off this effect. In the first image, you can see that the wide angle lens increases the size of the plants and rocks in the foreground, while shrinking the large desert mountains in the background. In the second image, a telephoto lens flattens out the depth of the many desert ridges, calling attention to their graphic patterns and outlines.

Summary: Space Versus Object

Have a hard time remembering all these details? Here’s an easy way to summarize it with a simple idea:

Wide angle lenses show off space, telephotos show off objects.

The wide angle lens’s big field of view, ease of uniform focus, and depth-distorting abilities, are great at showing off big, expansive landscapes. However, they take focus away from individual elements within the landscape in favor of showing the whole. Telephoto lenses are naturally the opposite: they’re great at showing off the size, shape, and intricacy, of detail of individual elements within the landscape. But their narrow field of view, small depth of field, and depth-compressing qualities make it hard to capture the landscape as a whole.

You can analyze this pair of images to see exactly how all of these techniques work together. Starting with the photo above, you can see how the wide angle lens fits the whole landscape into the frame, from close-up rocks, to far off peaks and sky. Because of the lens’s large depth of field, the whole landscape is in acceptable focus as well. The lens’s depth distortion is readily apparent as well: the foreground rocks look very large, creating a pleasing sense of depth, and emphasizing the leading lines that draw the eye from the edges of the frame to the center. Overall, you get a very good sense of the space and the expansiveness of the valley.

This image was taken in the same place, but the use of a telephoto lens captures it in a very different way. The photo brings out a single element of the landscape – look closely and you can see this peak in the previous image on the top right – and allows the viewer to appreciate its subtle details. Because of the telephoto lens’s narrow depth of field, the sky is slightly out of focus while leaving the details of the peak itself perfectly sharp. And most of all, the compressed sense of depth flattens the image, showing off the rocky mass of the mountain, and calling attention to the beautiful curve of the ridge line. Overall, you get a great sense of the mountain as a solid object, rather than a bounded space.

When to shoot what?

The best way to know which lens to use is to get out there, look, and think. What part of the landscape are you most drawn to? Does the landscape’s expansiveness give it its character? Are there stunning details surrounded by less photogenic elements? Are you shooting spaces or objects?

That said, my personal strategy is to just shoot both, because almost any landscape has enough beauty that just one type of lens isn’t enough to get to all of it.
What is your approach to landscape photography? Do you use a wide or telephoto more often? Please share your thoughts and landscape images in the comments below.

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6 Tips for Planning the Perfect Landscape Photo Shoot

By: Luigi Trevisi   

How many times have you shown your pictures to someone and said, ”You should have seen that sunset in person to understand how magic it was!” We can make many excuses as to why the photo doesn’t look the same, complaining about our equipment, settings or post-production, but let’s face reality, maybe there was something wrong with our landscape photo!
Before you open Photoshop, and even before you press the shutter button, you need to plan the kind of image you want to create. Planning plays a key role in landscape photography. Here are some things that are useful to think about if you want to capture the perfect light and transmit some feelings with your images.

Tip 1: Check the weather forecast

Calton Hill – Edinburgh, Scotland

Landscape photography is one of the most difficult genres, or at least among the most unpredictable, as you don’t have any control over the weather at the scene.
What kind of atmosphere do you want to create with your image? The weather can completely transform a landscape, so think carefully about what mood you want to evoke. If you want to create a bright, cheerful image you might already know that a blue sky with fluffy white clouds would be better than a flat blue sky, or even worse a grey one.
So, before you drive for two hours and you arrive to see is a dull landscape, use the only weapon at your disposal: the weather forecast.

Tip 2: Choose the right time of the day and year

The perfect weather condition alone is useless without proper light. In landscape photography, the light is given by the position of the sun in the sky in relation to your subject. Fortunately, this is something more predictable than the weather. Calculate where the sun will be at particular times of day, and it will be easier for you to foresee how the scene will be illuminated. Again, think about the atmosphere you want to create. Light and peaceful? Dark and moody? Are there any particular landmarks you want to highlight? The answer to these questions will inform where you want your light to be, and consequently what time of day to shoot.

Groningen, Netherlands

Bear in mind that the sun’s position doesn’t change only during the day, but also throughout the year. As a result, in one year there are many different lighting conditions for the same place. It would be a shame not to use them to your advantage. You can use many websites and apps for this; the one that I use the most is PhotoPills, which is very well outlined in this article.

Tip 3: Be inspired by other photographers

When you plan your holiday, after booking the tickets and the hotel, you may buy a travel guide with detailed information about the location. Like where to go and what to eat, to make sure you won’t miss anything. Or you might just ask some friends who have been there before. In both cases, you’re relying on someone who went there before you, and who therefore knows what’s worthwhile to visit, or what’s a good typical (local) dish to try.
Even if you can’t do exactly the same thing with photography, you can get pretty close, thanks to the multitude of photography websites and social networks full of pictures from all over the world. The ones I personally use most of the time are; Google Images, 500px, Instagram, Flickr, and Pinterest. Obviously, the list doesn’t end here.
Feel free to use whatever sites you want, as long as you do it. It doesn’t matter if the picture isn’t the best quality, after all, you don’t want to copy it, but you’re just looking for some inspiration

Zaanse Schaans, Netherlands

Tip 4: Enjoy the place and get familiar with it

When arriving somewhere, especially if it’s for the first time, it’s really tempting to take your camera and shoot whatever you see! This isn’t wrong in itself, but remember you’ll probably take dozens of nice pictures and lose the opportunity to take that single outstanding one. Because when the moment comes you’ll be tired of taking other pictures, or even worse, the battery is dead. (By the way, do you have a spare battery, don’t you?)
It’s better to be patient and spend more time exploring your location and the surrounding area. This way you are more likely to discover some interesting spots, hopefully different from the classic ones. You can use your smartphone for your normal tourist pictures, so don’t worry about anything but composition. This way, you can enjoy the place where you are, instead of spending all the time behind your camera. After all, landscape photography should be the happy ending of a good day outside, not the only reason for being there.

Land’s end – Cornwall, England

Tip 5: Use both golden and blue hours wisely

I’m sure you already know what the golden hour is: the time of the day around dawn and dusk when the sun gives its best warm light and long soft shadows. Hence the adjective golden. Many photographers, including me for a while, consider it as solely the right moment for obtaining good photos. This is wrong, because there is another one, called blue hour, which occurs just before the golden hour at sunrise, and just after sunset.
As you can imagine from the name, its particularity is in the blue colour of the sky, not warm anymore and not totally dark like in the middle of the night. It is very effective for urban landscapes, because it emphasizes artificial lights that wouldn’t be as visible during the golden hour. Furthermore, since the sky is not totally dark, you’ll have a better contrast with the warmer colours of the city, which will add drama to your picture.

Manarola – Liguria, Italy

Tip 6: Take location related issues into account

So, you’ve planned your shoot by choosing the right day, with good weather and explored the place properly. Is that all?
Almost… There’s still something to be considered and it depends on the place. For example, in the case that you want to photograph a coastline, you will need to consider tides. It can be useful for composition purposes, but most importantly it’s for your personal safety. Tides in the ocean are really rapid and wide, and in some cases, it could be difficult (if not impossible) to escape from the waves if you decided to shoot from the rocks along the shore, with a rocky wall behind you.
In the case of very famous landmarks, a common issue is that it will be full of other photographers and tourists that want the same shot as you. This can obviously create problems for your composition, or you won’t have enough space for your tripod. So, try to be in that place before it gets too busy. This not only reduces the risk of finding other photographers who have decided to photograph from your same spot, it also permits you to slow down and avoid making mistakes.

London, England

When I started taking pictures several years ago, I didn’t have anything in my mind other than to take pictures of what I liked. But looking at other photographer’s work I realized that I was missing something. In my opinion, proper planning is the most important thing that I could have learned.
Obviously learning new techniques is useful, but it’s the most obvious. Planning is often underestimated, but it can really help you to go somewhere already having a picture in mind. If this isn’t the case, remember again: landscape photography is just the happy ending, you can still enjoy the place!
Do you have any other tips for planning your landscape photography shoots? I’d love if you shared them in the comments below as well as your images.

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5 Tips for Setting the Focus in Your Landscape Photography

By: Jim Hamel   

In many types of photography the question of where you should set your focus is pretty simple. For example, in portrait photography, there is one simple rule: focus on the eyes. When the eyes aren’t on the same plane of focus, focus on the near eye. End of story.
It is pretty simple with other types of photography as well. In wildlife photography you focus on the animal. In fact, in any type of photography where there is a clear subject, you always focus on that subject. That’s not to say it is always easy, but at least it isn’t difficult to figure out.

Foreground sharpness is paramount in many landscape photos.

But what about landscape photography where you are generally capturing more of a scene than a solitary subject? Where do you focus to ensure that everything in the scene is as sharp as possible? The answer isn’t always so clear. Therefore, in this article, we’ll cover some tips for helping you know where to set the focus.

Tip 1: Don’t Just Set the Focus at Infinity

Again, oftentimes in landscape photography, you are trying to capture a scene rather than a solitary thing. Many times, the scene you are trying to capture is far away from you. Most lenses have a range of focus values, and once you get beyond a certain distance (often 20-30 feet, or 8-10 meters) the focus is set at infinity. Everything beyond that point will just be infinity. Therefore, if you are taking a picture where most things in the frame are far away, it might seem that you should just set the focus at infinity. If you are using autofocus (and most of us are), you might be inclined to set the focus using something that is very far away from you.
If everything in the frame is truly at infinity, then setting the focus at its maximum distance is not a horrible idea. If there is nothing close to you, then there is just no need to do anything else, you don’t need to overly complicate things. But more commonly there are aspects of the scene that are closer to you than infinity. Where do you set the focus then?

You can get into hyperfocal distance (we’ll talk more about that in a minute) and make this as technical as you want. But often your time is precious when you’re out shooting. The light is changing and things are moving. You can get a pretty good sense of things without resorting to calculations. As a result, consider this rule of thumb: set the focus at infinity and then just turn it back a little bit. The obvious question is what is, how do you define a little bit, and I’m afraid I don’t have a good answer for you. It will vary from lens to lens, but will usually be about a 5-10° turn or just to the highest distance number printed on the lens (if your lens has these numbers).

Why would you want to do that? Because of the depth of field that will be in your picture (more on depth of field below). Since you are taking an outdoor photo, you will probably not be shooting wide open, or even with a large aperture. So, there will likely be some depth depth of field involved. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a large depth of field, but the point is that it gives you some leeway. By pulling the focus forward, that leeway will still get everything out to infinity in focus. It will also get things a little closer in focus as well.

Tip 2: Try Focusing a Third of the Way into the Picture

Many pictures are ruined because the foreground is not sharp. It happens all the time. Therefore, if you have something in your scene that is close to the camera, focus on it. If the ground is prominent in your picture, set your focus close to you. Make sure that foreground is in focus. Often you will set the focus only a few feet in front of you.
But wait a second, you might ask, what about my background? Won’t it be out of focus or blurry? Probably not. If you’re using your wide-angle lens (and if you are taking a outdoor photo that has a discrete foreground, then you probably are) you will have a wide depth of field, even at moderate to large apertures.

A sharp foregound focus furthers the viewer’s sense that they can walk into the picture.

Tip 3: Focus on the Subject Matter

Let’s not lose sight of the obvious though. When you have a definite subject or center of interest in your photo, just focus on that. It is the most important part of your picture and you absolutely need it in focus. Don’t worry about your foreground, don’t worry about your background. Just make sure the subject is in focus. Frankly, if there is a little fall-off in sharpness from your subject, that will probably not be such a bad thing.

Sometimes you just want a definite subject in focus, and having the background start to blur out is 

just fine, as in this image of a sheep.

Tip 4: Watch the Aperture

There are no free lunches in photography. You probably already know that by using a smaller aperture to get a larger depth of field, it will cost you light. The smaller aperture lets in less light so you will have to use a longer shutter speed (risking blur if you aren’t using a tripod) or raise the ISO (risking digital noise in your picture). But the smaller aperture will also lead to something called diffraction, particularly in cameras with smaller digital sensors. Therefore, just using the smallest aperture possible isn’t always the answer. You cannot just set your focus anywhere and rely on a super-wide depth of field to save you.
There are two ways around this issue though, which we’ll talk about next.

With everything in the shot at a distance of infinity (30 feet or more), I did not need a wide depth 

of field to keep everything in focus.

Tip 5: Know Your Hyperfocal Distance

Hyperfocal distance is just a fancy name for determining how close you can set your focus, and still keep your background acceptably sharp. There are apps and calculators that will tell you this distance depending on your aperture, sensor size, and focal length. For a full explanation of hyperfocal distance along with some charts and links to apps that will calculate it for you, check out How to Find and Use Hyperfocal Distance for Sharp Backgrounds .
An example will illustrate the point made above about backgrounds tending to remain sharp when you are using wide angle lenses. If you’re using a 16mm lens on a full frame camera, and shooting at f/11, your hyperfocal distance is only 2.5 feet. That means you can set the focus on a point just in front of you, and keep everything behind that point sharp.
Knowing the hyperfocal distance will often liberate you to set the focus point quite close, in order to maintain sharp foregrounds in your picture. It also means you often don’t need to use the smallest aperture your lens offers, so you can avoid the effects of diffraction.

Tip 6: Consider Focus Stacking

When the methods above won’t work for you, or you just need to make sure absolutely everything in the photo from front to back is tack sharp, you may want to consider focus stacking. Here you take multiple pictures of the same scene using different focus points.
Start by setting the aperture of your lens where it is sharpest (also called the sweet spot – if you don’t know, that is usually in the range of f/5.6 – f/8). Take a shot with the focus set close to you, then repeat the process, gradually setting the focus point farther and farther away with each shot. Later you blend your pictures in Photoshop (for more about how to do that check out Maximizing Depth of Field Without Diffraction).
This method is not a cure-all. It obviously won’t work with moving subject matter. In addition, it can be tedious, and you risk slightly moving the camera since you have to twist the focus ring between shots. Still it can be a powerful tool for maintaining focus and sharpness throughout your entire picture.

Setting the Focus Summary

No rule is going to cover every situation when it comes to focus. As with many aspects of photography, you’ll just have to use your own judgment in the field. Hopefully, as you do so, these tips will help you nail the focus and keep the picture tack sharp where it matters.

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8 Steps to Great Long Exposure Landscape Photography

By: Tim Gilbreath

In this article I will outline eight steps, that will help visualize what you’ll need to capture beautiful, well-planned, and unique images that you’ll be happy with.
Long exposures are the true artworks of photography; a normally static and bland scene can become a dynamic masterpiece when the shutter is left open, and the capturing of movement occurs. Surf on a beach becomes a swirling, cloud-like mass, and grasses flowing in the wind become a single, beautiful entity. This is a situation where what you see, and what you end up with, are usually two very different things, and the results are often breathtaking.
But capturing that beauty can be challenging. So what do you need to focus on to make a long-exposure landscape shot work? Let’s explore that a bit more.

By David McAughtry

1. Choose your location wisely

Before you even shoot your landscape, you’ll need to decide what type of shot you’ll tackle, and what environment you’d like to shoot in – whether it be a grassy plain, a seascape, or a busy highway.
Long exposure photography is about capturing, and translating movement within a frame. Spend some time deciding what you’re trying to capture, and what movement you want to accentuate. Rolling waves? Swaying grass? Flowing clouds?
Take a moment to envision what your scene will look like, and what parts of it will be stationary, and which parts will be fluid.

By Aaron

2. Be patient and wait for the right time

Long exposures, at their very basic premise, require one of two things to work properly. Either very dim light situations such as the golden hour time periods, very early, or very late in the day – OR modifiers added to the camera to diminish the light that is coming in through the lens.
The reason you need one of these is because leaving the shutter open for longer periods of time, monopolizes one corner of the exposure triangle. When a normal amount of light strikes the camera’s sensor for an extended period of time, you’re guaranteed an overexposure. Therefore, you’ll need to change one of the variables to reduce that amount of light.

The solution? Plan your shoot for very early in the morning, and very late in the evening. The darker it is outside, the longer you’ll be able to leave your shutter open, and therefore the more motion you’ll be able to capture in your image.
If you’re unable to shoot at those times, you’ll need to invest in a neutral density filter, preferably one with the ability to reduce the amount of light coming in to your lens by 10 stops, or more. These filters also add an extra layer of uniqueness to your images, because they allow you to shoot these long exposures at times of the day you normally don’t expect to see them.

3. Select the perfect lens

Of course, there are no hard and fast rules about which lens you’ll need to use, but traditionally, landscapes are captured with wide-angle lenses, to broaden the view and translate a sense of expansiveness.
Can you capture a landscape with a standard 50mm lens? Of course you can! But to maximize the open feel of a scene, consider using something wider. Keep in mind that the more you capture within the frame, the more movement it will contain.

I personally use a 24mm f/2.8 pancake lens for most of my landscape shots. While it’s not as wide as what some people use, I find it gives me a good middle ground, with a wide focal length, and very little of the distortion traditionally associated with super-wide glass.

4. Bring the proper equipment

While we’re speaking about the planning phase of your shoot, it’s a perfect time to consider what gear you’ll need to pull off a long exposure landscape. As it happens, it’s the same equipment you’d need for any other long exposure shot.
A tripod is a invaluable piece of gear for any landscape photographer, and for a long exposure, it’s an absolute requirement. Exposures of several seconds, which are required to produce movement within the image, need a stable base for the camera. The slightest amount of movement can cause blurriness, and that is amplified with longer and longer shutter times. Invest in a good, sturdy tripod, and ensure nothing will blow or bump into the unit while in operation.

Another essential accessory for this situation is a remote shutter release. There’s really no excuse for any landscape photographer to not have one, as they can be found for your camera model for $10, or so. These releases connect to your camera, and allow you to activate the shutter without ever touching the camera body itself. This keeps the vibration during the shutter click to an absolute minimum.

5. Use the correct camera settings

Since you’re using longer exposure times to pull off this type of shot, you’ll need to make adjustments to other parts of the exposure triangle. Generally, this means you need to stop your aperture down as far as you can, while maintaining sharpness, and reducing your ISO to the lowest setting. These two settings will allow you to bump your exposure time up, to long enough to capture movement in your image.
Fortunately this also gives you some bonus advantages; a lower ISO (such as 100), will keep the noise and artifacts in your shot to a minimum, giving you the best possible image quality. In addition, lenses tend to be sharper in the middle aperture ranges. Using apertures such as f/8, f/11 or f/16 will give you a nice, deep depth of field throughout the picture, while also taking a sharper, clearer photo than what you’d generally get with an extreme aperture of f/22 (due to diffraction).

As always, shoot in RAW. This will capture as much data as possible, and allow you to make non-destructive edits to the file later. Shooting in RAW format also negates the need to fiddle with white balance while shooting, since that can be adjusted in post-production.
If you do set white balance at the time of the shot, it’s usually a good idea to select the Daylight preset, or a custom white balance setting of your own, that counterbalances the extreme warmth encountered at sunset, and vice-versa for a shot at sunrise, which is a cooler time of the day, color temperature-wise.

6. Focus on your composition

By Ekaitz Arbigano

When you have your equipment and settings where they need to be, it’s time to take a moment to compose your shot. What are you capturing? The movement of a body of water like the surf from the ocean? Adjust your composition to allow for more of the water to be in the composition, instead of the sky. Are you trying to focus on the movement of clouds across the sky? Then give that part of the scene more attention within your frame to accentuate it.

7. Envision and anticipate movement

Shooting a moving scene, and attempting to capture that movement involve a bit of foresight, not unlike a marksman leading his target, by visualizing where the target will be when the shot gets there.

How far will the clouds move in the duration of the exposure? In which direction? Plotting this 

out before you click the shutter will improve your final image.

For example, capturing the ebb and flow of surf pounding a beach, requires knowing where the surf-line will end, and begin to recede back into the ocean, to properly compose it. Watching the movement of the subject you’re shooting, will help anticipate where it will appear in the final image. It’s always pays to plan ahead!

8. Enhance beauty in post-production

Finally, (and yes, this can be a touchy subject), learn to excel with the post-production process. A long-exposure image will already by eye-catching just by its inherent properties, but it’s important to take time during editing to enhance the beauty you’ve already captured in camera.

This shot initially had a cooler white balance, due to being shot in the morning, as opposed to during 

sunset.

Since you’ll be shooting early or late in the day, tones will most likely already be dramatic, but may require some light boosting of the colors, or dodging and burning in Photoshop to add a bit more.
Since you shot at a low ISO to begin with, you likely won’t have to deal with noise reduction. After your exposure and tones have been taken care of, a little sharpening is all that stands between you and the final image.

By Aaron

So that’s it folks, the eight steps to get you started on the path to taking great long exposure landscape shots. What other tricks of the trade do you use to get the perfect capture? Sound off in the comments below, and as usual, let your voice be heard.

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10 Tips for Photographing Wide-Angle Landscapes

By: Anne McKinnell 

A wide-angle lens is considered an essential piece of gear for any landscape photographer because it gives you a perspective that you cannot achieve with any other lens. You’ll not only be able to photograph grand vistas, but you’ll see lines in a different way, and emphasize subjects by getting super close.
So if you haven’t tried one yet, borrow or rent a wide angle lens and get ready to make images with a different flavour using these tips.

21mm, ISO 100, f/18, 1/15 second

What is a wide-angle lens?

Camera lenses are defined by comparison to the field of view that the eye naturally sees – which is 50mm on a full frame camera or 35mm on a crop sensor camera. This is known as a normal focal length. Any wider than that is a considered wide-angle.
My favourite wide-angle lens is in the 10-20mm range on my crop sensor camera, or 16-35mm on a full frame camera.

When to use a wide-angle lens

Many people think the purpose of a wide-angle lens is to photograph grand vistas and get a lot in the frame. While that is one purpose for a wide-angle lens, its real power is in using its perspective to emphasize objects that are very close to you and de-emphasizing objects that are farther away.

1. Emphasize a foreground element

Wide-angle lenses allow you to get really close to something in the foreground, which will emphasize it and make it look larger and more important than the background elements. A wide lens has a way of changing the relative size of the objects in the frame, so that things that are closer to the lens appear larger, and things in the background appear smaller proportionally.

20mm, ISO 200. f/5.6, 1/160 second

Try using a low angle and getting very close to your main subject. By close, I mean inches away. You’ll be surprised when you look through the viewfinder and discover that objects don’t appear quite so close through the lens.

2. Photograph your subject and its environment

My favourite way to use the lens is to get very close to my main subject so it is large in the frame, as mentioned above, but also include other elements in its environment in the frame. This is a great way to create a story-telling image that provides context for the main subject.

16mm, ISO 200, f/8, 1.3 seconds

3. Get everything in focus

Another great power of a wide-angle lens is its ability to have incredible depth of field. You can get everything from two feet away to infinity in focus. Of course, this depends on the exact lens and the aperture you choose, but all wide-angle lenses have a greater ability to get more in focus than a telephoto lens (which is excellent at shallow depth of field by blurring the background). You’d be hard pressed to blur the background with a wide-angle lens.

19mm, ISO 100, f/20, 1/20 second

You can use a hyperfocal distance calculator to figure out exactly what will be in focus for your lens at the aperture you choose. But generally speaking, if you focus on something close to you and use a small aperture like f/18, everything from front to back will be in focus.

4. Watch out for distractions

Since wide-angle lenses include a lot in the frame, you’ll need to be extra vigilant to make sure there are no distractions. Everything that is in the frame should have a purpose.
Check your composition to make sure there is nothing in the foreground that you didn’t notice, since objects just inches away from you will be in the frame. As well, check the background to make sure there you haven’t included something unintentional.
Ideally, your composition should clearly show what the main subject is, what the supporting elements are using an interesting graphic design, and not include anything else. Simplify the composition as much as possible.

11mm, ISO 100, f/20, 1/6 second

Because the frame contains such a wide field of view, it will have a lot in it, so it is especially important that the main subject is obvious.

5. Keep the camera level

Wide-angle lenses are notorious for displaying distortion around the edges. Anything with straight lines at the edges of the frame will appear to lean inwards. To avoid or minimize distortion, keep the camera level with the ground and don’t angle it up or down.

6. Angle your camera upwards

On the other hand, you can use this distortion to your advantage! Just make sure it is intentional and you are using it to emphasize something. For example, by angling the camera upwards you can emphasize the sky, and any clouds in it will appear to point towards the center of the frame.

15mm, ISO 100, f/11, 1/60 second

7. Angle your camera downwards

Similarly, if you angle your camera downwards you can emphasize leading lines on the ground and create a perspective that really draws the viewer in.

10mm, ISO 200, f/11, 1/20 second

8. Make images in close quarters

Whenever you are in an enclosed space, making images with impact can become difficult, since you cannot get far enough away from your subject. If you are in a tight situation, a wide-angle lens is a necessity!

21mm, ISO 100, f/11, 5.0 seconds

9. Beware of polarizing filters

You may already know that polarizing filters can darken skies, emphasize clouds, and saturate colours when you are photographing in a 90 degree angle to the sun. If you are photographing with the sun directly in front of you or behind you, the filter does not have this affect.
With a wide-angle lens, you may find that part of the scene in the frame is at a 90 degree angle and is affected by the polarizing filter, and the other side is not. When this happens, it is better not to use the polarizing filter at all (it will give you an uneven sky which is darker on one side).

10. Manage uneven light

When photographing landscapes with a wide-angle lens you’ll frequently encounter varying amounts of light in the frame. Often the sky in the background is much brighter than your foreground. When this happens, you can use a graduated neutral density filter to darken the top portion of your image and even out the exposure.

10mm, ISO 200, f/11, 1/100 second

A wide-angle lens is often the favourite lens in the kit for landscape photographers and with these tips it may become your favourite lens too.
What do you like to shoot with your wide lens? Please share your tips and images below.

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