Using Wide-Angle Lenses

Simply put, a wide-angle lens is a lens whose focal length is shorter than the focal length of a normal lens for the image size produced by the camera. When using a wide-angle lens in photography, the images produced can look distorted, because they tend to be used much closer to the subject than they are when using a normal lens.

Wide-angle lenses for 35 mm cameras come in 35, 28, 24, 21, 18, and 14 mm. The lenses in this range will produce a rectilinear image at the film plane. Extreme wide-angle lenses that do not produce a rectilinear image are called fisheye lenses. These lenses commonly come in focal lengths of 6 to 8 mm. Wide-angle lenses come in both fixed-focal-length and zoom lenses. There is also two different types of wine-angle lenses, which are short-focus and retrofocus lenses.

Short-focus lenses are usually made up of multiple glass elements with shapes more or less symmetrical in front of and behind the diaphragm. The retrofocus lens does not have this problem, because the asymmetrical design allows the rear element to be further away from the film plane than its effective focal length suggests. This allows for the design of wide-angle lenses for single-lens reflex cameras.

One of the advantages of using wide-angle lenses is that you have the capability to stretch perspective, as the distance between objects is able to be extended and the proportion of objects is increased. In other words, objects closer to the camera look larger and those further away almost disappear in the distance. This is ideal for capturing large scenes. The best use of a wide-angle lens is to get close to the subject. Objects close to the camera are larger and those further away are smaller, and you can use this near-far perspective to create an illusion of distance and depth.

Remember, when shopping for your wide-angle lens, that they can be pricy. Talk to the camera store expert and let him/her know what your needs are and what you are looking to achieve in your photography.