DSLR Photography Forum

Have you noticed, when you think you've taken a decent wide shot, that there are a lot of unused spaces unless you're careful?

These were quite a stretch, in both cases lying down in the grass and assuming a "fox-eye" point of view about a foot or so from the main subject.
The flowers themselves are about 9 inches high maximum.

Early-purple orchids, 16mm, f.13....I had to choose this aperture so as to get the maximum depth of ffield handheld.



Cowslips: actually about 4 or 5 inches tall. I was getting a few funny looks by this time. 20mm at f 8.
It's amazing how the world changes so quickly when looking through a W-A lying in the grass: even small shifts have a dramatic effect.



Finally: notice the apparent position of the tree in both shots. It is the same tree...but its size and position relative to the buildings is dramatically different between shots.
The camera "never lies"...but it sure can bend the truth a little

Hi, good job. that's exactly why I can't handle wide angles, wide pictures are sooo difficult to compose, so much empty space to fill...

The second one, I could almost imagine the top half from a very slightly higher angle, and then cropped to panorama format, I like the way you framed the tree!

Uli

I love these shots! I spend a lot of time myself shooting close to the ground like this. I like seeing things in a way you don't normally see them. Excellent work on these.

Love #2 there Zig.

That's why I believe having a dramatic or interesting sky is more important for wide-angle shots than any other shots for exactly the reasons you mention. There is so much room to fill in the shot, often you need to rely on the sky to fill the frame and that can make or break the shot.

Great tutorial and great shots.

Wide angle lenses do have their own set of rules; you can't use tele-compression and short DOF to drop out the background, and a subject in the middle distance just won't carry enough weight to make a good picture. They also demand a lot more attention because of the control they give the photographer over the relationship of the foreground to the background -- very small distances make very big differences.

Ultra-wide lenses are unforgiving, but with those exceptions the rest is just a matter of good-but-universal technique. I don't see why anyone here wouldn't do a good job with one. True, different people will like different focal lengths and ways of seeing, but it's as much a matter of practice as it is a preference.

These wide angle shots don't look all that wide. What is 35 mm equiv of the 16 mm or 20 mm (in my camera they would 24 mm and 30 mm).

Very nice pictures Zig...

Well Don, as you're perhaps finding yourself, wide-angle lenses are about a lot more than width of angle/area of view, they're about perspective and the relationship between different points within the total depth of field. In other words, though "width" is not immediately an apparent feature of the shots, the relative perceived size of objects should be. The tree, for instance, is the same tree in both shots but plays a different role owing to the lens' qualities...which would simply not be the case if the lens were "less wide".
Matthew's comment is the pivotal point here: "They also demand a lot more attention because of the control they give the photographer over the relationship of the foreground to the background -- very small distances make very big differences. "
My camera effectively "crops" an area x1.6 compared to a 35mm or full-frame camera: I think it's x1.5 in your Nikon?
My 16-35 lens(with which these were taken) would, on a 35mm camera, work out as the length of the lens it's intending to replace in my case( 10-22): once I put this lens on a full-frame camera, it is almost exactly the same as the 10-20 you have, and exactly the same as the 10-22 I have. The reason the shots may not "look all that wide" is because of the sensor-size of our present cameras: the edges are cropped, in other words. BUT the relationships of all the objects in frame are still "ultra-wide".
Another thing: the 2 shots, in relative terms, are about, as you say, "24mm" and "31mm": those focal lengths are indeed considered "wide-angle" territory, with 24mm being considered, until relatively recently, "super-wide".

I agree. The shots are organized like wide angle shots for sure. What's missing for me is the zing that a wide angle lens gives photographs.

Really? I've seen many a zing-less W-A shot...innit the person behind the camera who gives it a zing? These give me a zing in any case, else I wouldn't have put them here.

I didn't say I didn't like them. They are very pretty.

Number 1 really appeals to me Zig - great use of the lens and the composition you have chosen.