Wide angle lenses

[John Hallas]

I quite like the idea of buying a wide angle lens for my Canon 400D. However I have never used one therefore do not know how beneficial it would be.

With so few camera shops around what is the best way of seeing the benefits. I thought there might be a site somewhere that shows views taken with different lenses.

Any thoughts

Cheers John

[Don Hoey]

Try this link. Select a lens from the range shown on the right then move the slider at the bottom to zoom through the range of that particular lens.
http://www.tamroneurope.com/flc.htm

Don

[John Hallas]

Thanks Don, an excellent link.
Initial thought are that the lens don't show as much 'fish-eye' effect as I thought they would.

I was really thinking of a wide-angle as being for street architecture and build shots, not sure I see the advantage just at the moment.

[Gidders]

To me using a wide angle lens is not just about getting more or less in the frame, which is what the Tamron link shows you, althouh sometimes that is important if you cant move back any further. Its about presenting a different perspective on a scene.

For example the following four shots were all taken with a 10mm lens equivalent to 16mm on a full frame camera.

However, if you could have got far enough back, these twoMorcambe_Bay.jpg or Sutton_Park-6283.jpgcould have been taken with say a 24mm, 28 mm or even a 50mm lens and cropped to the letterbox format.

However these two Birmingham-6303-Edit_copy_4.jpg and Birmingham-6333-Edit_copy.jpg I have used the change in perspective that a very short lens brings to alter the perspective in the image.

Some people think that a change in focal length changes perspective - it does not. A change in the position of the photographer changes perspective, but sometimes it is the change in focal length that enables the photographer to change is position. I shall post some examples that demonstrate

[Gidders]

I took a series of shots to demonstrate just this point at a workshop at my camera club.

In this series the position of the camera is unchanged - the shots have just been cropped to render the image
the same size (in the case of the 35 mm shot it has had to be up sampled hence the image degradation). You can
clearly see that the relationship between the foregroud cross and the gravestone in the background remains unchanged
IMG_4178.jpg

Where as in this series of shots the camera has been moved to maintain the size of the foreground cross in the image
frame. Now you can see the change of perspective brought about by moving the position of the camera.
IMG_4175.jpg

Hope this helps

[andy153]

Hi John - if you want to see what various lenses can do try the following link to pBase - they use the EXIF from posts to show the results from a particular lens. Just click on the manufacturer and scroll to the lenses

http://www.pbase.com/cameras

Have fun.