Best Practices for Wide Angle Lens Success

Hi folks. I’ve been speaking with and working with photographers interesting in improving their work and one area that comes up a lot is a lack of satisfaction with their images when using wide angle lenses. I asked to see some examples, and discovered some consistencies in the images that the photographers felt were missing something. I also asked the regular audience of the KelbyONE CommunityLIVE! weekly broadcast that I co-host what they would share as their best practices when using wide angle lenses. These folks are very accomplished photographers, and while I did not hear any ideas that were new to me, it was extremely valuable to hear some consistently mentioned best practices.

We should start with what we are talking about when we say wide angle. Wide angle is a measurement of angle of view, not focal length, although it is very common to hear of a focal length and then decide that it is or is not wide angle. Which begs the question, wider than what?

When we measure the typical angle of view of the mark one mod zero eyeball, it typically has a diagonal angle of view of about 50 degrees, and in the case of a 2:3 aspect ratio that means a horizontal coverage angle of just over 42 degrees and almost 29 degrees of vertical coverage. While the numbers are just numbers, lens makers used this real world data to define what was originally called the “standard” lens, where standard meant a lens that would create an image that looked like what the human eye saw. It’s not precisely accurate, because humans have binocular vision while cameras generally do not, but it is certainly close enough to be usable.

Therefore any lens with a diagonal view of greater than 50 degrees is safely considered to be wide angle. Aspect ratio doesn’t enter into things because it is the diagonal angle of view that actually matters.

In the context of what we call full frame, then wide angle lenses became available in different angles of view, but defined in terms of their focal length in relation to the film gate and now of course the sensor. So we see 35mm, 28mm, 24mm, 20mm, 16mm, 14mm lenses all marketed as wide angle, with some having the ultra tag added in front to delineate a lens with a really large angle of view. For those using crop sensor lenses such as found on Fujifilm cameras, divide those examples by 1.5x for angle of view equivalency and for those using micro four thirds sensor lenses such as found on Olympus cameras, divide those examples by 2x for angle of view equivalency.

Now that we are all on the same page as to what constitutes a wide angle, let’s delve into some of the concerns raised. These are direct quotes from the photographers themselves

Concerns

What I saw with my eye was majestic, but everything in the picture just looks farther away and has none of the impact that I saw

Everything in the picture is in focus, I cannot get part of the image to be soft or blurred

When I take a picture of the mountains, they are so far away in the picture that they have none of the impact that I was seeing live

The edges of my pictures are distorted. People get widened and sometimes there is bending of straight lines

When I use my wide angle to take pictures that have buildings, the buildings look like they are falling over

I was told to use a polarizing filter for my landscape shots but with my wide angle the colour of the sky is not consistent, the way I see it without the filter. Some parts are deeper blue and some are not. Why doesn’t the polarizing filter work properly?

When I put a filter on my wide angle lens, there is darkening that happens in the corners. It does not happen with my other lenses. Is my wide angle lens broken?

Resolutions and Best Practices

These are all very common concerns, so I’m going to try to address them individually, using my own built up over time expertise and weaving in the recommendations of the photographers I asked for best practices.

Since the camera to subject distance does not change when you just change lenses, we expect to see more of the overall scene with the wide angle lens. However, unless we make the effort to make the scene look deeper in the camera viewfinder, we just get a greater angle of view, which does not guarantee visual impact. In a landscape, ensure that there are foreground elements that are close to you, get low to make the image and select a an aperture that puts everything front to back in focus. Instead of focusing on the farthest away element, focus instead on something about ⅓ of the way in.

Wider angle lenses, by fact of optics have greater depth of field at any given aperture. Creating out of focus areas requires the use of very large apertures. You will want to use a large aperture to control how much blur or softness you get. If it is very bright out, you may need to employ a neutral density filter to successfully get the combination of large aperture, low ISO and suitable shutter speed to make it all work. Go in knowing that blur is always going to be tougher to get with a wider angle of view, and the wider you go, the more depth of field you are going to get. In this scenario, ask if the wide angle is the right lens for the desired goal.

In the mountain scene landscape example concern, this should be expected. The wide angle makes everything look farther away. If you want to bring the mountains into a perspective that shows their majesty and power, the wide angle is the wrong lens for the job. Consider a short to medium telephoto instead. It will nearly always be a better choice and produce a more pleasing result. I am well aware that wide angles are often sold as being great for giant scenes but it is not true in most situations. One tip to consider is to to use the narrower angle of view of the telephoto and take multiple images and then stack them together into a panorama to deliver the look and feel that you want. Some cameras will do panoramas in camera with JPEG outputs, but Adobe Lightroom Classic, Adobe Photoshop and many other applications have processes to make panoramas incredibly simple.

Edge bending and widening can sometimes be fixed by use of lens correction tools in post processing software. This is built into Adobe Lightroom Classic and Adobe Camera RAW with Photoshop, but in my opinion the product that does the best lens corrections is DXO Photolab. However other factors will impact how effective these tools are. The greater the angle of view, the more curvature there will be in the front element or elements of the lens design. More curvature means harder to correct, so a simple tip is just to leave yourself some empty space on all edges so nothing of consequence has to live in this area of the frame. A second and critical tip is to keep the sensor plane parallel to the subject plane. So for example, to shoot a photo of a group of people all lined up, shoot from their waist level and leave space on the edges.

The issue of buildings falling over, is the same as the above. The sensor plane is not parallel to the fact of the building. Sometimes however, you cannot get high enough to get the whole building in the frame AND keep the sensor plane parallel to the building face. In that case, get as parallel as you can, while leaving space around the building that is going to get cropped away by the next process. In most all editors, there is a transform function that allows you to fix the tilting effect, but when you use it, you will see that parts of the image get lost. This is why you must leave lots of space around the subject. Adobe Lightroom Classic and Adobe Camera RAW have good tools for this, but the best one, in my opinion is DXO Viewpoint. Another option is that if you do a lot of architectural work, to consider the investment in a tilt shift lens and then learn how to use it. If you go that route, buy as a wide an angle as you can, For example, a 17mm TS will be much more usable than a 24mm TS lens. I know this from personal experience in buying the wrong one.

Polarizing filters work across a maximum rotation of 90 degrees. You can spin that front ring until cattle sprout wings, and it’s only ever going to be 90 degrees. This means that across a 90 degree angle of view, you will see the full gamut of no filtration of polarized light to the maximum filtration that the filter can deliver. This means a difference in control of reflected light that has become polarized and we see that in changes in the blue of the sky most readily. Some folks instead do panoramas, adjusting the polarizer for each shot and this can work but there is a lot of luck involved in making it work. Others will take the one image, without the polarizer and then edit the image afterwards to mask the sky and manipulate it in post production.

When we see darkness on the edges we are seeing vignetting. A vignette means that a portion of the incoming light rays in the angle of view are being blocked by something. This something in the noted scenario is the depth back to front of the filter mounting ring. It’s easier and cheaper to make a filter mounting ring that is deeper back to front, but it’s not good for wide angles. When buying any kind of filter always require the thinnest ring possible. Better filter brands such as B+W do this on all filters, but no name filters from Amazon or the like probably don’t and are often not optically correct. Great filters cost money. Cheap filters are exactly that.

I hope that you have found the solutions to these common wide angle concerns of use. If you shop with B&H Photo Video, please do so through the link on this site’s main page. It costs you nothing and pays me a small commission which is helpful to continuing the work here. Please post any questions or comments as you wish. Until next time, peace