Why you need a wide-angle lens

[Mike W]

Whilst I was at Ellerton yesterday I wanted a series of pics for my website to illustrate the effect of wide-angle lenses. I've seen lots of above water comparisons of angles of view, and even produced one for the website, but never seen an underwater series that made the point.

So, I took a shot of the bow of a small cabin cruiser with my Olympus compact, added the wide converter and took another, then took the same shot with my Canon and fisheye lens. Here's the result (Dropped into b/w to get rid of a difference in colour balance between the Oly and the Canon) all pics from jpegs produced in camera, auto-levels and re-sized in Photoshop and no other changes. All are full frame.



The wider the lens the closer you can get to the subject, which means less water between you and the subject, and less water means sharper, more contrasty pictures. You can also see the effect on perspective of increasingly wider-angle lenses, look at the apparent length of the foredeck of the boat.

[TimIngmire]

That's a really good demonstration of the benefits and effects of using a Wide Angle Lens - whilst everybody talks about closing the distance between the camera and subject, it's not often you see mention of the effect on perspective - this series demonstrates that very well.

It may also help to show the difference with a diver behind the subject in classic pose and to show the effects of apparent distance with different focal lengths.

Nice one Mike.

Tim