Shooting Wide
Over the last few weeks, whenever possible, I have been using the widest possible angle that I have. I normally make use of the great zoom lens' that I have and find myself a convenient location and use the zoom.
This adds a whole new dimension to how you go about taking the actual picture!
So, as I have been selecting a wide angle, the only way to frame a shot is to move. Yes, zoom with your feet!
I have never really bothered, but a few shots I took today at 14mm (28mm equiv) meant that I had to move much closer than I first thought.
I started with a simple tree, and by getting in close, and down low, I utilised nearly all of my 75Deg FOV (Field of View). Until you try it, you just don't realise how much you can see in 75 Degrees!
This tree is not particularly tall - only about 6metres. As you can see, I shot it in portrait mode. I just framed the shot in the viewfinder, and kept walking forward until I got the tree to almost fill the frame. I bent down a little bit to minimise the amount of ground visible to the horizon. Additionally, I used the tree itself to hide a couple of distracting elements in the background!
When I took this photo, I was only around 2metres away from it, yet I still managed to fit all 6metres of the tree in with room to spare. I might have been able to get a little closer and maybe I will try again another day to do just that, but for now, I'm happy with the result.
I took more than this one photo while out using the same sort of approach - set the lens to 14mm and "zoomed with my feet" to frame the picture.
"Map the Miner" is a statue that is around the 6m tall - about the same size as the tree from earlier in the day. The statue sits up on a base around 1/2 metre high.
What I did here was to get down so that I was only just a little bit higher than the base and kept moving forward until I had a full frame. To do this, I ended up even closer than I was to the tree - I was less than 1.5m away from the feet.
And another photo from another angle.
Now, the 2 photos of "Map" give an idea that it is quite large, even without having anything in frame as a point of reference. As we are very close to the bottom, and much further away from the top, we get a bit of perspective distortion, making the head look smaller.
With the head way up there, and by getting down low, I have not only managed to get rid of most of the distracting background, but made the statue appear to tower all over me. I didn't get rid of all the background, but if I had stepped back, and shot from a standing height there would have been considerably more.
This is quite a bit different than my typical approach and over the next several weeks I will try using wider angles as much as possible so that I can add this technique to my arsenal. From these couple of shots, I can say that it was interesting to step out and try something different than I normally do, and now I just need to master it and learn when and when not to use very wide angles.
I am trying to decide if I want to purchase a tele-converter or a wide-angle lens next. The tele-converter would extend my maximum zoom from 200mm to 284mm (1.4X) and the wide angle would give me 11-22mm. 11mm does not sound much wider than 14mm, but when you consider 89degrees V's 75degrees FOV it is quite significant!
Now, before I go spending a small fortune on yet another lens, I need to challenge myself to exploit the 14mm end of my standard zoom as much as possible and when I feel that I am limited by 14mm not being wide enough will I know it is time to get another lens.
