Photography News Issue 42

Photography News | Issue 42 | absolutephoto.com

Technique 29

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Get more fromyour wide-angle lens Improve your wide-angle technique with these four easy-to-follow tips

PART 2

1 Deal with dynamic range

The short focal lengths of wide-angle lenses provide a very wide field-of-view, and this in turn exaggerates depth. Close-up objects seem very large, while distant ones get smaller. This causes a problem in many wide-angle shots, which have lots of foreground, but very little for the eye to settle on in the distance. The wider you go, the more exaggerated depth becomes, and with many photographers drawn to those extreme wide angles, it can lead to poor composition, with too much space around the subject. To fix this, you can do two things. If you have a wide-angle zoom, try pushing in a little and using one of the longer focal lengths. Going from 12mm to 24mm, should see the foreground and background equalise a little, though you’ll almost certainly need to recompose and move back a little if you want to include the same foreground element. The second method, is simply to move your feet. If possible, get closer to the subject and, if required, find new foreground interest nearer to it. This way you’ll be able to fill the frame more easily and avoid large, blank areas that can spoil a shot. Increased field-of-view means dynamic range is likely to be higher across the frame. Compare this with the cropped view of a telephoto lens, and you’ll generally find less contrast variation. High dynamic range in a scene means the camera can’t record all of if correctly in a single exposure, so some parts end up being too bright or too dark; it’ll look fine to the naked eye, but typically, in landscapes, the sky will be too bright or the land too dark. The traditional way to control this is to use graduated ND filters, which have clear and darkened sections and come in various strengths. Place one of these over the lens, so the dark part sits over the brightest areas and you’ll equalise the light. The modern route is to shoot in Raw mode and process the image in software. During processing you can use digital grads, or brushes to darken the parts you want. Alternatively, you can use your camera’s bracketing mode. This will shoot several exposures, typically three, five or seven shots, altering the lightness each time. You can then either pick the best, or blend two or more in Photoshop to achieve the results you want. 2 Fill the frame

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3 Combat converging verticals and distortions

software features to straighten things up after the event, but you will loose some of the picture to cropping this way. Allowing for more room around the subject when taking the shots will help. Many modern wide-angles show very little distortion and some, like Sigma’s 12-24mm Art lens, claim none at all. There’s nothing in shooting you can do to help, aside from switching on lens corrections in the camera (these can also be applied in your editing software). When it comes to lens flare, there are several things you can do. The most obvious is to make sure you’re using the lens’s supplied hood, which should cut out the light source causing the problem. If it’s outside of your composition, and still causing problems shield the lens front from the light source with your hand or a card.

Because of their broad field-of-view and construction, wide-angle lenses are more likely to show certain distortions and problems than longer lenses. These problems include converging verticals, where buildings will seem to topple over backwards, barrel distortion which causes a bowing of straight lines, and also lens flare, where the light source reduces contrast and causes ghosting. Converging verticals occur in any lens, they’re just more obvious in wide-angle shots. Your pics don’t need to be totally free from them, but too much distortion will look unnatural. The only way to remove converging verticals is keep your shooting position level; any tilt up or down will send the vertical lines off balance. This is difficult if you’re close to the subject, and it’s tall, so try moving away from the subject. You can also use lens correction

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