It's weirdly easy to take bad pictures with a wide-angle lens. Right now,
I'm in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah, one of the best places in
the world to use a wide-angle lens, and even here you have to be careful when you do. So, what makes
them so tricky to use, and what can you do about it? Well, I'm going to show you all that next.
The first thing that you need to know about using wide-angle lenses is that they include
so much negative space in your photos. Now, wide-angle lenses capture a lot of negative
space just because they're always filling the frame with *something*. If you've got a lot of
sky in your photo, that creates an enormous amount of negative space that you've got to deal with,
either by embracing it or by choosing a different composition. Alternatively,
if your foreground is just one element in a field of grass,
then there's going to be a bunch of negative space around it, too.
Now as you know, negative space can give your photos a sense of isolation or loneliness,
and that does work sometimes; it can even be your goal. But in many cases, it just doesn't
work quite right, and that's because of that classic, "if your photos aren't good enough,
then you're not close enough" kind of mindset. Now, the idea is that you should fill the frame
with your subject rather than leave areas that are large and empty just to distract
the viewer's eye. For example, take a look at this photo. Now here, I used a wide-angle lens,
but it just doesn't work that well, and that's because the scene has way too much empty space in
it. Instead, this is a good case where I could use a medium lens, or even a telephoto. And,
as you can see, this final image is significantly better than the first.
Next up is something kind of controversial, and that's the idea of using a wide-angle lens to,
quote-unquote, "fit everything in." In other words, to take a picture at a beautiful place
where the entire scene is in your photo. And the reason why this is considered controversial
is a lot of photographers say it's sort of a lazy method of composition. Now, in my opinion, getting
it all in is actually a perfectly valid reason to want to use an ultra wide-angle lens. For example,
take a look at this photo of a rainbow. Now, in this case, quite clearly the only way to
get the entire rainbow in the photo was to use a wide-angle lens. And it's not just rainbows,
either. If you're photographing, say, the Milky Way at night, then using a wide-angle
will let you capture more of it. Or, if there's an interesting cloud overhead, then you really
will want to get it all in. The only problem is if you use this idea of a wide-angle almost by
default. In that case, you might end up with some significant distractions in your image that will
take away from your composition. So, yes, using a wide-angle lens can be a good idea if your only
goal is to fit a large amount of the scene into your photo. But in other cases, you'll want to be
very careful using it that way, just because you might end up with too many distractions.
The next topic that I'd like to talk about is the idea of perspective distortion. And
this just means that when you get very close to your subject, its proportions will appear
exaggerated relative to the background. And sometimes, especially with wide-angle lenses,
you can end up with subjects that just look completely unnatural. For example,
if you photograph someone's face with an ultra-wide lens.
Now, not all subjects will look unnatural when you try to photograph them with a wide-angle,
but a number of them will. If you're taking pictures of sand dunes or rock formations,
then you might not notice. But if you've got trees, or people, or buildings in your photo, then
it can be a significant problem to use too wide of a lens. Now, the problem here is that it's very
easy to get an extremely exaggerated foreground and a tiny background if you use a wide-angle
lens. You might have a mountain on the horizon in the distance that just looks like a little
bit of a bump at the back of your photo. And, in many cases, that's not going to be what you want.
I'm gonna sit down for a second. This is a really nice spot.
Now, if you haven't been able to guess, I'm about to enter some serious slot canyons,
which is one of the best places that you can use a wide-angle, so hopefully I'll be able
to show you some example photos. But first, I do want to emphasize one more issue that
wide-angle lenses sometimes have, and that is their inability to isolate certain subjects.
Now, one of the good reasons to use a telephoto lens is that you can pick out
the specific part of a photo that you want to capture, and you can ignore anything else. If
your shadow is in front of you -- if there's telephone poles, weird rocks,
clouds that don't look good -- a wide-angle cannot isolate a subject nearly as well. Instead,
the best time to use a wide-angle lens is when you have an important foreground that you want
to emphasize, when the background isn't as important to your photo, and when there aren't any
major distractions that can take away from your message. Now, in my opinion, slot canyons are some
of the best subjects that fulfill all of these characteristics, so let's go and explore them.
So, why is it that a scene like this is so good with a wide-angle lens? Well, the first reason,
again, is just to get it all in. Let me demonstrate real quick. Right now, I'm at 14mm,
but I can zoom in to 30mm. And when I do, you can see, I just don't get nearly as much of the
canyon, and it's not as nice of a photo. Instead, 14mm is the way to go in a landscape like this.
Now, on top of that, this is just such an abstract subject that the whole idea of
perspective distortion doesn't apply nearly as much. The corners might still be stretched out,
but you can't even tell, just because the subject itself is already just a bunch of lines.
Another reason to use a wide-angle lens while photographing something like the
slot canyons is simply that they have more depth of field than telephotos. And,
on top of that, they're also less prone to camera shake. So,
if you don't want to bring your tripod down into a tight squeeze like this,
then you can get by with handheld photos much more easily using a wide-angle than a telephoto.
I'm at a truly amazing spot. Let me turn the camera around, and I'll show you.
This is a natural archway in the canyon. I'm definitely going to take a picture right here.
And now I'm nearing the end of the slot canyons. I hope that you found this landscape to be as
awesome as I did. And it's also just a good reminder of when wide-angle lenses can be so
useful for landscape photography. Personally, in a case like this, where I want as much of
the foreground as possible, and it's a very abstract scene, a wide angle is absolutely
the way to go. So, I hope that you found this video useful, and I will see you next week.