Voigtländer has introduced three new lenses that will be released in Spring 2016: the 10mm F5.6 Hyper-Wide-Heliar, 12mm F5.6 Ultra-Wide-Heliar, and 15mm F4.5 Super-Wide-Heliar. All three lenses will feature a Sony E-mount for use with full-frame Sony cameras sans an adapter. Read more
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
In our latest Field Test we put Olympus’s new M.Zuiko Digital ED 8mm F1.8 Fisheye Pro and M.Zuiko Digital ED 7-14mm F2.8 Pro in the hands of DPReview writer Dan Bracaglia. Dan put them to the test in some of his natural environments: a rock concert, skate park, and a beach landscape at sunset. See video
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
Wide-angle lenses are indispensable in travel photography. When I organize photo tours, I find that each and every trip has a storytelling component. Almost always, we as photographers, strive to not only describe a situation, but tell a tale, and when it’s about people, we want to tell the audience the story of the hero in the center of it. We want to draw the viewer in so far that they can sense it, breathing the very scents of the scene.
There is an ideal tool for this type of need; the wide-angle lens that normally ranges (on a full frame camera) from about 21mm to 35mm. It has a variety of advantages; you can get close to people, evoke a sense of immersion in the viewer, and get people and objects in focus with minimal effort.
I normally use FUJI X cameras which have APS-C sized sensors. As this sensor is smaller than full frame, if you want to translate the focal length of the lens from full frame (a size of sensor similar to that of 35mm film cameras), you will have to multiply it by 1.5 times. Thus an 18mm lens on full frame is LIKE a 27mm lens on a cropped sensor (18 x 1.5 = 27).
In this article, when I refer to a focal length, for example 24mm, I am referring to the length on full frame. A focal length of 24mm on a full frame camera will act like a 36mm on the Fuji ASP-C sensor.
The difficulty inherent in the wide-angle lens is that it forces you to be very conscious of the distortions it produces. When photographing people, it also requires you to get close to the subject, which can be uncomfortable for most amateurs.
If you are looking for the dream location to take the wide-angle lens for a spin, it’s India, specifically Benares. It’s a scenario full of detail, with dramatic first planes of foregrounds, colorful seconds, smells, activity, and noise. It’s a great big beautiful mess, and there are always extraordinarily attractive people to photograph.
With wide-angle, the typical range goes from 21mm to 35mm, although some photographers use up to 18mm when photographing people. The famous photo agency Reuters published its best photos of 2013, and if you read the blurb under each, you’ll see that 80% of them were taken with a 24mm wide-angle lens. With a quality prime 24mm lens, the distortion of the outside lines is not as much of an issue.
Between the photo tours I organize in India, Ethiopia, Thailand, and Cuba (among other places), I recognize that I have a special predilection for Varanasi. By what I can see in the data from my Adobe Lightroom software, is that 73% of the photos I take are done with a 18mm lens. I also use – despite the fact that it requires a lot of skill when dealing with people as subjects – a Zeiss 12mm, which is the equivalent of an 18mm on APS-C format.
It isn’t only that wide-angle lenses open the shot more, the viewer gets more information inside the frame, and the wide-angle lens allows for a much more natural view (it is argued among experts as to whether a 28mm or a 35mm is the most natural point of view).
Wide-angle has a series of advantages, but – as aforementioned – not without also presenting an inconvenience; it does have a great tendency to deform the outlines, like on images of people. Also, it does require a specific and honed technique to get the best photos from it. In the majority of cases you have to get close to the subject in order to get dramatic results, as well as getting a notable depth of field, and this is something that creates yet more issues for photographers who are not accustomed to getting up close and personal with people.
Now, let’s take a look at some of the characteristics of the wide-angle lens.
A 24mm lens, if it is not used properly, will deform outlines and produce exaggerations. If the lens is not good quality, you will see a curvature in some parts of the photo instead of straight lines. In some type of photography this exaggeration of the lines is considered a creative argument and can add a dreamy look to a picture. This works fine from time to time, specially if you do not over do it.
The best approach to this possible issue is to be aware of the horizontal position of your camera and avoid, as much as possible, tilting it up or down. Having the camera on an horizontal plane parallel to the ground helps.
It is important to take your time situating the camera critically with respect to the vertical axis. This is why whenever I use a wide-angle lens I change my position (camera height) with respect to ground level. Using a wide-angle lens 50cm (19.7″) off the ground isn’t the same as being one meter (39″), or one meter eighty high (5.9 feet). I normally try a few levels to find the position that will give me the best angle, though I recognize that with practice you can understand this process before actually having to go through trial and error.
I am always very aware of at least one vertical line in a picture taken with a wide lens. It can be a street corner, a mast, a raised arm. The vertical reference can many times be the anchor, the basic reference of the picture, the nail of the whole image. The best way to ruin a good picture is to show a bent mast where the viewer clearly expects, and knows, that it should be straight and distortion has been created by your position taking the picture. On many modern cameras you can set your viewfinder to display a grid. This will allow you to see through the display and organize the lines of the whole set with the vertical and horizontal references that are visible.
A high camera angle consists of taking in the subject or the scene from top to bottom, situated on high ground from the objects you want to photograph. When using a low angle, you would be taking a photo from bottom to top from a point below what you want to photograph. As well as getting a more original point of view, a lot of times it is used as a technique to augment the distortion and highlight different parts of the subject. Honestly, I would use it with a lot of caution, here’s why:
If you have seen the movies of Orson Wells you will remember the scenes which evoke feelings of dreaminess – or sometimes nightmares. Wells loved to use the emphatic form made by shooting from a high angle far above the subject, and the low angle doing just the opposite. Anyone who has seen his movies knows perfectly how much distortion it produced, as he used it to create very specific environments. If you use extreme high and low angles, you will get this effect as well.
Depth of field is important if you want everything in focus. With an 18mm lens it’s difficult to get a photo that has shallow depth of field or less of the scene in focus. With an aperture of f/5.6, it will keep practically everything in focus from a distance of one meter (3.3 feet) to infinity. This makes it interesting and convenient if you want to take pictures without even focusing.
A lot of street photographers shoot this way – focus at two meters (6.6 feet) with an aperture of f/5.6. From there, you already know that if you keep a set distance from the subject, everything will be reasonably in focus. This can save you lots of time in situations were you do not have much time to focus properly or you find that your automatic focus behaves erratically.
With an extreme wide-angle lens, once your eye is trained, you can offer a rather original vision of reality. In real life we do not see wider than 50mm. Going beyond this, 28mm, 24mm, 21mm, 18mmm, creates a kind of unreal feeling. Lines exaggerate their proximity or separation, the foreground seems tremendous (large) in relation to the background. The relative size of objects differs from what we normally sense. If we add to all this the depth of field characteristic and the possible distortions, we do have a creative weapon that should be used with great care! As much as we are surprised by an original point of view, we get bored by seeing to many wide-angle lens distortions.
This will give the viewer a strong feeling of being there, of immersion into the scene. In possibly half of the photographs that I take with a wide-angle lens, the distance to the subject is less than two meters (6.6 feet). In documentary style photography – not necessarily photographing landscapes – a wide-angle lens rewards closeness with a subject, as it results in a rather impressive image. Great photographs are done with a 18mm lens and have been made from a distance of less than one meter (3.3 feet) from the subject. This is typically done by getting the subject in the third of the frame and allowing the viewer to observe what is happening at the second plane. You should be specially aware of the way your lens behaves; the nearer the subject to the edge of the frame, the bigger optical distortion you will get. Also remember what has been said about the way to hold your camera to avoid distortion; vertical and horizontal axes as well as the tilting issue.
Many photographers feel uncomfortable getting this close. But, if you like photographing people, a wide-angle is an essential tool. The best you can do is get used to getting close to people, with a friendly manner and a smile.
Landscape photographers do not always follow this proximity suggestion. Their use of the wide-angle is aimed more at obtaining an impressive depth of field, many times a spectacular symmetry and… searched distortion! You will see hundreds of pictures taken with a 15mm were the clouds follow a very characteristic pattern created by the distortion of the lens.
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The post How to Use a Wide-Angle Lens for People Photography by Harry Fisch appeared first on Digital Photography School.
Sony has officially announced four new conversion lenses – two for full-frame and two for APS-C – that can be screwed onto a select group of lenses. On the full-frame side there are ultra-wide and fisheye adapters for the new FE 28mm F2, which drop the focal range to 21mm and 16mm, respectfully. The adapters for APS-C lenses – the 20mm F2.8 and 16mm F2.8 specifically – and reduce the focal lengths by 0.75X for the ultra-wide adapter and 0.6X for the fisheye. More details.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
Samyang has announced a wideangle prime for mirrorless interchangeable lens cameras, the 12mm F2.0 NCS CS. With manual focus and aperture control, it will offer an 18mm equivalent angle of view on cameras with APS-C sensors (19mm equiv on Canon EOS M), and 24mm equivalent on Micro Four Thirds. It uses nanocrystal coating to minimise flare and ghosting, and will be available in Canon M, Fujifilm X, Samsung NX, Sony E, and Micro Four Thirds mounts. Pricing and availability are still to be confirmed.
News: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
Fujifilm has announced the XF 10-24mm F4 R OIS, a premium ultra-wideangle zoom lens for the company’s X system mirrorless cameras. It offers an angle of view equivalent to 15-36mm on full frame, and incorporates optical image stabilisation to reduce blur at slow shutter speeds when shooting hand-held. It also has an aperture control ring on the barrel, and is compatible with the company’s Lens Modulation Optimizer function. It’ll be available from March 2014 for $ 999.95 / £849.99.
News: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
Samyang has announced the 10mm F2.8 ED AS NCS SC, a wide-angle manual focus prime for APS-C format cameras. It’s the company’s first lens to feature nano crystal coating for increased light transmission and reduced internal reflections. With a 15mm equivalent angle of view (20mm equivalent on Micro Four Thirds), it’ll be made in mounts for all current SLR and mirrorless systems. It’ll go on sale at the end of January 2014 at an RRP of £469.99 for Nikon AE mount, or £429.99 for all other versions.
News: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
If there was ever a subject and a lens made for each other, then it is the wide-angle lens and the landscape.
Wide-angle lenses are ideal for landscape photography:
Telephoto lenses, by contrast, increase the sense of distance between the viewer and the photo. They are lenses of isolation that you use to pick out an element of the landscape, as in this photo taken with an 85mm lens:
Wide-angles are lenses of inclusion that you use to capture a larger slice of the scene.
Bruce Percy’s article A Gift takes an interesting perspective on this topic.
There is no precise definition of a wide-angle lens, but it includes focal lengths of up to around 40mm on a full-frame camera, 25mm on an APS-C camera and 20mm on a micro-four thirds camera. The definition is hazy because some zoom lenses cover a focal length range from wide-angle at one end to telephoto at the other. It is difficult to pinpoint where one ends and the other begins.
There are pros and cons of both, so let’s look at each in turn.
The biggest advantages of prime lenses are that you get excellent value for money in terms of image quality. They are great for photographers on a budget. An inexpensive prime gives you great image quality, and you would have to spend much more on a zoom lens to get one that gives the same image quality throughout the focal length range.
Another benefit of prime lenses is that they have wider maximum apertures than zooms. While this may not be much of a benefit in landscape photography, when you often need to stop down to f11 or f16, it may come in useful if you are shooting images hand-held in dim light.
Prime lenses are often lighter than zoom lenses. This is a generalisation only; for example, a wide-angle prime lens with a maximum aperture of f1.4 may be larger and heavier than a zoom that covers the equivalent focal length.
The biggest benefit of zoom lenses is the rather obvious one of having several focal lengths available. This comes in useful in landscape photography because there are times when you are unable to move closer to (or even further away) from your subject. If you are standing on the edge of a cliff, for example, then it is not physically possible to move forwards. The advantage of a zoom lens in this situation is that it enables you to frame the landscape precisely. That’s what happened in this photo. I used a 17-40mm lens set to 28mm to frame this image:
Here are some tips for getting the most out of your wide-angle lens:
1. Include some foreground interest.
Look for something interesting to place in the first third of your photo. This gives the viewer something to look at.
2. Move in close to the subject.
It depends on exactly what you are photographing, but see what happens when you move closer to your subject with a wide-angle lens. Remember that wide-angle lenses make distant objects appear smaller, and if you are not careful you may end up with everything in the frame too distant to be of interest.
Perhaps what I’m really saying is that you should decide what is your main subject in the photo. In a landscape that may be something like a tree, a rock or even a person in the landscape. Once you have decided on the subject, see if moving closer makes the image stronger.
But: don’t move too close, don’t be afraid of including negative space to improve the image. It’s a subjective thing, and your eye for how close to the subject to get will improve with practice.
3. Use leading lines and patterns to create a sense of movement. The viewer’s eyes will follow the lines through the image. This creates a sense of movement and depth. Do you see how the rocks in the foreground in the above image create lines that point towards the distant volcano?
If you liked this article then take a look at my ebook, Understanding Lenses: Part I – A guide to Canon wide-angle and kit lenses. It is a complete guide to wide-angle and kit lenses for the Canon EOS camera system, showing you how to use them and how to decide which lens to buy.
Post originally from: Digital Photography Tips.
Check out our more Photography Tips at Photography Tips for Beginners, Portrait Photography Tips and Wedding Photography Tips.
Wide-angle Lenses and the Landscape
The post Wide-angle Lenses and the Landscape by Andrew Gibson appeared first on Digital Photography School.
Leica has announced the Elmarit-S 45 mm f/2.8 ASPH lens for its medium format S system. With an angle of view equivalent to a 35mm lens on full frame, it offers a classic moderate wide-angle field of view. Like several of the other S lenses it’ll be available in two versions, either with or without an in-lens ‘Central Shutter’ (that allows flash sync at all shutter speeds). At the same time, Leica is offering firmware updates for its S, S2 and S2-P cameras to give ‘optimum functionality’ with the lens. The Elmarit-S 45 mm f/2.8 ASPH will be in dealers this month at a price of £4650, or £5500 for the CS model.
News: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
Adapter and accessory maker Fotodiox has announced two adapters to enable the use of filters with wide-angle lenses that have large convex front elements. The WonderPana Filter systems are based around adapter hoods that allow 145mm circular filters or 6.6″ rectangular filters to be used, via an adapter. Each system comes with a lens cap that mounts on the hood, allowing the lens to be stored and protected without needing to repeatedly remove the adapter hood. A variety of adapter and filter kits are available for a range of Super-wide and Ultra-wide lenses.
News: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
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