One final piece on the wide angle camera.

You’ve seen how important the wide angle is for the outdoor photographer. But there is something that you really need to consider.

Standard lenses show perspective, and lines, like you see them with your eyes. Wide angle lenses distort, sometimes quite dramatically. A wide angle lens needs to shoot at right angles to the plane of the subject. Imagine you are at the bottom of a church steeple. You tilt the camera upwards to get the spire into the shot. You’ll see the spire, but the perspective will be distorted with uprights lines being curved. Often you really don’t notice this until you get home and look to process the shots.

This distortion can be used quite creatively, but be careful with it. Sometimes the wide angle simply doesn’t give you a good shot.

This shot was taken in the County Cork Village of Baltimore. This row of cottages caught my eye. I had to use the wide angle to get the shot but the perspective was really too sharp. I tried cropping the print for better effect. This is a beautiful seaside village but one which is difficult to shoot because it is tightly developed and the vistas aren’t there. I’d have probably caught a better ‘feel’ of the place if I’d concentrated on some creative detail shots, which sought to express character through close-ups.

The London Eye. Sometimes the exaggerated perspective can work to the advantage of a dramatic photo.

Here the wide angle has allowed me to get this Bradford building into the shot and to place it in its proper street context. But you can see how the perspective is a little odd.