How to Shoot With a Wide Angle Lens on a Digital Camera

Put simply, a wide-angle lens is any camera lens that has a short focal length with a wide field of view. Used to capture a greater angle of view on even the best digital cameras, it’s a popular choice among landscape photographers and others to get extremely close to their subject without losing too many scene elements. So, if you’re looking to expand your photographic skills by learning how to shoot a wide-angle lens with a digital camera, you’ve come to the right place.

Tips on How to Use Wide-Angle Lenses

Because wide-angle lenses produce an exaggerated view of your chosen scene, it’s easy to make mistakes when taking pictures with one. That said, if you just keep in mind a few photography basics below, you’ll soon realize that using your wide-angle lens is just as easy as learning how to stop motion blur on a digital camera.

Understand How to Use or Avoid Distortion

One of the first things you’ll notice is that, similar to a fisheye lens, a wide-angle lens creates distortion around the edges of the frame. Depending on how you hold the camera, there are two types of distortion you’ll find.

The first kind of lens distortion enhances perspective by making objects closer to the lens appear larger than they really are, while objects that are further away will appear smaller, even if they’re the exact same size. What this means is that you can choose which element to emphasize and by how much simply by moving it closer to or further away from the lens.

The second kind, known as barrel distortion, makes objects appear as if they’re leaning towards or away from the center of the image. If you angle the camera upwards, objects will lean towards the center, while angling the lens downwards will make them lean out from the center.

While distortion can be an artistic choice, if you simply want to include a lot of detail in your image without distortion, keep your camera leveled perpendicular to the horizon. Otherwise, if you tilt it at too far an angle either upward or downward, you’ll see the characteristic distortion around the edges of your photo. It’s also possible to correct barrel distortion in editing software like Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom.

Choose a Clear Subject

Part of the beauty of a wide-angle lens is its ability to make a subject stand out in an image. Choosing a clear subject and getting in close and tight will add depth and interest to your photo. The wide-angle lens’s exaggerated sense of scale creates lines within the image that will lead the viewer’s eye through your composition. Otherwise, if everything in the frame is the same distance from the lens, the viewer won’t know what to look at.

If you know how to set aperture on your digital camera, you can also use this to your advantage. Using a wider aperture like f2.8 or f4 will further separate your subject from the background (which is incredibly useful if the background is rather boring), thus enhancing any desired stylistic effects of the distortion.

Use the Sky and Foreground to Your Advantage

The rule of thirds is incredibly useful when shooting with a wide-angle lens. If you have an interesting foreground and a beautiful sky, fill about a third of your frame with the sky to create an extraordinary sense of depth.

Shoot Low and Vertical

Don’t be afraid to get close to the ground and shoot low. Thanks to the wide-angle lenses’ extreme sense of width, including a lot of the foreground and allowing it to lead the viewer’s eye to the horizon can result in beautifully dramatic scenes. You can also get some stunning results by shooting vertically, either looking down from atop tall buildings or using a floor-to-sky perspective.

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