24mm for all day photography.

alaios

Hi all,
one of my hobbies is to always have a camera with me . For that I have a compact body like the nex bodies that I like and a pancake lens of 16mm (that is 24mm on full frame).

I wanted some advice and tips on how I can reduce the large distortion on the frame ? Which are the cases one can use this lens without distortion killing the shot?


I am sharing a shot here, that my eyes are complaining
http://alexpal.smugmug.com/DailyLife/Facebook-Uploads/i-B5sfHjW/A
that I have not faced well enough the distortion.
1. What is wrong in this shot?
2. How I should have reduced distortion?

Regards
Alex

ian408

alaios wrote: »

Hi all,
one of my hobbies is to always have a camera with me . For that I have a compact body like the nex bodies that I like and a pancake lens of 16mm (that is 24mm on full frame).

I wanted some advice and tips on how I can reduce the large distortion on the frame ? Which are the cases one can use this lens without distortion killing the shot?


I am sharing a shot here, that my eyes are complaining
http://alexpal.smugmug.com/DailyLife/Facebook-Uploads/i-B5sfHjW/A
that I have not faced well enough the distortion.
1. What is wrong in this shot?
2. How I should have reduced distortion?

Regards
Alex

I think it's always easier with the WA/UWA if the subject fills the frame or nearly so. So maybe right behind the kid and down low. I might have shot this horizontal and also added a little +EV.

M38A1

Actually, I think it's more of a an orientation issue....

I grabbed a copy of it, then rotated it a bit CCW to make the waterspout in the background and it's reflection vertical as well as a couple trees. What I think is, the child is stepping on his left foot and is off vertical. Go play with the orientation and see if the distortion is still as great as the original.

Freezframe

Composition!
Hey Alex: When shooting with a Wide Angle Lens. I try to better utilize my entire field of view. This picture would have been more dramatic if you would have brought your view lower. By adding more of the foreground into the picture creates a more appealing shot by lowering to the level such as the child's perspective level. Your subject (the child) view is what you should have tried to capture. In doing so you would have brought out more detail such as the pebbles and, also drawn our eyes to that of the youngster (the fountain).

Brady

alaios

hi thanks for the very nice answers...
can someone explain me at such focal length where the distrortion appears and how it distorts the image? It would be easier to have a slight of theory before I take my camera again.

Regards
A.

zoomer

shoot level not angled up or down....shoot mostly verticles.

divamum

Alaois, your photo is simply not STRAIGHT - it's leaning way off to the right (clockwise). Rotate it, and you'll find it looks better. Different lenses have different kinds of distortion, but wide angles often get what's called "barrel" distortion. The extreme of this is the effect found in a fisheye lens.

For the fairly minor distortion of most modern wide angle lenses used in typical wide-angle scenarios (landscape, environmental portraits etc), you can easily correct it in software (lightroom, photoshop, and even the software that came with the camera). It's typically not a huge big deal for most regular subjects. The only exception is using a wide-angle lens for traditional portraits - particularly since you will usually stand closer to the subject to fill the frame, you may (WILL) find that the inherent distortion in the lens is extremely unflattering to the human face.

Effect of focal length on portrait subjects

alicepattinson

If it was me, I think the pic is really awesome but wow with the comments here, now I know

pathfinder

alaios,

Robert Capa said "If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough" I think he was not talking abut zooming your lens, but zooming with your feet. Physically moving closer, kind of scary to do if you are a combat photographer like he was. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Capa,_Death_of_a_Loyalist_Soldier.jpg

Many beginning photographers try to get closer by using longer ( telephoto ) lenses to isolate their subjects from the chaos of the world. I certainly tend to this school of shooting. But this type of photographic isolation can just cut your subject out of its surrounding environment, and that may not be what you want or need.

The other way to get closer is with wide angle lenses - but the trick is that you have to get much, much closer sometimes, or the wide angle view captures the chaos of the world at the edges of your frame. With wide angle lenses, one must check their frame edges carefully. I was very siow to learn to use, or appreciate wide angle glass, but I have a friend who shoots with them all the time, and very well. One of his tricks is that he is quite content to shoot with the camera lens almost seeming to touch his subject. He is not afraid of getting very close, inches, from his subjects. Stop a wide angle lens down a bit, say f8, and depth of field concerns almost disappear. Photo journalist like wide angles because you can use them in tight crowds and still come home with good captures.

Ten years ago we had a similar discussion about wide angle use here on dgrin - http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=1169

Ken Rockwell has a good thread about wide angle use too - http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/how-to-use-ultra-wide-lenses.htm

More about wide angle use for Nature Photogs here - http://www.naturephotographers.net/articles0403/dw0403-1.html

Some things to be aware of shooting with very wide lenses - http://viewsinfinitum.com/2010/05/21/10-tips-on-using-a-wide-angle-lens/