The Digital Photography Book

When to Use a Super-Wide-Angle Lens

I grab a super-wide lens (something like a 16mm or 14mm on a full-frame body, or a 10mm or 12mm on a crop-sensor body) when I want to make the scene I’m standing in front of look bigger and more epic. This works incredibly well in small places, like indoors in a small chapel (you can make it look like a huge cathedral) or outdoors when there’s something right in the foreground that you want to emphasize (like a piece of driftwood, or a large rock, or a small pond). Super-wide lenses push the scene in front of you farther away, and especially, if you get down low and shoot from a low perspective, they can really ...