Super Wide Angle Lens

My main interest in photography is getting outdoors into the landscape, and I came across the idea of using a Super Wide Angle lens which enables you to get the big picture. I bought the Sigma 20-10 mm lens for my crop-sensor Nikon SLR back in February. My wide angle plans were almost immediately thwarted by Lockdown. I just managed a quick trip to Berrington Hall. All the following pictures were taken at the widest setting - 10mm (15mm full frame equivalent)

 

 

Anyone who has been to Berrington Hall near Leominster will know the Pink Pineapple Pavilion in the Walled Garden and I have taken pictures of parts of it before but this time with the wide angle I could get nearly all of the inside in one shot! Obviously the lens has distorted the structure but with a symmetrical geometric structure like this the picture still works. The lens captures a wide area, viewed from a narrow entrance.

I took some crazy wide angle views of the house as well but because you know that a house should be rectangular, and because the hall at Berrington is so rectangular they only had a short term novelty appeal. When I lengthened the focal length to 18, 19 or 20 mm then I was working at the same focal length as the top end of my every day 55 - 18 mm lens so not utilising the Super part of the Wide Angle lens.

This was an exciting start but I would have to wait several months before I got another opportunity to experiment.

 

 

 

When finally released from Lockdown I spent July and August chasing butterflies with my long lens and it wasn’t until September that I got out with the Wide Angle lens again.

At the start of September we did a walk that ends up at the foot of Sugarloaf in Wales. The route takes you through an amazing wood of stunted oak trees which I am always trying to capture. At one point you come up out of the valley and the trees meet overhead. This is the subject of ‘Trees Overhead’ which exaggerates the curve of the path and the stretch of the trees but in doing so it gets as near as any of my pictures to representing the feeling of walking up out of this wooded valley.

This picture is not ideal because of the bright sky - always a big no no for woodland photography, but this picture is about recreating a feeling and I like the dappled light on the ground and the twisty branches silhouetted against the green leaves.

 

 

 

 

At the beginning of October we managed a short holiday in Yorkshire - near Skipton, and we visited Fountains Abbey - a wonderful place with lakes as well as the impressively substantial abbey ruins.

I took lots of pictures of the abbey in its surroundings but one of my favourite pictures is ‘Abbey Arches’ which uses the wide angle lens to capture an expansive subject from a restricted view point. I was very close to the central pillar and I think that I got down low to get in the top of the nearest arch.

The crazy angles are not to everyone’s taste but I love them. I like the fact that we can see down the side aisle with all the nested arches but at the same time we can understand the arches facing into the Nave from either side. The sunlight and shadow helps us to understand the shapes. At one point the sun went in and the pictures became very drab and dour.

 

On our Yorkshire holiday I finally managed to get out into the landscape. We started a walk but quickly encountered this beck which supposedly had stepping stones, they were however completely submerged - so we followed the beck up this little side valley. The sound of the water was really loud and the speed was relentless.

This picture - ‘Raging Torrent’ - taken looking back down where we had come from gives a good sense of the V-shaped valley. Again the lens has caused distortion - this time to the tree - elongating the branch on the right. It is a gnarly tree anyway, and I quite like the diagonal created by the stream from the bottom left and the tree branch reaching up into the top right corner.

The churning water at the bottom is also exaggerated but the water is the main subject of the picture- that was what defined that day - the white foam enables us to see it disappearing down the valley.

 

 

 

I am always keen to try a landscape in portrait mode and this alternative picture: ‘Narrow Valley’, gives a different emphasis to the water. This time we get more of a sense of the water falling away. You can see how with the wide angle we see the rock at my feet as well as the branch of the tree which is now above my head. If you compare this to Raging Torrent then you can see how that view stretched out the valley sides. The hillside was very steep and prevented us climbing up - we had to return to the bottom in the end.

 

One final picture illustrates my adventures to date with a Super Wide Angle lens. This was taken in November in my local woods. I was on my own, off the beaten path looking for photo opportunities. In fact just after I took this picture four deer ran past, stopping briefly to look at me ears pricked, to work out what I was doing in their woods.

All the leaves on this tree had turned yellow at once and the branches stretched out pretty horizontally in all directions. I got down low and pointed the camera up to get the underside of the lower branches and reach up as high as I could. I like the way the dark branches are silhouetted against the yellow leaves. I took another horizontal view which is okay but I prefer the height of this view. You can get a sense of the distortion by looking at the other tree trunks which were of course vertical in reality.

In conclusion, I would say that making best use of a Super Wide Angle lens isn’t as easy as it first seems. Far objects become diminutive, objects get warped and sometimes more is not better. However, by trial and error I have found a number of scenarios that responded well to this treatment. I think that the lens is good at creating an impression of a particularly memorable location if it exaggerates the elements which make that scenario noteworthy. That might be height, symmetry, depth or pattern. Though I wouldn’t take it every time, I will definitely make sure that there are days in the future when I take my Super Wide Angle lens with me.