What is wide?
Wide angle lenses are lenses shorter than the standard normal lens. A normal lens is defined as a lens which has a focal length that is approximately equal to the diagonal of the film surface. You aren’t really getting wide though until you get past 90 degrees, which is just shorter than 24mm for film photography. Fisheyes also count as wide angle lenses, but they have uncorrected distortion. When corrected in a program like DxO, the image becomes much wider than the given focal length. Also, you can simulate a wider angle lens by creating a panorama, but this is a pain in the but to do compared to using a real wide angle lens.

Why go wide?
For the fun of it! These lenses often let you get really close, sometimes just an inch away (note: this does not mean they are macro lenses, if you try and pass off a wide angle picture as a macro image ^hellfirediva will your ass for it!) which results in a crazy perspective. They also let in a huge amount of background, so you can get a lot in one image. For landscapes, they serve the purpose of taking a huge amount of space and shrinking it enough to where it’s easy to display and photograph. For architecture, it can be difficult to get far back enough to get the whole place into view, so instead you use a wide angle lens or a fisheye lens with correction software to get the whole place into view. Also, smaller focal lengths allow greater depth of field, so wider apertures are more useable.

So what’s the best of the best?
Canon has the upper hand on this one. Get a Canon EOS 5D or 1Ds series body and the 15mm fisheye, the 14mm, the 16-35mm, or the 17-40mm and you will have one of the best wide angle system around. If you have one of Canon’s smaller cameras, get the 10-22mm, it’s better than Sigma, Tonika, Tamron, etc. Note there isn’t really a good wide angle lens for the 1.3x factor of the 1D series. For Nikon, the 12-24mm Nikkor is the best. The 12-24mm Tamron is cheaper and just as good. The 10-20mm Sigma goes wider, and is very popular, but it’s a Sigma. Nikon’s 10.5mm fisheye is also excellent. If you’re lucky to have the D3 while reading this, please note me for my address so you can send it to me. If you have a Nikon film camera, Nikon’s new 14-24mm is the sharpest 14mm to date. The 14mm prime is also very sharp, and the 17-35mm is very popular, with the 18-35mm giving similar results when stopped down. For medium format cameras, you’re going to want something in the 40-50mm range. If you use large format, then I have to ask why you’re bothering reading an armature’s article on wide angle photography? And if you haven’t figured it out yet, wide angle photography can be very expensive and hard to get with APS-C sized digital cameras, but easy to do with larger film cameras. Note: avoid screw on conversion lenses; you would be happier with a real lens.

My favorite wide angle photographer is Ken Rockwell, have a look at these three galleries. Here on deviantART, it’s without a doubt *hotburrito2.

Feature time!