Shooting Wide - Andrew Peacock
I’m an unabashed fan of wide-angle lenses. That is a lens with an equivalent focal length of 35mm or wider. They can be used to tell a story so well. They can also emphasize the space that is already around you or suggest an illusion of space in your surroundings in small spaces.
I shoot with Canon equipment and own their 16-35mm F/2.8 L lens, which is my go to zoom in the wide-angle range. My favourite wide-angle lens though is an old Canon 15mm Fish eye. Teamed with my Aquatech water housing and dome port this combination of equipment allows me to shoot water based adventure travel images that really draw the viewer into the frame.
Canon recently loaned me their newest wide-angle zoom lens – the EF 11-24mm f/4 L USM – to try out for a week’s trip to an island in Vanuatu with my wife, Sabina. Luckily she is a willing and adventurous model and together we explored a tropical island paradise. I thought I’d share some of the wide-angle images I shot with you.
The classic under/over shot made possible with my 15mm fish eye lens and a dome port for my water housing. The fish eye distortion can be ‘corrected’ in Lightroom (as I did in this case) or with Photoshop or left as is for a creative effect.
It took a few swings on this cool rope swing over a ‘Blue Hole’ before I could about match my camera panning speed with the speed of Sabina moving through the air. She didn’t seem to mind the repeated swims in the beautiful clear water!
At the local market these root vegetables and bananas in the background made a nice subject with wide-angle framing. It is worth mentioning that to take full advantage of the field of view of a wide-angle lens it’s best to team one with a camera that has a full frame sensor such as the Canon 5D Mark3. Cameras with smaller sensors would effectively reduce the field of view of any of the lenses I’ve mentioned.
Once again in the water with a fish eye lens I spent some time getting to know these youngsters as they played at the beach. I haven’t corrected the ‘fish eye’ perspective in post processing as for me the overall image distortion works in this situation.
To create an even wider perspective for this photo I held the camera as high above my head as I could manage while keeping it steady and level to the horizon.
It was hard to stay out of the ocean in Vanuatu with amazing coral like this to see while snorkelling. On this occasion I used the 16-35mm f/2.8L lens with my water housing f/5.6 @ 1/2000sec
I deliberately went looking for circular shaped coral formations that I knew would work well with the already circular distortion in an image produced by my fish eye lens.
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