How to Using Wide Angle Lenses

A wide angle lens will let you capture a greater field of vision for your picture. It gives you more of a panoramic effect for your pictures without having to stitch pictures together taken as separate frames. A wide angle lens is useful when you are photographing the interior of a room and capture as much of it as you can. Interior decorators use wide angle lenses frequently to snap pictures of their work, and architectural photographers also use them to take pictures of buildings so they get the entire building in one frame. Read on to learn more about how to use a wide angle lens.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• A lens that is less than 50 mm that fits your camera.

1. Following the instructions for your particular make of camera, mount the wide angle lens and make sure that it is on properly.

2. If your digital camera has sensors for wide angle lenses, change the settings to wide angle.

3. Choose whether or not you want the exposure to be manual or automatic. Lighting requirements inside a room, where a wide angle lens is commonly used, can be insufficient to take the picture without additional lighting.

4. Snap a sample picture, and see if the results are satisfactory.

5. If the picture is too dark, consider opening window coverings to bring additional light into the room. If that still doesn't bring in enough light, turn on some incandescent lights in the room to brighten the picture up. If you have supplemental photographic lights, position them to get the desired effect.

Tips & Warnings

• Some digital cameras come with zoom lenses that start with a wide angle in the default setting. The widest angle will be printed on your camera's lens. If you want to use the wide angle setting, use the camera with the lens in the most recessed position. The longer the lens is sticking out from the camera body, the more telephoto it becomes.
• If you have a fixed focal length digital camera, see if you can get different focal length lenses for yours.