In article <4ca7f3$d1l@cello.hpl.hp.com>, jacobson@cello.hpl.hp.com
says...
>In article <4c87ik$r42@lectura.cs.arizona.edu>,
>Bo-Ming Tong
>>Wider pictures are often either not tight enough in
>>framing, or have ugly, tasteless geometric distortion.
>
>I'm glad you said that. I've noticed a similar problem. Three or 4
>years ago I got a 24mm lens, my first lens any wider than 50. (Since
>then I also got a 28-85 zoom.) I too fell into abuse. When I'd go to
>the Grand Tetons I'd put it on to get the whole range. At the Grand
>Canyon, I'd put it on to get the whole thing, etc. But when I looked
>at the slides, the Teton's looked like tiny hills, not the giant
>majestic range that they are. The Grand Canyon looked unimpressive.
(rest deleted)
I'm one of those "the 28mm is my normal lens, and I go to a 15mm
for a real wide angle" people, and I do shoot mountains with 16mm
fisheyes. (BTW, fisheyes make wonderful landscape lenses [providing
you place the horizon in the middle and fill the top of the frame
with a mountain, great clouds, an overhanging tree, the edge of a
cliff, etc.] - the spherical perspective keeps foreground subject
material more in scale with the distant subjects while showing
entire canyons, mountains, etc. at once.) Rectangular perspective
super wides tend to exaggerate the size differences between near
and far subjects which can make the distant subjects look puny,
instead of part of a vast vista (the panarama cropping [which
eliminates those relatively large foreground details], or careful
choice of foreground material [framing] can help with this).
I like super wides (the 20 has become my standard lens for a lot of
my commercial and personal work) for their deep perspective look;
for their ability (with quick and easy adjustments of viewpoint)
to give me a great variety of photos in a short time (going from
the closeup [high, medium, and low] with the surroundings [context]
included, to the distant, overall shot [where again, quick and easy
adjustments provide a great variety of images in a hurry]); for
their ability to allow me to photograph people without their
awareness of what I am doing (the "look at something in the distance"
technique used before and after a photo taken of an unasked subject
helps - and it puts people more at ease [even on a commercial job
when people know I am photographing them] when I am not pointing the
lens directly at them.); and for their almost care-free ease of use
(DOF is almost universal [even at wider apertures] and super wides
can be hand-held at absurdly slow speeds, so they are good in almost
any light [1/8th is easy with a 20mm, 1/4 with a 16mm fisheye, and
1 second {!} with an 8mm fisheye]).
Tips for using super wides: remember that EVERYTHING in the frame is
"subject" - arrange everything to make sense, even if some of the
subject is turned into mere texture within which something else is
placed; get close to anything you want to be prominent in the
photograph; keep the horizon (or imaginary horizon, if none is
visible) in the middle of the photo if you want vertical subject
lines to be vertical in the photo (you may need to shoot people from
a middle viewpoint, instead of from eyelevel); avoid placing people
at the edges of the photo - they will look "squashed", unless you are
using a fisheye (if you must have people near the edges, a good trick
is to cut off part of them with the edge of the frame [leave the
face!] so they will not look so fat and wide as they would if fully
included); favor smaller apertures over faster shutter speeds (see
comment above about allowable hand-held speeds), since many super
wides and wide zooms do not perform well in the corners at wider
apertures, and the near-universal DOF makes unsharpness anywhere
painfully obvious (which is a good reason for selecting high quality
lenses [if possible] so that you are not limited to the smallest
apertures for acceptable lens performance; do not use a polarizer
with a super wide lens, unless you like the look of very uneven
skies, etc.; watch for vignetting from thick-rimmed filters and
shades that cut into the image; keep the lens clean - dust that
would go unnoticed in the images of longer lenses may actually come
into near focus with a super wide lens at small apertures; if you
have trouble seeing correct focus in the viewfinder, scale focus
the lens - with the great DOF, it is easy and accurate at most
distances to guess-focus a super wide lens; and, HAVE FUN with
super wides - these lenses ARE fun to use (if you don't try too hard,
and go with the flow....), and they solve many photo problems without
creating many of their own (if you don't let them!).
Hope This Helps