People that know me know I love to shoot with extreme wide angles. Lately I have been experimenting with shooting at 10mm full frame. Shooting at 10mm is like shooting in another world. Because of the distortion on on the edges you automatically get an effect that kind of sucks you into the image. Foreground elements get extremely big, and clouds in the sky automatically point to the center.
This is not for everyone, but I love using this distortion to my advantage. I shot a bunch of images to show the effect of 10mm on a full frame body. Some tips when shooting with extreme wide angles:
First of all, get extremely low to the ground. Small things like little rocks or lines get extremely big on the foreground when using extreme wide angles.
Walk around with your camera at a much lower level than normal and constantly look through your viewfinder (or in my case liveview, with a tilted screen), to see how the distortion affects the image.
Small steps left and right, or putting your camera just a bit higher or lower, has a huge effect on the final image. Centimeters can make or break an image composition wise.
Use cloudy skies to your advantage. They look epic with with super wide angle lenses.
Shoot vertical for an even more extreme effect.
Using an extreme wide angle will give your creativity a boost, especially as wide as 10mm. It’s a whole new way of photographing and I can recommend it to everyone who likes to get creative in landscapes or architecture photography.
Note: Some people think extremely wide is automatically a fisheye. This is not the case. Fisheye lenses have an entirely different lens structure that causes then to distort in a circular way. A 12mm full frame fisheye is actually wider (but distorted) than a normal 10mm full frame, so keep that in mind.
These shots were done with the 10-18mm Laowa on the Sony A7RIII.
Other extreme wide angles are:
- New 10mm Samyang f/3.5 (just announced, not released yet, Canon/Nikon).
