Amateur Photographer magazine (25 July 2009) has on its front cover a picture of two 10-24mm dSLR lenses with the subtitle “Great lenses for landscapes”. These lenses are for less than full-frame sensors so have the 135-equivalent field of view of 15-36mm. It seems to be a common assumption now that the wider the lenses the better they are for landscapes. But is this true?
It’s undeniable that wide lenses may have advantages. They get more into the frame and have enormous depth of field. At 15mm (22.5mm equivalent) everything from three feet in front of the camera to infinity will be in acceptable focus. In the same issue of AP there are several photographs taken with a 12-24mm lens on a full-frame digital camera. They certainly squeeze a lot of landscape into the shot. And squeeze it is.
I think – complain if you don’t agree – that in terms of a 35mm SLR camera our eyes perceive that the size of objects is correct if the photograph is taken with a 55mm lens. Perversely we also perceive that the field of view is correct if the lens used has a length of about 37.5mm. So we don’t see in 3:2 aspect ratio and it is more like 2:1. In the 19th century travelling artists used watercolour paper of 16 x 8 inches to depict landscape while the photographers were stuck with 5 x 4 or 10 x 8 (half-plate or full-plate). In many cases these early landscape photographs look much better if they are cropped to a panoramic format.
My view is that landscape images would look best if they were printed on A3 in landscape orientation and then cropped to a height of 8 or 9 inches. To do this well we would, if using dSLRs, need to take two shots and stitch them together with software. We could then use longer lenses which would give more clarity and a “photorealistic” picture.
So I would suggest that such wide lenses as 10-24mm zooms are not really suitable for landscape work. If they produce a true rectilinear image they would instead be excellent for architecture. I have a 12-24mm zoom lens for my full-frame Canon dSLR that is wonderful for photographing large buildings – inside and out – but I would never let it loose on some magical countryside as it would probably kill the magic.
Posted by marstonfoto 