The Online Association of Photographers: These Photos Were Taken with a 10mm Full-Frame Lens

Monday, 8 April 2019

These Photos Were Taken with a 10mm Full-Frame Lens

People who 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 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:

1. 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.

2. Walk around with your camera at a much lower level than normal and constantly look through your viewfinder (or in my case live view, with a tilted screen), to see how the distortion affects the image.

3. 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.

4. Use cloudy skies to your advantage. They look epic with super-wide-angle lenses.

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 that some people think an extremely wide-angle focal length automatically makes a lens a fisheye. This is not the case. Fisheye lenses have an entirely different lens structure that causes them 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 photos were shot with the Venus Laowa 10-18mm f/4.5-5.6 FE on the Sony a7R III. Other extreme wide angles are the Voigtlander 10mm f/5.6 prime (Sony), the Irix 11mm f/4 (Canon/Nikon), Canon 11-24mm f/4, and newly-announced Samyang XP 10mm f/3.5 (Canon/Nikon).

About the author: Albert Dros is an award-winning Dutch photographer. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. His work has been published by some of the world’s biggest media channels, including TIME, The Huffington Post, The Daily Mail, and National Geographic. You can find more of his work on his website, or by following him on Facebook and Instagram.