Take It Wide And Slow

Adam Waring shows you how to fit more into the frame with a wide-angle lens, and slow down time with an ND filter

- Adam Waring

2 HOURS Wide-angle lenses enable you to cram much more into your scene, with an angle of view that sucks more than the eye can see into the frame. The widest angles available in non-fisheye lenses used to be around 16mm for full-frame cameras, but recently we’ve seen lenses that stretch to 14mm, like Nikon’s 1424mm f/2.8. A few more millimetres of focal length may not sound like much, but the effect on viewing angle at this end of the zoom range is a big deal, at 114 degrees as opposed to 107 degrees with a 16mm lens.

Ultra-wide lenses come with a caveat: capturing the light at such extreme viewing angles necessitates the inclusion of bulbous front elements that make using regular filters impossible. However, thanks to its new Z-mount, Nikon has managed to create the world’s widest ultra-wide lens with a flat front element in the form of the new Z 14-30mm f/4 S, enabling the use of screw-in filters or filter holders.