Lens News

Don’t believe it when tell people tell you it’s wrong to shoot portraits with a wide-angle lens. If you know what you’re doing, your results can be eye-catching and super modern-looking.

If you ask most landscape photographers what’s the first lens they pull out of their bag, the answer is likely to be, “my favorite wide-angle.” That’s because the perspective these lenses provide is ideal for capturing expansive vistas.

How low can you go? That’s what pro photographer Andrew Boey of Beyond Photography asks in the below tutorial where he advises you to try shooting from low angles, sometimes really low angles, to give your portraits a unique look.

The first thing most landscape photographers do upon arriving on location is open their bag and mount a favorite wide-angle lens on their camera. But using the right lens doesn't guarantee great results unless you understand the "essential" techniques for getting the job done.

I really like extreme lenses. Extremely wide, extremely fast, and extremely long lenses will all allow you to create unique images that stand out from the crowd. When I heard about the Sigma 8-16mm lens I wanted to get my hands on one and start shooting, so I asked my editor if I could borrow one from Sigma for testing. He wanted to know what I was going to do with it, so naturally I told him: take portraits. You might, as he did, find this a little odd—taking portraits with a wide-angle lens, and a very wide lens at that. After all, don’t photographers usually use long lenses for portraits?

Why are photographers taught to use long lenses for portraits? There are four basic tenets behind this reasoning: narrow angle of view, shallow depth of field, flattering perspective, and a comfortable working distance between you and your subject. However, flip these “rules” on their head and you’ll see why I like working with wides: wide angle of view, great potential depth of field, unique perspective, and, oddly enough, working right in your subject’s face. In short, I use the special nature of a wide lens to give my portraits a new and unique look.

Have you shot some great photos? Well, now’s the time to enter them in our brand new photo contest where you’ll have the chance to win two amazing prizes!

You’ve probably heard this one before: you should shoot portraits with mid-range lenses like an 85mm or an 100mm to create the most flattering look. Or this one: don’t shoot a portrait with a wide-angle lens because it will make a person’s face look distorted.