Shoot Wide, Widely Shot.

Since we got the new Nikon F2as, it’s introduced an element we’ve largely ignored lately in photography. It came with a 24mm f2. Well, it didn’t come with it… I requested it and then the shopkeeper said he had an f2 instead of the f2.8 I was looking it.

Well, now we’re back to shooting wider shots. It’s take a lot of time to reconceptualize shooting in this way. Often, we are using a 105mm 2.8 Takumar on the Fuji. That’s quite a jump to 24mm 2 on the film Nikon.

Why did we do it? Well, We’ve been itching for bigger shots, bigger stories. And we don’t really have any nice primes in that range. I’ve never been a big fan of the 28mm lens, either. So now we’re shooting wide again.

Wide allows you to tell different stories. I love this shot of the whole shop, there’s a lot of commotion going on in the right and next to nothing elsewhere. Actually, photographer mistake in not pulling my backpack out of the shot. It would have a little more umph without that, I think.

I hesitate to say that I’m shooting landscapes with this lens. Perhaps, “environmental shooting,” is a better way to think about it. With the 24mm, there’s no chance to leave out elements that we’d isolate away with the 105mm. It’s a learning curve, yes.

One other thing I’m noticing is that I’ve got to get closer. Bigger and bigger in the frame is key.

Interestingly, I think common wisdom is that wide angle lenses are for landscape photography. Yet, I think this is a misconception. If you go back quite a bit, Leica used to advertise their 135mm lenses as a landscape lens. I don’t trust Leica for everything but I think they were onto something for that one.

All that said, rules are meant to be broken. Landscapes can and should be taken with a wide angle. We just need to be aware of what we’re framing and why. This gets me back to what I said earlier, the 24mm 2 appears to be more of an environmental lens than a landscape lens. When the environment communicates something by being a wide landscape, the 24mm can do a great job.

Anyway, thanks for stopping by to read. We’re hoping to drop in some actual photography reviews here soon. Traffic is slowly picking up for the site, which was the ultimate goal. Huzzah!