While a wide angle lens can be a lot fun, it can also get a beginning photographer into a load of trouble. The larger the area included in the photograph the more complex the composition becomes, and hence the harder it is to complete a succinct and striking photograph.

 

Used properly a wide angle lens is one of the best tools in your tool box of image making. The perspective on a wide angle lens exaggerates the distance between two objects; in other words if you are taking a picture of a fencerow with  a wide angle lens and the fence-posts are 10 feet apart they will appear much further apart when viewed through the lens or in the resulting photograph. This exaggeration in the perspective gives images that are made with wide angle lenses a reference outside of the image. Wide angle images make the objects within the frame feel like they are floating out of the frame. A wide angle image is an active and dynamic image. On the other hand a telephoto image refers into itself which usually makes the image appear calm or serene.

One tip when using a wide angle lens is to place a prominent object in the foreground. This will give your landscape a sense of depth and scale; it will also draw the viewers' eye into the image. Another tip for using your wide angle lens is; don't overdo the depth of field. In many instances your wide angle lens will give you all the depth of field you need for your image at f11 or there-abouts. If you stop down that extra stop or two "just for good measure" you can be losing image sharpness. "How come?" you say?  All lenses have what is known in the industry as a "sweet spot" what this refers to is; the aperture at which the lens has the best resolving power. Most lenses' "sweet spot" is somewhere around the middle of the f-stop range. Stopping down to a smaller f-stop can cause diaphragm diffraction which in turn can cause a loss of image sharpness. This happens because as you stop the aperture down more and more light that is falling on the image sensor is diffused by the edges of the aperture's diaphragm. Use only as much depth of field as you need to produce the desired effect in the final image. As a general rule for maximum image resolution avoid using the extremes on either end of the f-stop range.