Varieties of Canon Wide Angle Lenses

Canon Wide Angle Lenses

Sooner or later, you will feel the need to purchase a wide angle lens. I suggest buying from Canon as they have an extensive selection! “Wide Angle” covers the approximate range of 14mm through 28mm. Any range that is longer than 28mm is really more of a general purpose lens. Anything that is shorter than 14mm would be considered a “fisheye” lens.

Canon EF28-105/3.5-4.5 USM

This is an eminent lens. It is minute, light and reasonably priced. This Canon wide angle lens covers a useful 28mm to 105mm range and the sharpness of your pictures will be exceptional. This camera takes 58mm filters which are a common size in the Canon lineup. If your finances are limited and you can only afford to purchase one lens, this is the Canon wide angle lens for you!

Canon 24/2.8

The 24/2.8 isn't a USM lens. It uses a micro motor which means you can hear it focus and you don't have full time manual focus. The advantage of the prime over the zooms is that it's smaller and lighter. What it does have is a floating element focus, which means that the optical formula of the lens changes when you close focus to maintain optimum sharpness by minimizing spherical aberration and field curvature. This can be a benefit if you do a lot of close-up photography work. A point to consider in this case would be the fact that the 24 prime lenses focus down to just below 10” while the 20-35/3.5-4.5 only focuses t0 13”. You may be thinking that 3” doesn’t sound like a lot, however for a wide angle lens used that close, it is substantial. The other major advantage of the prime ‘Canon wide angle lens’ is reduction in flare.

Canon 20-35/3.5-4.5 USM

This Canon wide angle lens is well constructed and an optimal performer when it comes to taking excellent photos. This lens has silent operation and full time manual focus allowing ease of use. This is probably the “best buy in the Canon wide angle lenses selection. The sharpness and flare control are exceptional and vignetting is negligible. This Canon wide angle lens is compatible and can be used with a standard Tiffen 77mm polarizer. The standard Canon filter size is 77 mm, so you may already have filters that fit this lens.

What to buy?

From a sharpness point of view, for landscape work where you are at f8-f16, I would chose a Canon wide angle lens that covered the focal length I wanted and had the features I wanted (filter size, weight etc.), with optical differences being a smaller weighting factor. If you intend to shoot a lot under flare provoking conditions though (e.g. with the sun in the frame), that's the time to give extra consideration to the prime lenses. Prime Canon wide angle lenses also typically show less distortion, though again, for landscape work, this isn't usually a big issue

Wide Angle Lenses vs. Telephoto Lenses - Which is better for you?

Can't decide between a Canon telephoto lens or a Canon wide angle lens?

Most professional photographers have learned about shorter focal length (wide angle lenses) and long focal length (telephoto lenses). There may be debates between different photographers as to which one is best but like everything it is all down to personal choice as to which one you like best.

Many of the experts out there may say that a wide angle length doesn't necessarily give you more depth of field. If you would like, you can always try this out for yourself. As an accomplished photographer, what impact will it have on your work?

Don't forget that this may only be true if you keep the size of the picture constant.

Remember that it is possible for you to take a picture of a subject using your Canon telephoto lens then zoom out and compare the difference with your Cannon wide angle lens. You might be thinking of taking a shot of some really amazing scenery, perhaps a hillside with beautifuly colored trees and sunlight shining down through the trees.

Try using the telephoto setting and zoom in, after which you can then zoom out and take a picture with the wide angle setting. When using the Canon wide angle lens, you will automatically expect there to be more depth of field in the last photo and that’s what it will look like. However, if you enlarge the photo, the depth of field may disappear. There are some of you who will zoom out to get more in their picture using only a wide angle setting. Remember though, by doing this, the objects may look smaller. When you zoom in on a particular object you want in your picture, you will typicaly lose depth of field. By zooming in and out and varying the focal length setting, you will have the perception that the depth of field is variable.

It may therefore appear that by using a wide angle lens you will get more depth of field if compared to using a telephoto lens. Remember that whatever a person is happy with when they are taking photographs is all down to the photographers personal choice as to what they like and know best and what they are looking for. What ever you decide to do, using either a Canon telephoto lens or a Canon wide angle lens should greatly enhance your photography experience.

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How to use a Canon Wide Angle Lens

There is a very interesting feature that you can play around with when you are using a canon wide angle lens and that is the perspective stretching capability. What this is is the ability to things that that when looking through a wide angle lens, it may seem like the distance between the objects is much more than it really is. When looking at an object that is not very far away in the distance, it may appear that the object is much farther off than it is in reality. The object's proportions may increase dramatically; this effect can can make the object closest to the camera appear to be huge, and those farthest away seem to fade into the distance.


If you can imagine looking through a wide angle lens at two parallel lines stretching out away from the camera, the lines will merge at a distant point. This, for the wide angle lens, is called the perceptive vanish point. This means that at this distance the objects may represent a small point or cannot be seen at all. The normal lens camera can be farther away from the focal plane than for a wide angle lens.


As an example if you have two children who are similar in height, one may be nearer to the camera and the other may be a few feet farther away. Now you can take a photo with a wide angle lens, you will now see that the one who was farthest away looks a lot smaller when in fact they were of similar height. This will give you some perspective and effect you can achieve by using a wide angle lens understanding the stretching perspective.


There are a lot of benefits for a photographer when using a wide angle lens, as mentioned when there are two subjects, the one nearest the camera then becomes the primary subject. It is easy to assume this without additional thinking, and this happens when using a wide angle lens as it is much simpler to focus the viewer’s attention to the main subject.

5 Great Tips on Using a Wide Angle Lense!

5 Tips for Creative Photography Using Your Canon Wide Angle Lens



Here are some tips to help you achieve those fantastic photographs you are after using your canon wide angle lens.
This is a great way for you to add creativity to your photographs by capturing a wider field.

The subject may be the image's focus; however, by using this wide angle lens, you can make good use of the background in the picture to add interest. This way the picture will capture a larger story instead of just a photo; for example, in a picture of two children playing on the beach, you may have captured a small fishing boat going past in the background. In respects to the larger lens, the wide angle lens gives you a stronger depth of field. This is great in that it will not only give you a background and foreground, you also have the chance of keeping everything focused. However, on the other hand, if you were using a bigger lens then you would need to have the aperture more closed. This would mean you would have to use a slower shutter speed and a tripod, which is of course more time consuming. With all the extra messing around, the depth of field very well may not have the strenght it would have had you been using a wide angle lens. The great thing about using a wide angle lens is that if taking photo shoots of such things as railroad tracks, a jetty, fence-line things that may stretch into the distance, then by using a wide angle lens will actually give you great photos. This will give you a photograph where you may feel like you can actually walk right along the railroad track giving very strong lines to the picture. One cool thing you can create with a wide angle lens is the addition of a dimension which makes objects that are distant apear to be much further apart than they actually are. The objects at the forefront look smaller, while the background objects may seem a lot more distant. The tips I have provided shoud help you in some manner to acheive the goals you have set for yourself when it comes to creating fantastic pictures. There is nothing better than getting your camera and taking different photos using your wide angle lens and experimenting to see what sort of pictures you have taken.