Choosing an ultra-wide lens

For interiors, architecture and landscapes where you cannot step back

Ultra-wide means roughly 20mm equivalent and shorter. It is a specialist tool — used well it creates depth and drama, used carelessly it produces pictures where everything is small and far away.

Why 20mm equivalent or wider

Below 20mm the frame starts to include the space you are standing in, which is the point for interiors and for cramped architectural subjects where stepping back is not an option. Between 20mm and 28mm you are in wide-angle territory, which is a different guide.

Composition is the hard part

An ultra-wide makes near things large and far things tiny. Without a strong foreground, the picture empties out. The usual technique is to get much closer to something in the foreground than feels natural, and let the wide angle handle the background.

Straight lines will bend if you tilt

Point an ultra-wide up at a building and the verticals converge sharply. Keeping the camera level and cropping afterwards is often better than correcting in software, which throws away resolution at the edges.

Filters may not fit

Many ultra-wides have a bulbous front element and no filter thread at all — worth checking if you use polarisers or ND filters, since the alternative is an expensive bracket system. The filter size column is empty for those lenses.

Lenses that match

Criteria20mm equiv. or wider

Focal lengths are judged in 35mm-equivalent terms, so APS-C and Micro Four Thirds lenses appear when their equivalent falls in range. 96 lenses match.