Going ultra-wide

Central park-1

Because the sensor in a digital SLR camera is typically smaller than the 35 mm film that it replaced, the physics of the focal point of the lens are changed. This is known as "The Field of View Crop Factor" or sometimes "The Focal Length Multiplier". The net result means your long lens becomes longer and your wide lens becomes narrower.

Wildlife photographers sing the praises of The Focal Length Multiplier because their 200 mm telephoto lens effectively becomes a 320 mm lens. Creative photographers hate it because now a 24 mm lens becomes a 38 mm lens and you can never get wide enough.

My personal lens investment is from the pre-digital era, so I never had the chance to compensate for this effect. All of my lens became too long for many of my purposes. I satisfy my need for wide by occasionally renting a 14 mm ultra-wide lens (effective focal length of 22 mm), which reminds me of the good old days, when a wide lens was truly a wide lens.

Wide is a lot of fun and it also allows me to keep the header imagery fresh.