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The biggest award is that your images will look differently from nearly everything that is posted today, especially if you get close. The past decades have bee

The biggest award is that your images will look differently from nearly everything that is posted today, especially if you get close. The past decades have been decades of wide angle. Before the turn of the millennium wide angle photography was confined to mostly landscape, architecture and real estate. Often out of necessity and not because people liked the look. It was in the early 90s that skater subculture chose wide angle out of necessity, but they also embraced the distorted look. From there it went into hiphop culture and became mainstream. At the same time technological development also facilitated wide angle lenses because together with tiny sensors they can be easily fitted into mobile phones and action cams. If people 100 years from now will look at our photos and watch our videos the wide angle look will be the dead giveaway of our era.

dghlsakjg 1y ago
Many, many famous photojournalists and artists embraced wide angle decades before skater culture did. A significant number of the most famous photos from the mid century were taken on 35mm or wider lenses. A big thing to consider is that good and practical extreme wide angle lenses didn’t exist until the 80s and 90s. Something like a 16mm f2.8 lens went from not existing to being in every pro photographers arsenal in the 1990s and 2000s
- weinzierl 1y ago
  That is true. A lot of journalism and street photography is 35 mm and that was considered wide by then. The difference is that distortions were seen as an error back then. Wider angles were, as you said, not widely available but I think also not much desired. This changed in the 90s when some embraced the distorted look and made it part of our photographic vocabulary.
- Aurornis 1y ago
  > Many, many famous photojournalists and artists embraced wide angle decades before skater culture did. Photography threads are interesting because they arrive with so many different interpretations of history. There are multiple comments claiming that “everyone” did one thing until a certain famous photographer or specific subculture came along and disrupted the world. Yet like you said, the only real driver was the affordability and availability of equipment. When it became attained, people started using it.
- harrall 1y ago
  35mm photos might have been “wide” historically but it’s not very wide. Even the main camera on iPhones are around 28mm. Skate videos created an explosion of very wide content at ~10-14mm.
exitb 1y ago
Can’t overlook the influence of phone photography, which is usually wider (~26mm equivalent) than what was considered standard in the 90s (~35mm). These days even a 50mm will make your pictures stand out.
- paulsmith 1y ago
  Another good rule of thumb to remember is that a 50mm lens on a 35mm sensor ("full-frame") is roughly the equivalent FOV of the human eye, i.e., what you see naturally.
  - weinzierl 1y ago
    I never understood that argument. By pure FOV the human eye is much wider. Of course it is not that simple, spacial resolution drops off to sides (while temporal resolution increases). This makes statements like "50 mm on 35 mm is FOV of human eye" not very meaningful.
    - fvgvkujdfbllo 1y ago
      The way I understand is that it is not FOV but zoom level. If you look through a camera with 50mm lens, the subject and background should appear same size as when viewed with naked eyes. Doesn’t matter if it is full frame or crop sensor.
      - _aavaa_ 1y ago
        Relative size of subject and background is cause by distance to them, not focal length.
        tveyben 1y ago
        Also called ‘perspective’ and the only way to change it is to move the position of the camera It does not matter if you crop an image taken with a 50mm lens to get the same area of the motive as taken with a 300mm lens from the same ‘standpoint’ - there will be no difference between foreground and background (except for grain and noise - but that’s another story… ;-) You have to move the camera to change that. This is often seen in movies (those shot on real film) as opposed to on video as zoom lenses are often used without moving the camera, film based often use a dolly to move the camera. The effect of combining zoom and camera movement to keep the same crop of the foreground while having a dramatic effect of the background quickly getting larger/closer (or vice versa) is really effective - also in illustrating this concept. In my early life (before taking the education as a photographer) I was really liking wide angles as it brought ‘life’ in to a lot of pictures. Wide as in 24 mm for my 35mm camera (Nikon F2, from 1973 should you wonder) was a favorite, replacing my 28 mm. Too bad full frame digital is still so expensive. Using a 14-24 f/4 on the DX format in (Nikon D7100) just is’nt the same. So now the iPhone is the most used camera (you know - the camera you have with you…!)
nop_slide 1y ago
Love that you mentioned the skateboarding history of it. I have fond memories of our young crew finally acquiring a “death lens” for our VX1000. It was such a fun challenge to see how close you could get because it looked so sick. Of course that meant we ended up with a bunch of scratches over the years on the lens, and I had my fair share of hitting the lens :)

dghlsakjg 1y ago

Many, many famous photojournalists and artists embraced wide angle decades before skater culture did. A significant number of the most famous photos from the mid century were taken on 35mm or wider lenses. A big thing to consider is that good and practical extreme wide angle lenses didn’t exist until the 80s and 90s. Something like a 16mm f2.8 lens went from not existing to being in every pro photographers arsenal in the 1990s and 2000s

weinzierl 1y ago
That is true. A lot of journalism and street photography is 35 mm and that was considered wide by then. The difference is that distortions were seen as an error back then. Wider angles were, as you said, not widely available but I think also not much desired. This changed in the 90s when some embraced the distorted look and made it part of our photographic vocabulary.
Aurornis 1y ago
> Many, many famous photojournalists and artists embraced wide angle decades before skater culture did. Photography threads are interesting because they arrive with so many different interpretations of history. There are multiple comments claiming that “everyone” did one thing until a certain famous photographer or specific subculture came along and disrupted the world. Yet like you said, the only real driver was the affordability and availability of equipment. When it became attained, people started using it.
harrall 1y ago
35mm photos might have been “wide” historically but it’s not very wide. Even the main camera on iPhones are around 28mm. Skate videos created an explosion of very wide content at ~10-14mm.

exitb 1y ago

Can’t overlook the influence of phone photography, which is usually wider (~26mm equivalent) than what was considered standard in the 90s (~35mm). These days even a 50mm will make your pictures stand out.

paulsmith 1y ago
Another good rule of thumb to remember is that a 50mm lens on a 35mm sensor ("full-frame") is roughly the equivalent FOV of the human eye, i.e., what you see naturally.
- weinzierl 1y ago
  I never understood that argument. By pure FOV the human eye is much wider. Of course it is not that simple, spacial resolution drops off to sides (while temporal resolution increases). This makes statements like "50 mm on 35 mm is FOV of human eye" not very meaningful.
  - fvgvkujdfbllo 1y ago
    The way I understand is that it is not FOV but zoom level. If you look through a camera with 50mm lens, the subject and background should appear same size as when viewed with naked eyes. Doesn’t matter if it is full frame or crop sensor.
    - _aavaa_ 1y ago
      Relative size of subject and background is cause by distance to them, not focal length.
      - tveyben 1y ago
        Also called ‘perspective’ and the only way to change it is to move the position of the camera It does not matter if you crop an image taken with a 50mm lens to get the same area of the motive as taken with a 300mm lens from the same ‘standpoint’ - there will be no difference between foreground and background (except for grain and noise - but that’s another story… ;-) You have to move the camera to change that. This is often seen in movies (those shot on real film) as opposed to on video as zoom lenses are often used without moving the camera, film based often use a dolly to move the camera. The effect of combining zoom and camera movement to keep the same crop of the foreground while having a dramatic effect of the background quickly getting larger/closer (or vice versa) is really effective - also in illustrating this concept. In my early life (before taking the education as a photographer) I was really liking wide angles as it brought ‘life’ in to a lot of pictures. Wide as in 24 mm for my 35mm camera (Nikon F2, from 1973 should you wonder) was a favorite, replacing my 28 mm. Too bad full frame digital is still so expensive. Using a 14-24 f/4 on the DX format in (Nikon D7100) just is’nt the same. So now the iPhone is the most used camera (you know - the camera you have with you…!)

nop_slide 1y ago

Love that you mentioned the skateboarding history of it. I have fond memories of our young crew finally acquiring a “death lens” for our VX1000. It was such a fun challenge to see how close you could get because it looked so sick. Of course that meant we ended up with a bunch of scratches over the years on the lens, and I had my fair share of hitting the lens :)