what is your widest lens and why?

[Trius]

Doug: I love both of those shots. The 21 at close range has such impact, and wider would be too wide for me.

 

[biomed]

I have a CV 15 and am still trying to get the hang of it. The CV 21/4 is my favorite for most wide shots. I am waiting impatiently for the R4, then maybe a 28 will join the herd. I like the surreal quality of some subjects shot with the 21 and am hoping to achieve that with the 15. There are some samples in my Flickr gallery in the "Film" and "Bessa L" sets.

Mike

 

[Doug]

Thanks, Ferider and Trius! Ferider, I'm particularly intrigued by your first one of the public square... I think the focal length of the lens used should help govern the distance at which a photo is viewed. That one is big enough on my screen that I can get my nose right up to it and the edges almost disappear in my peripheral vision -- and THEN the perspective and corner distortions start to look more normal. Stick your nose against it with your eyes centered on the image, and look around it by only moving your eyes. Immersion in the scene.... marvelous. Too bad my eyes won't focus that close. 😀

 

[ferider]

Thanks guys. The first shot is kind of centered around my wife in the foreground - which is why I like it.

Posting these and talking about ultra-wides makes me want to get one again ....

Roland.

 

[Bryce]

When my first Bessa L broke, I had no way to use the 15mm lens. I thought about getting a 6x6 back and a shutter of some kind rigged behind it so I could shoot 2" circular images with it.
Wider yet, Yeah!
I decided it was an impractical project and bought another "L".
I still wish for that rig, though.

 

[dostacos]

Couple of 15 "street shots" .... highly addictive focal length - but when you look at the photos after a while they feel not so special, in particular when people are in the photos; they get highly distorted.

Ok now I want a 15 and I want to shoot it at the Western Wall 😱
one roll of film $4.69
lens $345.00
roundtrip ticket to Jerusalem $1547.00
picture....PRICELESS

 

[jmilkins]

CV 15 mm is my widest lens in any of my systems. Like several others it was my first CV lens. It got me into the Bessa system with an L , and goodies just kept on arriving in the mail from there on in 😉

I like it because what else could I use to take the shots in my CV15 Gallery?🙄

 

[furcafe]

I recently picked up a used CV 15/4.5 Super Wide-Heliar, but haven't had a chance to really use it. I have a couple token shots of a street musician, but I had to do some serious perspective correction & cropping in Photoshop to get something that wasn't too vertiginous:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/furcafe/329816025/

Besides the SW-H, the widest RF lens I have is the CZ 21/4.5 Biogon for Contax RF & the widest SLR lens is the 25/2.8 Distagon for Contarex. As far as street shooting is concerned, I hardly ever use anything wider than 28mm. I love Winogrand, et al., but personally find the use of wide-angles in a lot of current street, documentary, & PJ work to be seriously cliched. However, bear in mind that by default, I'm a 35-50mm (mostly 50mm) shooter, so I generally will only go wider if I find myself, or anticipate finding myself, in situations where 50mm will be too tight & I simply can't back up (e.g., crowded streets, interiors)--basically the opposite of when I use telephotos. I also generally don't like the way wides (i.e., 28mm & wider) exaggerate tilted/off-axis perspectives & provide enormous DoF, so I find it difficult to embrace the "wideness" of wide angles the way other photographers are able to. For those reasons, I actually prefer using wides on an SLR because I can see any distortion & correct for it (using a bubble level on an RF is a pain in comparison).

That said, whatever my photographic "default mode" may be, I'm always interested in experimentation & learning how to use wides & super-wides more effectively, so the 15mm SW-H was a relatively inexpensive point of entry on the super-wide end. Aside from experimentation, the crop-factor on the R-D1 & M8 forced me to go wider, anyway. . .

ok, i'm thinking of going wider than my current wide, the zm 25.
zeiss is coming out with the 21/4.5 which i hear will be very sharp and more affordable (for me) than the 2.8 version.
cv has tons of sharp wide glass also. the 21, the 15, the 12, all look good from the pics i have seen on the great www.

i had the 21 and liked it but now i'm wondering about the 15 as it would be a significant jump from my 25.

i am also seeing some of my street (er, urban black and white) stuff going wider, with the 25 being the base or normal lens for my new possible project.
so 2 cameras, one with the 25 and the other with the ?.

help me fill in the blank.

thanks.
joe

 

[mike goldberg]

Hi... Cosina 20/3.8 in Nikon AI mount, and I used this once.
Seems I don't 'see' wider than 24-25mm, photographically.

I just got the CV 25/4 Skopar for my M2.
mike