Tips for Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5?

[Stavalamp]

We got my mom one for Christmas and so of course she expects us to show her how to do cool things with it. Anybody have any tips/suggestions for shooting with it? We're thinking landscapes would look nice with it, but not totally sure. I know more about video than I do about still photography. She's got a Rebel T2i. Thanks.

 

[fokker]

Wide angle lenses are great, the wider the better as far as I'm concerned. There are a few things you should know in order to make the pictures look the best.
1) Don't use it outdoors when it's overcast, as you get a lot of sky in your shots with these lenses and if it's overcast the whole sky will be a whitewash. Same goes, to an extent, when it's a clear blue sky. A large featureless sky is boring, what you need is clouds, and preferably sunsets and sunrises.
2) You need to create depth to wide angle landscape shots by incorporating foregound elements. Keep in mind that the wide angle will make close objects look disproportionately large while objects in the distance will be disproportionately small.
3) Get really close to your subject to create dramatic perspectives.
4) Try to fill the frame with interesting stuff - the subject, mainly, but remember its hard to make a background disappear with a wide angle so be aware of what's behind the subject.

Here are some of my favourite wide angle shots (all shot with canon 17-40mm on full frame at 17mm which is about equivalent to 11mm on a crop sensor)

 

[pgriz]

^^^ Good tips above. To say it in slightly different terms:
- Wide-angles distort perspective, the closer, the more distortion.
- Wide-angles exaggerate the relation between near and far, separating the two (compared to telephotos, which compress the near and far),
- Wide-angles give you phenomenal depth-of-field even with small apertures so you can get everything from your toes to the horizon in focus.
- your 10x10 closet of a room becomes long enough to hold a bowling alley.

However, with great power, comes great responsibility.
- Put people at the edges of the wide angle, and they gain 300 lbs.
- get close to people's faces, and the cute little button nose becomes a camel nose.
- your toes get to photobomb almost every shot.

 

[Scuba]

Great advice from those two. Also, be careful because things can easily creep into the image from the sides that you didn't see. One more thing you can change a lot by tilting the camera up and down to use the distortion. I have the 17-40 on full frame as well and is my favorite lens.

 

[Big Mike]

Love that lens, especially for landscapes.

 

[Stavalamp]

Awesome! Thank you all for your help! I will definitely write these down and keep them in mind. Any suggestions in terms of camera settings? I.e. high aperture low shutter for quality? Etc.

 

[pgriz]

If your Mom isn't very camera-savvy, then I'd suggest putting the camera in Av mode, and use an aperture of about f/5.6 to start with. Camera shake isn't going to be a problem because the wide-angle tends to diminish these. Let her experiment. Suggest taking pictures from low down, high up, with stuff in the foreground, etc. Then upload to the computer and examine. Look at what you've got, make adjustments. It's a fun lens.