A Week With a Wide-Angle

Canon 10-22mm f3/5-4.5.

I’d forgotten just how wide this lens really is – the last time I used it was in 2007 I think!  Having mostly used a 50mm, 35mm or 18-55mm at its widest, a 10-22mm is all the way at the other end of the spectrum, i.e. WIDE.

You can literally be just a few centimetres away from a subject and capture not just the subject but everything around it, and best of all, often the subject doesn’t even realise they’re in view :P

Mucking around with it at work

When I took the above, I was so close to the guy he was practically next to me, which is why he didn’t flinch when I took the shot. OK, so it’s not a great image, but it demonstrates just how ridiculously wide this lens is.

Walking around the Brick Lane area. This guy pointed to my camera and said “What is that?”

Me – “Erm, a camera – what does it look like?”.  He asked me if I was going to take a picture of him, so I did.  He went on to ask what I was going to do with the picture. “Put it on your bedroom wall?”. Puke. Inevitably, he asked for my number and where I work and whether I wanted to go into his restaurant for a drink. No thanks mate! Points for trying though, I guess.  Or maybe not.

I went to Cork for the day for work.

Take off!

I landed, walked 5 mins over the hill to the meeting, walked back over the hill, and took a flight back to London. Yay for business trips.

The airport in Cork is pretty small and I didn’t have enough time to go into town, so I just sat on the grass in front of the airport for a bit, taking, er, self portraits to demonstrate just how windy it was.  Oh, and also to demonstrate how easy it is to take self portraits with a super wide lens!

(^ Dirty lens and didn’t bother using the heal tool in Photoshop)

I didn’t get a window seat on the way back so no more plane-view pictures

I met up with @jimeh and @jonromero who were in London for something uber geek-related.

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We went to my favourite tunnel in Waterloo. I must have taken hundreds of pictures here over the last year or so.

It’s amazing that a year on from the original graffiti festival, whenever I come here people are still tagging their stuff.  It’s a never-ending evolution of art.

Southbank is a great place to walk around – things are always happening, like this breakdancing show.

They picked a boy from the audience and helped him do a headspin.

The real thing:

I think he did around 20 spins.  Pretty impressive stuff.

Michael Jackson tributes.

Downside of a wide-angle – you have to get REALLY close if you want to capture details. I literally took this on my knees with the lens touching the ground, and still it’s nowhere near as close as I’d have liked it:

You’re just about to lose:

You lost! Hah.

If you don’t know what that’s all about read this – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_(mind_game)

The most ridiculous ‘game’ ever.  According to Jon it’s hugely popular in Athens where people put signs around streets to catch people out. Madness.

Free-runners practicing in the Southbank area

How cool is that?  I could have literally watched it all day.

(I got my 7th DD for the above shot, which I’m quite proud of I have to say!)

One of the best crepes I’ve ever had! Feta cheese, red peppers, mushrooms, sweetcorn, and hm.. some other stuff I don’t remember.

The Tate Modern – the ultimate tourist gallery.

One of the strangest exhibitions I’ve been to lately.  I don’t remember who it was by but it was made up of slide shows of naked people doing odd things.

A couple of weeks ago the weather was amazing – 30C, not a cloud in the sky, a slight breeze.. perfect.  I took a day off work with the intention of going to Wimbledon, except Andy Murray was playing which meant ridiculous (more than usual) queues.  So the choice was – queue for a day without a guarantee of getting in to watch any tennis (so basically waste the day), or do something else?

Decided to go to Brighton instead!

Sunshine, sea, and chips.  What more could you want?

Warning – don’t feed the seagulls chips unless you want to be surrounded by big flapping birds.  It sounds obvious but I still did it.

It felt like I was on holiday – perfect way to spend a day off work.

This dog kept playing coming to us and wanted to play so we threw pebbles into the sea and he was going in to fetch them.  His owner was a lovely old lady who started up a conversation and told me I looked better than all the other girls on the beach! How sweet!

To end the day, I won a toy from one of those grab machines that never work (except for this time!). Yay.

Pros of the 10-22mm:

• Wide enough for sneaky shots
• Surprisingly light for its size
• Great for architectural shots/landscape/occasional self-portraits :P

Cons:

• Not ideal for close-up portraits.  To fill the frame up, you will literally need to be a few cms away from the subject which is pretty intrusive
• Edges can get skewed/distorted
• A small matter of ££.  It’s £700.

More shots with this lens in this post – http://www.tanya-n.com/?p=325

Cheers for looking/skimming/reading