Wide angle lenses are good, you have heard me say this many times.

Not just for travel. Also, for instance, for “event background shots”, like this recent picture taken at a corporate event:

Bar Lemons

Or for this:

Montreal Plateau Tree

Wide angles because:

• You get more in (d’oh).
• They are easy to focus – if you wish, you can get it all in focus (but see the note below).
• It is easy to avoid camera shake (a safe-ish shutter speed is “1 divided by the lens length”, after all, so shorter lenses are easier).
• You introduce depth (“close-far” technique).
• You can exaggerate perspective, if you wish.

So how wide is “wide”?

I would say 16-35 mm on a “full frame” camera – that means 10-20 mm for those of you who use a crop camera, like a Digital Rebel, 50D, D3000, or D90.

Now I promised you a footnote. Wide lenses make it easy to focus on “everything”. So what if I want selective focus, like in the bar or in the following shot? Selective focus is oh so important in photography, as it helps you tell a story:

Buffet

Well, then I need to have a wide open aperture. Wider than on a longer lens.

And that is why I use a 16-35mm f/2.8 lens, and if I could find a faster one I would get it, too. The faster (i.e. the lower the “F”-number), the better. So when some say “a wide lens does not need to be fast”, they are wrong.