Mastering Wides Primes?

[johnastovall]

I've never been a wide shooter until lately. But I've been shooting a Canon 24L for almost a month now and a 35L before that. I'm finding shooting Wide and Ultra wides primes require much more concentration on the image in the finder, framing and composition than lenses in the 50-200 range (my past work horses were the 50, 85 and 135 primes). Conversely, the 24 lets me do a lot of grab shots where I don't have to focus (other than set the lens to manual and hyperfocus everything from 1 to infinity). The camera does have to ever come to the just point and shoot the room is just pointed from the waist or hand or off-hand.

I'm starting to really like the way an ultra wide prime creates a sense of place rather than the sense of an object.

Or do others think the wides are easy?

[Stephen H]

I don't necessarily find them harder. But when I first got my 24mm lens, I was figuring "this is nice scenery, so the more of it in the picture, the better". And I quickly discovered that didn't work, you got more in the picture, but it was also correspondingly smaller and less interesting, and I had to pay a little more attention to having a single point of interest in a shot.

[StudioDesigntC]

For a 'snapshooter' I'm sure wides are easy. For most of us on this forum, we have a better trained eye and are much more sensitive to the shot process. One of (the many ) things I struggle with while shooting the 17-40 with film is the horizon line and distortion. I realize distortion is inevitable on the wide side, but the placement of the horizon line gets me every time.