WORK WITH ACCESSORIES

Add extras to your kit bag and enhance the impact of your compositions

Wide-angle lenses are in a category most favourably provided for in terms of accessories. While other types of lens can be augmented with optional extras, the wide and ultra-wide range is most frequently utilised by landscape, cityscape and travel photographers – photographic genres that make great use of hardware filters. Accessories have the potential to significantly enhance both the images we take, but also the experience of using lenses to achieve the images we had hoped for.

However, as extensive as the variety of available products may be, we have to be cautious with the items we choose to add to our gear inventory. Many accessories are not manufactured by the same brand as our cameras and lenses, so there is always going to be a risk of optical incompatibility or inconsistency. Lenses are generally the most expensive items in a photographer’s kit bag, so having invested in a quality wide-angle optic, it is important to avoid degrading sharpness and colour fidelity through use of lower-quality add-ons. Wide lenses in particular are unforgiving or filter misuse. Stacking filters on the front of the lens will quickly result in vignetting, which may demand cropping of the image if it cannot be reduced in processing. More specific to the wide angle of view, the effect of a filter may be seen to vary considerably across the frame. Since polarising filters work most effectively at 90 degrees to the sun, in an ultra-wide scene uneven brightness may be visible across the sky, which is often unattractive and distracting. This is a factor photographers new to wideangle imaging may have never encountered before, and therefore may not know to avoid.

Furthermore, since many areas of a scene are included in the composition, each with potentially different reflectivity, colour saturation or angle, the photographer must be mindful of how the filter they are using is rendering all parts of the frame. This is necessary to avoid unexpected lack of colour and exposure control. By carefully selecting an arsenal of filters, the drama of wide-angle photography can be complemented and even enhanced, although usage of any item on an ultra-wide optic must be done with caution.