The Super Wide View &
The Art of Creating Panoramas
4 hours online Saturday, January 30th • 2021 9am PST / 12pm EST
Capturing a wide perspective of the scene often means using a wide angle lens. Some of these lenses offer an incredibly wide view of your scene where you can produce incredible results. Wide angle lenses can include a vast amount of the scene in your frame compared to a normal focal length lens.
Through the years, these lenses have gotten incredibly wider and the images created from these lenses can create a feeling that you cannot achieve any other way. Wide can be amazing and this class will show what is possible from different lenses and why shooting wide or super wide might be what is needed.
Fisheye lenses will also be explored because they differ in their view of the scene and because they can distort the image in good ways and bad ways, depending on how you use the lens. They offer a unique perspective and sometimes they are just what the doctor ordered to give you a different super wide view of the scene.
Wide is where it’s at!!
Wide angle lenses come in a vast selection with many being what is called, “rectilinear”, which will keep the straight lines across the scene from being bent or distorted. These are different than Fisheye lenses that will distort straight lines and other aspects of the image and create more curves of your straight lines.
Depending on the focal length of your wide angle lens, the amount of coverage you can capture can be dramatic for landscapes, architecture and especially shooting after dark with the night sky. Once you see the impact that a particular focal length can give you, it will without a doubt spoil you forever!
What about Fisheye?
Fisheye lenses will also be explored as they differ in their view of the scene as they can distort the image in good ways and bad ways depending on how you use the lens. They offer a unique perspective and sometimes they are just what the doctor ordered to give you a different super wide view of the scene.
I have used many different types of Fisheye lenses for about as long as I can remember and I will show many different methods to use them in a variety of settings. Often, they are exactly just what the doctor ordered and nothing else will really do the trick!
Panoramas are like nothing else
Although shooting with wide angle & fisheye lenses can be the answer quite often, many times it really isn’t. The one drawback that happens is everything in the scene appears smaller and at times, farther away than it really is. Wide angle compositions can be just what you need quite often but other times, the optical distortion and farther away feeling you capture from the wide view is not what you really want.
Many times, the answer is setting up and creating a panorama photograph. Shooting a multi shot panorama can give you results that are incredibly different than a typical wide angle photograph and often much more powerful. A panorama looks much more realistic and also can be incredibly striking to the eye, especially when printed large!
One other part of the class will cover how to capture a vertical panorama. Most people do not try this insanely cool technique but I will show you why you might want to try it.
A panorama consists of shooting several images, usually vertical for a horizontal pano, moving your camera each time and stitching them all together in post processing. The results can be absolutely gorgeous and visually the feeling of a powerful panorama is like no other. The wide angle feeling is gone and it is replaced with a more realistic rendition of what you wanted to capture. I will also cover the correct way to capture Multi Row panoramas which can be insanely cool for some locations & show great gear for these Multi Row panos.
I will show how to capture panoramas during the day and also after dark, including the Milky Way and the night sky. Once you realize that a wide angle lens will not capture the scene the way you see it in your head, then a whole new world awaits you with your photography! Panoramas have stopping power in powerful ways and in this class, I will show you how to master everything there is to know about this powerful part of photography.
Join the class!
1. After signing up, I will email you a link for the GoToMeeting for online screen sharing session and a time to sign in for this class on Saturday, January 30th, 2021. You can check into the class around 10-15 minutes early before the 9AM PST / 12PM EST start time.
2. This workshop will cover all types of wide angle lenses from superwide to fisheye and show which lens might be the best for different applications. The workshop will also go extensively into how to set up and capture panoramas, choosing the right gear to buy for Panos and also how to process them in Photoshop.
3. The online class is approx. 4 hours but may go a little longer if needed
4. This class is interactive and audio is alway turned on so students can ask questions at any time.
5. After each week’s class, you will receive a link to the recorded video file of the class so you can watch the class again anytime, up to one year or download the video file to keep forever.
6. * This informative online workshop assumes a working knowledge of Photography and Photoshop. You will need to know some of the tools and the basics of Photoshop and be pretty familiar with camera settings such as aperture, shutter speed, ISO, and white balance.
