This exercise required me to photograph a subject in the distance, taking a series of images whilst zooming in on a single focal point. I decided to photograph Scrabo Tower, just outside of Newtownards. It sits on top of a hill overlooking Newtownards and the local area.
The first image was taken at 24mm (36mm full frame comparison on my DX sensor camera). This would be classed as wide angle, but only very slightly.
The second image was taken at 80mm (or 120mm on full frame). It has reduced the overall field of view considerably. The field and road in the foreground have now been completely removed including a lot of the sky above. Scrabo Tower itself now occupies much more of the frame when compared against the first image. Zooming in has had the same effect as cropping the first image down to what we seen now.
The third image was taken at 200mm (300mm on a full frame sensor). The tower is now the prominent feature within the image; the foreground is now completely removed, as is the sky above. The image now focuses upon the tower and the hill it stands upon.
The rest of the images from this exercise can be seen in the gallery below.
Upon completing the exercise, I carefully looked at the images in photoshop. Zooming in to the centre of the first image showed that it was identical to the final image, just considerably smaller; however when looking around the images, anomalies started to appear. Although not drastically obvious, vertical objects appear to be leaning in towards the centre of the frame, as shown by the telegraph pole in the image below.
A more obvious example of the effects of wide-angle lenses is in the image below from my first exercise. The image shows the Titanic centre in Belfast. The lampposts in the image appear to be leaning quite drastically towards the centre of the image even though they are actually perfectly vertical.
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Conclusion
The series of images show the effect of increasing the focal length upon an image and also the effect of using wide angle and telephoto lenses upon any given subject. The most obvious difference is the zoom effect the longer focal length lens has upon the image. In the first image the main focal point, Scrabo Tower, is hardly distinguishable from the landscape it is set in. However by the final image it has become the main focal point of the image and takes over a much greater proportion of the frame.
Wide-angle lenses can cause distortion to images, especially around the edges. They generally tend to bend objects towards the centre of the image. This is good to remember when taking photographs, it would be best to stand further away from the subject and use a telephoto lens then to stand close and use a wide-angle lens.
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