Reversing Course

For about 2 months now, I’ve been using my Laowa 12mm ultra-wide angle glass for a lot of the basic real-estate jobs. the whole estate agent world is obsessed with everything being as wide as is humanly possible, so I thought it best to try and keep up with that demand. Turns out it wasn’t so much of a demand.

One agent let me know that they were getting remarks, and a complaint about the appearance of certain shots using that lens. Going ultra-wide can be great in some instances, although as described in previous posts, I’ve never been a fan. It creates problems that need to be addressed by altering your viewpoint - namely, the height of the camera. In addition, the vignetting around the outer edges have to be compensated for by applying complex masks which add brightness and correct colour casts in the corner areas.

You need to drop the camera height to about hip level so as to avoid including too much ceiling in the frame. This leads to objects in the foreground becoming more prominent, and can make it look like a childs-eye view. Here’s the same living room using a 15mm lens, and then the 12mm.

Notice the change in perspective due to the lower viewpoint. The wider view would have been ok if I’d moved forward by 12 inches, or just cropped into the frame afterwards. The next example is in the kitchen:

The 15mm shows the tops of the work surfaces, but not as much of the room. The same thing can be noticed in the next shots of the kitchen:

The camera position was a bit different in each photo, and I prefer the wider one to be fair.

It’s so subjective - and I’m the only link in the property selling chain that is at the mercy of someone’s personal taste, as well as having the misfortune of being the link in the chain who needs the most equipment, skill, flexibility, patience, computing power, and artistic competence - and coincidentally is paid the least - by a mile.

So anyway, I’m dropping the 12mm usage for everything but the smallest of rooms, and some exteriors where it works to show gardens at their best. Back to my trusted Laowa 15mm Zero-D shift lens.