Should I add a lens? I shoot with a Fuji X-T4 and my hobby is taking pictures of ships. My two lenses are 100-400 and 18-135. They are all I need for most of my needs.But occasionally...

Dragonophile

I shoot with a Fuji X-T4 and my hobby is taking pictures of ships. My two lenses are 100-400 and 18-135. They are all I need for most of my needs.But occasionally I get very close to a very large ship. 18mm or thereabouts is sufficient to get the entire ship in frame but the resulting picture is often not pleasing. It just looks wrongly proportioned. I do not want to stitch. If I got a 10 or 14mm shot and then cropped it to larger size, would the ship appear more normal looking?

Rongnongno Loc: FL

Dragonophile wrote:

I shoot with a Fuji X-T4 and my hobby is taking pictures of ships. My two lenses are 100-400 and 18-135. They are all I need for most of my needs.But occasionally I get very close to a very large ship. 18mm or thereabouts is sufficient to get the entire ship in frame but the resulting picture is often not pleasing. It just looks wrongly proportioned. I do not want to stitch. If I got a 10 or 14mm shot and then cropped it to larger size, would the ship appear more normal looking?

You might want to look at a software solution instead. A wider angle will not help.

Najataagihe

Dragonophile wrote:

But occasionally I get very close to a very large ship. 18mm or thereabouts is sufficient to get the entire ship in frame but the resulting picture is often not pleasing. It just looks wrongly proportioned. I do not want to stitch. If I got a 10 or 14mm shot and then cropped it to larger size, would the ship appear more normal looking?

No.

Proportion, or perspective, is dependent on distance from subject, not focal length.

For the proportion to be right, you need to be farther away - regardless of focal length.

larryepage Loc: North Texas area

Dragonophile wrote:

I shoot with a Fuji X-T4 and my hobby is taking pictures of ships. My two lenses are 100-400 and 18-135. They are all I need for most of my needs.But occasionally I get very close to a very large ship. 18mm or thereabouts is sufficient to get the entire ship in frame but the resulting picture is often not pleasing. It just looks wrongly proportioned. I do not want to stitch. If I got a 10 or 14mm shot and then cropped it to larger size, would the ship appear more normal looking?

A shorter lens will make the perspective distortion that you find displeasing even more pronounced.

frankraney Loc: Clovis, Ca.

Dragonophile wrote:

I shoot with a Fuji X-T4 and my hobby is taking pictures of ships. My two lenses are 100-400 and 18-135. They are all I need for most of my needs.But occasionally I get very close to a very large ship. 18mm or thereabouts is sufficient to get the entire ship in frame but the resulting picture is often not pleasing. It just looks wrongly proportioned. I do not want to stitch. If I got a 10 or 14mm shot and then cropped it to larger size, would the ship appear more normal looking?

A wider angle will actually make it worse. Try to get farther back or, stich. Take a two by three set.

camerapapi Loc: Miami, Fl.

"If I got a 10 or 14mm shot and then cropped it to larger size, would the ship appear more normal looking?"

No, it will not in most cases. Extreme wide angles have lots of distortions and it is not always practical to keep everything level to minimize distortions. Rent one of those lenses and give it a try.

davidrb Loc: Half way there on the 45th Parallel

Dragonophile wrote:

I shoot with a Fuji X-T4 and my hobby is taking pictures of ships. My two lenses are 100-400 and 18-135. They are all I need for most of my needs.But occasionally I get very close to a very large ship. 18mm or thereabouts is sufficient to get the entire ship in frame but the resulting picture is often not pleasing. It just looks wrongly proportioned. I do not want to stitch. If I got a 10 or 14mm shot and then cropped it to larger size, would the ship appear more normal looking?

Possibly THE most widely asked question on UHH is "should I buy?" Now, the ball is in our court and WE ask YOU "Does baby need a new pair of shoes?" If the answer is a resounding "NO" then buy the darned lens and learn how to make it work for you. If YES, "fogedaboutit," baby needs to walk! Flipping a coin works also, but not as easily. Be sure to gives a demonstration of your work, or baby's.

Dragonophile

Thanks to all who replied. Sounds like a consensus (not always easy on this forum) that a wider lens is not a solution. I guess I will need to live with the issue. Getting further back is usually not feasible as I can often only find tiny spots along the waterfront to take pictures of docked/docking/undocking ships.

Again, thanks to all.

PHRubin Loc: Nashville TN USA

I would think that if you went to a wider lends and then cropped until it filled the image, you would be back to where you were with the 18 mm.

xt2 Loc: British Columbia, Canada

Dragonophile wrote:

I shoot with a Fuji X-T4 and my hobby is taking pictures of ships. My two lenses are 100-400 and 18-135. They are all I need for most of my needs.But occasionally I get very close to a very large ship. 18mm or thereabouts is sufficient to get the entire ship in frame but the resulting picture is often not pleasing. It just looks wrongly proportioned. I do not want to stitch. If I got a 10 or 14mm shot and then cropped it to larger size, would the ship appear more normal looking?

Just stand back! Proportion is reliant on distance. Save your dough, buy a photography book, take course, just apply yourself rather than your wallet and you will be shocked at your photos. Cheers!

fetzler Loc: North West PA

camerapapi wrote:

"If I got a 10 or 14mm shot and then cropped it to larger size, would the ship appear more normal looking?"

No, it will not in most cases. Extreme wide angles have lots of distortions and it is not always practical to keep everything level to minimize distortions. Rent one of those lenses and give it a try.

A well made rectilinear wide angle lens does not have distortion just as do lenses of other focal lengths

Changing the focal length of the lens does affect perspective. If you take a picture of a person's face with a very wide length the person's nose will appear large as you will be relatively much closer to the nose than the ears. Wide angle lenses can be used to emphasize near objects. If you use a telephoto lens the picture of the face will seem flatter as you will be farther from the face and the nose and ears will have nearly the same relative distance to the lens.

Taking a picture of a face from the same camera position with a wide angle lens and a telephoto lens will show that the face is smaller for the wide angle lens. Cropping the wide angle image to look like the telephoto image will show that wide angle and telephoto images are the same.

Picture Taker Loc: Michigan Thumb

You might try stitching it.

Jagnut07 Loc: South Carolina

I don’t know that stitching would help either as the distance to the subject is still closer in the middle than the sides. Hi about a software solution to shrink the middle and expand the sides. I.e. change the perspective in software. How about posting a photo here and have one of the post processing experts work on it to provide a solution?

jcboy3

Dragonophile wrote:

I shoot with a Fuji X-T4 and my hobby is taking pictures of ships. My two lenses are 100-400 and 18-135. They are all I need for most of my needs.But occasionally I get very close to a very large ship. 18mm or thereabouts is sufficient to get the entire ship in frame but the resulting picture is often not pleasing. It just looks wrongly proportioned. I do not want to stitch. If I got a 10 or 14mm shot and then cropped it to larger size, would the ship appear more normal looking?

Perspective doesn't change with focal length. The only way to get a "normal" perspective is to shoot from further away.

However, using an ultra wide angle lens will usually give pleasing results if you don't crop; that way you get the ship and surroundings, which will help make it look "more natural". Cropping it just exaggerates the perspective distortion.

So yes, you should get an ultra wide lens for times when you are very close to a ship. Not to crop, but to get a better picture.

One other thing: sometimes if you are further from the subject (ship), you have more foreground elements that are blocking you view (like cars or people). I frequently solve that problem by getting the camera up and shoot over the foreground. I use one or two 6-foot monopods, and control the camera with my iphone. Getting the camera 12.5 feet up in the air can be a significant improvement. If shooting wide enough, you don't need to see what you are doing and can use a simple wireless remote shutter. But using a smartphone app, you can see the image, focus where you want, and trigger the shutter.

Picture Taker Loc: Michigan Thumb

panoramic it