Mar

27

1 iPhone, 1 Scene, 3 Lenses, 3 Photos, 3 Stories — Why Zoom Range Matters

Filed Under Photography on March 27, 2021 | Leave a Comment

I’ve spoken a lot on recent Let’s Talk Photo episodes about how my iPhone has become my primary camera, and how the ultra-wide angle lens is one of the features of the recent iPhones that excites me most. The reason why is simple — different focal lengths (zoom levels) give you different perspectives, and you can’t compensate for that by moving closer or further away from your subject. When I’m shooting artistically, zooming really isn’t about getting closer, I have feel for that — it’s about controlling the background by altering the perspective (literally).

Anyway, I was out walking this morning and came across a scene that illustrates the point nicely. I was on the grounds of St. Patrick’s College in Maynooth (well within my 5km limit and socially distancing like a responsible citizen) when I noticed that both the blue Wood Anemones and some white Daffodils were in bloom in the old apple orchard. That presented a scene with three interesting things — the two different types of flower, and the gnarly trunks of the old apple trees.

I made a point of taking the same photo with each lens to see how that changed the scene, and hence, the story the photo told. Ordinarily I would have kept the best, shared it on Twitter, and then deleted the other two, but given recent podcast episodes, I kept all three so I could use them as a practical example instead.

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