Double-wide
By David M. Cobb
A fellow photographer taught me a trick about a decade ago that I still use today. When shooting a landscape with flowers, I sometimes attach my Kenko Pro 2X to my Canon 16-35mm wide-angle lens. Why do I do this? It allows me to get inches away from the flowers, and it turns my 16mm lens into a 32mm lens and my f22 into f44 (or so I was told, and given the amount of spots I pick up on my image I believe it’s true). Then by focusing 1/3 of the way into the scene my foreground and background are tack-sharp.
Why not just use a wide-angle lens? Because sometimes I like the effect the doubler adds to my composition; it not only allows me to get extremely close to my foreground, but it brings my background mountain or waterfall closer. If I were to get that close to the flowers with a 16mm lens, the distant mountain would look like a pimple on the horizon – not good.
Why a Kenko Pro 2X? Because they not only make the best teleconverters out there, their 2X Pro teleconverter allows me to connect to my Canon 16-35mm lens – Canon and Nikon teleconverters will not allow this joining, because the glass impedes it.
What follows are a couple of samples where I used this technique.
Paintbrush Moraine
Ridgeline Glow