Crop-sensor wide-angles

ost standard zoom lenses give decent coverage, but wide-angle zooms go a whole lot further. With viewing angles of more than 100 degrees, you can shoehorn much bigger areas into the image frame. They’re ideal for the great outdoors, especially when you want to capture big skies and epic vistas in landscape photography. Extra-wide viewing angles can be vital for indoor photography, when you can’t get as far back from your subject as you might like.

Wide-angle photography isn’t just about cramming more into the image frame. A key creative advantage is that you can really exaggerate perspective and inject some real wow-factor into your photos. Get in really close to the main subject in a scene, and it can take on a giant-like stature, with the middle distance and background dramatically shrinking away from it.

Thanks to the inherently large depth of field that you get at very short focal lengths, another bonus is that you can retain excellent sharpness in the foreground and background, keeping scenes well focused from front to back. Let’s choose some winners.

Canon EF-S 10-18mm f/4.5-5.6 IS STM £239/$279

Light in build, light on the wallet

Lens mount Canon EF-S

Carrying around additional lenses is no fun when they’re big and heavy.