If you have been paying attention in Mr. Martin’s classes you have learned a lot about bokeh, apertures and focal lengths. Well since the principles of photography change very little from one type of image capture to another, those lessons apply to consumer point and shoot cameras as well as professional digital cameras.

I like wide angle. The ability to capture more in an image from less distance. That’s wide angle. The accepted focal length for a camera approximating the human eye is 50mm on a conventional 35mm camera (I know it’s numbers and some of us are already getting lost in the weeds), actually 45mm is closer to the way the human eye perceives objects, but we’ll follow the accepted conventional norms (Norm likes to hang out at conventions?) for the sake of argument. Given that 50mm = normal perception in optics, any focal length smaller than 50mm begins to show more information from the same vantage point (at a wider angle than the human eye). Bingo! Wide Angle. Regardless of brand: Nikon Coolpix cameras, Powershot Digital Cameras from Canon, Sony Cybershot cameras,  Olympus Stylus, cameras you name it most digital cameras start at about 35mm’s of wide and go up from there, a 3x optical zoom will usually be a 35 to 105mm equivalent, a 4x will go to 140 and so in 3 times or 4 times the starting focal length. Each brand may offer one or two models at a wider starting point mostly a 28mm equivalent.  Mostly. This is a good place to review equivalent focal lengths through the magic of the internet.

Now the good news one company is there for all of us wide angle fanatics (yes, I could stand to lose a few pounds). Panasonic, there’s your wide angle camera Kings. Roberts Imaging carries 6 different Panasonic digital camera models that offer 28mm or wider. Yes I said wider, there are two that are 25mm equiv’s and one even wider.  Yes there is a Panasonic digital camera that has a f2.0 lens and 24mm wide angle starting focal length. The DMC-LX3 also offers a Leica lens, a hot shoe, 10.1 megapixel resolution and 24mm “mega” wide angle. The above photo shows the basic lineup left to right: DMC-TZ4 (28-280mm 10x zoom w /8.1 megapixels), DMC-TZ5 (10x again 9.1 megapixels), DMC-LX3 (24-60mm 2.5x zoom with 10.1 megapixels and f2.0-2.8 lens), DMC-FX37 (25-125mm 5x zoom, 10.1 megapixel), and the DMC FX-35 (25-100 4x zoom, 10.1 megapixel) not shown is teh DMC-TZ50 which is the DMC-TZ5 with built-in wi-fi for wireless transmitting of images.
The above photo shows the DMC-LX3 after taking a shot of its ‘less’ wide angle siblings from about 10 inches away. That is the benefit of wide angle, Kiddies.