Wide angle photos

[kuzushi]

Hello all. I just purchased a Canon EOS Rebel SL 1. I do plan to slowly learn how this camera works, but my immediate purpose is to take wide angle indoor photos of my rental property so I can post awesome pictures to Craig's List and Zillow! I usually sit in a corner of the room to show off how large the rooms are. I also want to pick up the beautiful wood flooring.

I attached the lens that came with it and zoomed out but the pictures are blurry. Please tell me the step by step process to make this work. What setting do I use? Do I use flash? Do I have to do anything else? What about the f stop? Obviously I know nothing except how to turn on the camera and put on a lens. Please set me up to do this so I get this house rented soon. Thank you in advance.

[kvbarkley]

What lens?

You will probably need one of the EF-S wide angle lenses, the 10-18 or the 10-22.

[wheeble]

18 mm is not the widest lens, but its what your camera probably has.  To get wider pics for the interior using that lens, you need to mount on a tripod and take two overlapping panning shots and then use the photostitch program that came with your camera to join the images into a wider shot. (it is an easy program to use). 

As a new user of this camera, set it to the green box on the dial and make sure the lens AF switch is set on.

[kuzushi]

The lens that came with the camera is am 18-55mm. I would be happy if I could get wider shots than my small Nikon Coolpix camera. That just had a small lens that barely expanded.

[kuzushi]

If I widen the lens out what settings should I use. Based on my efforts so far I am doing something wrong.

[kvbarkley]

If you use green-square mode, set the lens to 18mm and auto focus, that is the best you can do. We do not know the conditions you have. If depth of field is an issue, use Av mode and set an f/16 Aperture.

Can you post some sample pics?

[kuzushi]

Kvbarkley. What are depth of field issues? Please give an example. Thank you.

[kvbarkley]

With wide apertures - like when shooting in low light - the plane of focus can be pretty narrow. For example, only things between 6 and 8 ft of the camera will be in focus. Everything else will be blurry. If you decrease the aperture to f/16, then a wider range will be in focus, say 1 foot to infinity.

This is an extreme example, but see how the concrete a foot away or so is blurry? Even the body of the bug is starting to go out of focus. A smaller aperture would have fixed that.

[ScottyP]

As suggegsted above, if you want everything in the room to be in focus, you need to use a narrow aperture.  Since you are indoors, the camera will be trying to widen the aperture to let more light in in auto modes, so get out of auto mode and narrow the aperture and compensate for the loss of light by using a long exposure.  Long exposure however is impossible handheld due to handheld camera shake being visible with slow shutter speeds.  Compensate for the handheld camera shake by not handholding; put it on something solid.  If you don't have a tripod, pull a coffee table or something over into the corner.

Zoom out as far as you can.

Put the camera in Av mode on the mode dial.  That lets you select the aperture size but the camera still does everything else.

Select a high number like f/11 for a small aperture opening in the lens.  That will make everything in the room come into focus but doesn't let light in very fast.

This reduction of light does force the camera to use a long exposure, so handholding will be impossible without blur.  So put the camera on something really solid.

Take picture.

[Waddizzle]

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@wheeble wrote:

18 mm is not the widest lens, but its what your camera probably has.  To get wider pics for the interior using that lens, you need to mount on a tripod and take two overlapping panning shots and then use the photostitch program that came with your camera to join the images into a wider shot. (it is an easy program to use). 

As a new user of this camera, set it to the green box on the dial and make sure the lens AF switch is set on.

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Buying a decent tripod to implement the above suggestion is cheaper than buying a new lens.  Roll the camera to portrait mode when you take a series of shots.  Make the shots overlap by 1/3 for best results.

[EDIT]. You will get the best results taking a series of panoramic shots if you use the same exposure for all shots, which means shooting, which means shooting in Manual mode.  Take a shot in Green [A] mode, write down the settings if you like exposure.  Use those settings in manual mode to take a series of shots as you pan the camera across the room.