In the field of architectural photography, a building should usually be presented such that its vertical lines are parallel. To achieve this, you have two options:

First, you can use a specialized lens such as Canon’s TS-E 24mm f/3.5 L that gives true perspective correction in-camera, meaning the lines of the building are already straight when you look thru the viewfinder.

Or you can use any wide-angle lens and correct the perspective later in Photoshop. But to do that, you have to be careful in how you frame your shot, making sure you leave enough breathing space around the building since you will be left with diagonal edges after you have straightened the perspective. Also, you are well-advised to not go with this option unless absolutely necessary, since cropping means you have to throw away valuable pixels.

Remember what I posted about regarding wide-angle lenses? Well, I had to eat my words yesterday.

The building I had been commissioned to shoot stood 15 floors high and was sandwiched left and right by other buildings making up the concrete valley otherwise known as Robinson Road. The good thing was that there was only one facade to capture. The only spot to capture this one facade was from across the four-lane road. The bad thing was the row of skyscrapers behind me. The proximity of the two rows of buildings did not allow me the luxury of taking another two steps back; my back was literally pressed to the wall of the building behind me.

Also, since the best angle of the facade was an almost frontal one, I had to tilt my lens skyward more in order to frame the entire building, which translated into an even sharper perspective.

Which further translated into more drastic perspective correction cropping. While I was able to get the entire building and its surroundings amply into the shot with my EF 17-40mm, too much had to be cropped from both left and right sides of the image after perspective correction in Photoshop.

After an hour in which I spent shooting just about every variation in framing to allow for better crops, and trying out each crop on-location, it became clear there was no way I was going to get a shot wide enough to accommodate perspective correction. Quite simply, I needed to go wider. The TS-E 24mm mentioned above would not have helped here; I would not have been able to get the entire building into the shot in the first place, even if it would have given me true perspective.

But every problem has a solution, no? But of course; it only comes down to how much one is be willing to pay for it.

Out of sheer frustration, compounding which was the fact that it was my fifth trip back to this site due to flaky weather, I made a call to my usual camera store and asked for the price of The Solution.

In Canon’s catalog of lenses, the widest of the wide-angle lenses of interest to the architectural photographer is the EF 14mm f/2.8 L. With a point-of-view at 114 degrees, the angle that this lens can capture is astounding. Its price tag is just as astounding; coming in at the amount I am due to receive for three ongoing jobs, getting this lens effectively negates the income.

But I had a client to please.

I bit the bullet. The difference between 17mm and 14mm is hugely visible. In the end, I got the shots I needed with the new lens. I guess, in photography, size—even three minuscular millimeters—does matter. Appropriately, I have decided, upon seeing the lens for the first time, to nickname it ‘The Clit’.

Canon Ef 14Mm F2.8L

Looks like one, no?