You want Wide? I've got wide

Camera gear is serious business and lenses are highly sophisticated bits of optical technology that can be used to define your career in photography... That being said, I bought a new lens and wanted to play with it right away.

I had been hungering for an ultra wide angle lens for a while but never got my hands on one because they're not as common and therefore a bit pricey. For those of you who know a thing or two about cameras, I'm invested in the micro four thirds mount; it is a relatively new and smaller mount than what is found on most other cameras which makes it even harder to find cheap ultra wide options - native or adapted.

With money burning a hole in my pocket from my wedding earnings, I decided to re-invest the cash in an ultra wide angle lens for myself. I maxed out my earnings with the cheapest option I could find, a used Tamron 10-24mm f3.5-4.5, EF mount lens mated to a Viltrox EF -M2 speedbooster. For those of you who have no idea what any of that means, essentially the lens is made for a different (more common) lens mount and the speedbooster adapts that lens mount to work with my camera.

With a free evening on the day that the new kit arrived and some quick messages to Chris (IG: @chris.stray), I grabbed my camera and tripod to head into Sheffield city centre for an evening of shooting.

We started by heading to the square outside the front of city hall, a spot I've rarely visited with my camera.

You'd think that being right outside the city hall with it's big columns atop of the steps and a wide angle lens to test, I'd go straight for taking shots of city hall but I just wasn't feeling it. I lined up some shots of city hall but felt a bit uninspired, so instead we turned our attention to one of the fountains and gold coloured building reflecting the sunset.

Feeling like we had exhausted the potential at the fountain for one day, we started to wonder around town looking for inspiration. After trying some shots of graffiti in a car park my eye was drawn to an alleyway as we walked through it.

With the last of the light fading we headed to the new cinema on the Moor to try a concept I had in my head from the start of the outing; I wanted to get a long exposure shot whilst on an escalator to get the motion blur of the stairs moving but keep a person still in the frame. I only gave it one quick attempt before moving on but I think it proved that the concept was a good idea and it's definitely something I'll make a better attempt at in the future.

After more aimless wandering we headed to Sheffield Cathedral where, yet again, I felt uninspired taking photos of the imposing structure and instead turned my lens to take shots of long exposure light trails of the traffic outside of the cathedral. At first I wanted to set my focus on the railings of the tram stop and show the trails of light behind, a shot inspired by US photographer Evan Ranft's shot taken through a chain link fence. Unfortunately I just didn't think the shot worked well, the background was too cluttered and the thick bars of the fence didn't look right to me (I have included my best attempt as the first shot shown below). Unlike the fence idea, I think the shots looking up the tram tracks turned out great!

We decided to move down the tramlines and made our way towards the ponds forge roundabout. Taking a quick stop en route I took what I consider to be my best shot of the night.

I call this one "Busses doing zoomies"

I don't consider the ponds forge roundabout to be particularly pretty during the day, I mostly associate it with the time some old fella almost took the bumper off my car after pulling into my lane without looking or indicating, at night though, you can get some seriously nice sweeping light trails from the cars passing through. I haven't had much experience with capturing light trails and long exposures, most of the shots I take are trying to freeze fast motion not draw it out so it made a good change to (quite literally) slow things down.

The last stop on the (much longer than expected) trip was the train station where I had another concept to test - to have a wide shot looking straight down the foot bridge that connects each platform to the station. Initially I wanted to have the walkway completely empty so that you would see the leading lines drawing into a point in the centre of the frame; however, an unexpectedly large volume of late night (11pm) commuters changed that plan, so with a slightly drawn out exposure to blur the crowd I went home with a shot that I prefer to the original concept.

Feeling a little more adventurous we walked down onto one of the platforms to take a few more shots. To be honest we were enjoying our shots too much to care about the time but we suddenly realised that it was getting quite late and we were starting to get hungry, it was a good time to end the shoot.

Although we had called it a night and put the cameras away the highlight of our night came when we passed the cab of a train as we were walking back along the platform. Chatting between ourselves, we were interrupted by the driver of the train who had seen us taking pictures on the platform. As it turned out he was a fan of photography himself and spent a handful of minutes chatting to us about gear and what we had been up to. It wasn't till we ended the conversation and started to walk away that we realised the guy had actually been delaying the train to talk to us! It gave a good little laugh to wake us up and warm us for the long walk home in the cold night air.

Safe to say I had a great spur of the moment night with a lens that I'm very happy I spent my pennies on.