The affluence of architectural innovation encourages professional photographer to capture the images of awesome buildings of the world in their cameras. Every city has its own beauty. Thus, it attracts every photographer to capture the beautiful images in the camera. Camera, itself, is the only important thing that decides the quality of the images. Therefore, whenever you plan to buy a digital camera for architectural photography, you must consider some basics of the camera that you need particularly for architectural photography. Since all the objects of such images are static, you need not to worry so much about the features and functions of the camera. It is very easy to take shots of any building, but proper technique and appropriate digital camera can give you better quality of the images.

The Appropriate Camera and Its Accessories

Among various options for the digital cameras for architectural photography, photographers prefer medium format or large format camera. These cameras produce 4x5 inches or 6x9 inches images. Because of the larger format, images cost very high. The technical inconvenience also discourages the photographer to use These cameras.

Anyhow, 35 mm camera is a good substitute for those cameras. This is actually a reliable option for those who are about to start architectural photography, professionally. Besides a superior 35mm or a Digital SLR camera, you must be equipped with tripods and lenses as well. Zooming is an important factor in architectural photography. So, the camera must be featured with either zoom or fixed focal length to capture the images from a distance.

A regular or standard lens produces good quality of images, but the options become more wide if your camera is powered with a lens, which is of 20 mm to 200 mm in length.

Aperture value

Wide aperture value of the lens is not as much essential in architectural photography as it is in other types photography. However, aperture smaller than F11, is not recommended for architectural and city-escape photography because it interacts with the wave of light, which is known as Diffraction. Though auxiliary lens gives better quality of images, there always remains a probability of distortion. To avoid such inconvenience, it is better to use a zoom instead. There also remains an option of SLR lenses as well. But before you purchase any lens, you are advised to check out its performance, if possible.

The Ultra Wide Angle lens is also widely used for architectural photography. The focal length of the lens varies somewhere between 15 mm to 21 mm. Since it is very expensive and heavy, the photographer is always advised to examine it properly before finalizing the decision of buying it.

Lens

Lenses play a key role in Cityscape and architectural photography. Super wide ranging from 14mm to Wide Angle lens ranging from 24mm is a great choice for architectural photographers. The length of the wide angle lens ranges from 14mm to 50mm where 50mm is same as human eye. The lens gives rich quality of picture for the city-escape photography. It can cover the scene with a wide area and consequently capture all the objects in a single frame. This is slightly less expensive than Ultra-Wide Angle lens. Similar to the Medium-Wide Angle lens, Short Telephoto Lens is also less expensive and also very useful for architectural photography. The Short Telephoto Lens can effectively isolate the background objects and provides sharp image of the main object. There exist particular types of lenses that are designed specifically for the purpose of architecture and cityscape photography. Canon is one of the manufacturers who have made such lenses for architectural photographers. They call these lenses “Tilt-and-Shift lenses”. These lenses can be tilted at an angle to the camera body, and the lens axis can be shifted away from the centre of the frame. This allows correction of perspective distortion and the manipulation of Dept-of-Field. The Tilt-and-Shift lens is very expensive but useful for the purpose to ignore converging verticals incase of architectural photography. In consequence, by considering all the varieties of lenses, photographers can easily decide which lens would better suit their needs. Actually, lens is a very important component and as a result, it demands maximum attention while choosing the best digital SLR camera for architectural photography.

Tripod

Since most of the tripods are very heavy, photographers find it very difficult to carry them. As a result, they prefer to avoid the use of tripod. However, a tripod is very essential accessory that helps the photographer to capture the images from different angles. Nowadays, tripod is made up of aluminum and is light in weight compared to earlier tripods. The tripod made up of carbon fiber is also lighter and stronger as well. It is expensive, but easy to handle. The ideal tripod should be of at least 5 foot in height from the ground.

Depth-of-Field

The shutter speed is not a big deal in architectural photography. Therefore, the digital camera does not essentially have a feature of high shutter speed as far as architectural photography is concerned. Lower shutter speeds are used more often than fast shutter speeds. Depth of field is an important factor that needs to be considered while looking for a digital camera for architectural photography. Although sensor size of the digital camera affects depth of field but its not the one that controls it. Most amateur photographers think that digital cameras should provide depth of field but it is not true. Digital SLR cameras have an option to show Depth of Field but this is something related to lenses not digital cameras themselves. Depth of Field is related to aperture value on your lens. The wider the aperture the shallower depth of field you’ll receive. When you are taking shots of a building and you want a thorough and in-depth detail and sharpness of the scene you’ll probably go for narrower aperture since it provides a much more robust depth of field. In case you like to focus on a subject and only pull out the details of that part but no other distracting objects then you’ll probably go for larger and wider aperture value. The Tilt-and-Shift lenses offer great aperture range and provide awesome depth of field for cityscape and architectural photography but one of the draw backs that this lens offer is the lack of auto focus.

ISO Level

The ISO level of the camera is another issue that one should consider. Some architectural photos require indoor photography where low-light is introduced. In such locations your digital camera should be capable of producing images with acceptable quality on higher ISO settings. There is a problem here. Yes you can control light with aperture value but with architectural photography, you definitely need narrow aperture in order to produce sharp and details indoor image. This way you are left with no other setting but low shutter speed or high ISO setting. Due to many visitors to such places you have less chance of using higher shutter speed. This is where high ISO capabilities of your camera come in to account.

Recap

Most people believe that architectural or city-escape photography is quite easy, but it does involve several technical applications not to mention the capabilities of your DSLR camera. This is one of the conditions that we highly urge hobbisists, architectural and cityscape photographers to go for DSLR cameras rather than SLR-Like digital cameras. The possibility of being able to use different lenses means a lot in this area of photography. As mentioned lens plays the most important role for good quality images in this area. Architectural photography is no exception to it. The buyer should be aware of his/her needs and budget while selecting the appropriate lens for the camera. Nowadays a DSLR can be bought as low as 600 bucks which is close to SLR-Like camera prices. Above and beyond lens, the photographer should also spend some amount of time in considering budget for lens, size of LCD screen and ISO level as well.

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