Thoughts on use of wide angle lens for indoor event

[Postman5]

I am shooting an indoor event in a few weeks and will have minimal room to operate. I have a full-frame camera and a lens collection that goes down to 24mm. I would love to shoot the whole think with my 50mm 1.4 but expect that I won't be able to get a lot of the small group shots that will present themselves. In the past I sometimes find that 24mm is still not enough in a residential home setting with a bunch of people moving around. I was thinking about renting a 15-35mm zoom to allow me to fit everything in the shot. I hope to use it in a way where I am not right on top of people but within the constraints of the space. Does anyone have any advice or feedback on this approach? Does the distortion ruin the benefit?

[charles.woodrich]

The Voigtlander 15MM is a nice sharp little lens.  Set it to f8 and everything within 3ft will be in focus.  Crop your images to taste.

[stever]

for an event i think renting a 15 or 16-35 is a good plan - but do a little practice shooting people ahead of time as you can make some very unflattering things happen with a superwide

[Rob C]

for an event i think renting a 15 or 16-35 is a good plan - but do a little practice shooting people ahead of time as you can make some very unflattering things happen with a superwide

Good advice!

[mshea]

Well yeah, if you get in close to catch groups in conversation, you'll have lots of stretched heads. Don't go with an f/4 16 - 35; it's liable to search just a bit longer before locking focus and you may lose that perfect split season reaction.

Merrill

[JoachimStrobel]

For many years I shot good family and indoor crowd photos with my Canon FD 17/4. Recently I switched to the Sony 16-35/4, anticipating the same low distortion for off-centre face shots. I am disappointed, the Canon lens was better in that (even after Dxoing the Sony). So I am just saying: Whatever you rent, try it out on people first and in case of a zoom, check for the widest enjoyable setting. I also noticed that an EVF reaches its resolution limit for judging focus in UWA corners and wildly swinging the camera for a focus-hold irritates people.