Ultra wide lens Enlarged space

The photo was taken in the Cathedral of Szeged (Hungary). At the first really nice spring day I made a short trip to Szeged so I had taken my camera-bag but nothing special. I had no special plan to take photos so I left my tripod. However when I entered to the Cathedral of Szeged I regretted to leave my tripod so I had no other choice but turned up the ISO to 2500 and set the aperture to f/2.8. The focal length was set to 16mm so these settings provided me a safe shutter speed (1/30) to take a sharp picture in spite of lacking tripod and image stabilizer, as well. I wasn't worried about the DoF because of the ultra-wide lens that provided about 1.5m as near limit. The rich decoration of the walls and the variety of the architectural elements like arches and domes was attracting enough to take a memorable photo. However when I was setting my camera a man walked into the viewfinder and finally he stood the perfect place in front of the altar.

High contrast

The bright stained glassed windows, the shady walls and arches make very high contrast, which was more than the dynamic range of my camera. Actually, I would have used HDR function to take more photos to increase the dynamic range but in that case the tripod had been necessary. Even if I had a tripod to take HDR picture the dome would have seen very similar because there have had nothing behind the windows of the dome but only the sky. The windows of the altar would have been detailed in case of some EV compensation but it was not my objective (and nor my possibility). Eventually, the bright windows and the silhouette of the man complete the well exposed interior. I deem this "over- and underexposed" parts give special sense to the picture.

Post processing

The first thing that I check in case of taking photo with wide angle length is chromatic aberration and vignetting. These are the two, most annoying phenomenon of wide angle lenses, at least for me. However it is quite easy to correct with software during post procession if the photo was taken in RAW, because most software automatically make correction based on the recognition the camera and lens. In this case the strong vignetting was the most disturbing for me in the corners. Besides the basic corrections I made a minimal adjustment of the colours, contrast and white balance.

Composition

The composition of the picture is very simple. To use a ultra-wide angle lens from a low viewpoint provides an extra high interior for the cathedral, where the silhouette of the men is in contrast to the bright windows and the altar in golden light. 16 mm focal length means 95° angle of view vertically that is pretty wide to involve the floor and also the dome right above me into a photo. Of course the distortion of the walls is extremely high but that is what I wanted to have.