Photographing tractors

Another problem with the wide-angle is that if the camera is TIPPED a little bit, vertical lines will appear to be tilted inward or outward, depending on which way the camera is tipped. This is why so many of those great shots we took on our vacations show buildings with walls that lean toward each other. Here is a very easy way to avoid both these problems: ZOOM OUT and back away if you can. The telephoto settings minimize the "too-close too-big" look AND reduce the chances of getting vertical lines to lean inward or outward. With the digital camera, it costs nothing to experiment. A few minutes trying a few pictures at different zoom settings will give you an idea of what your camera will do. Some of the effects I'm talking about don't show up very well on the tiny digital screens, so you may have to put them on the computer screen to see the results of your experiments. Before the digitals became all the rage, photographers usually had to change lenses to go from very wide-angle to telephoto (some zooms did both). It was a common photographic trick to use a fairly wide-angle lens to distort things in the way I talk about above. Usually, this was deliberate. Today, we don't often think about whether our digital lens is "wide-angle," "normal" or "telephoto." The effects are there, but we just don't think about them. I've taken quite a few pictures of buildings with tilting walls, or of people whose hands are bigger than their faces, before learning that I had to stop and think about the effect I wanted. It's fun to experiment, it's fun to play tricks with the camera, AND it's fun to get exactly what you want to show. Hope this is helpful.

Gordo

One more tip, if I do say so myself. It is often nice to be at the same level as the subject you are shouting. Too often people take pictures of flowers while standing. What you get is a "fly over shot". It is much better to squat. Even when taking pictures of say people sitting on a bench, the shot will be better if you squat to the people's level. This is not likely too much of an issue when photographying tractors, but it could be if you are getting an action shot and you are shooting from a hill side or such.

One more, quater on shots are often more interesting that totally oblique shots.

Good advice Len!

The farther away you stand and the more telephoto you employ, the less distorted (and generally more pleasing...) image is the result.