CFWA

Share with your friends!

CFWA stands for Close Focus Wide Angle, and it typically used to describe a technique that is popular with underwater photographers. The idea is to use a lens that allows extremely close focusing, but still shoot with a relatively wide angle in order to take in the surrounding underwater landscape. Popular lenses for this technique would be the Canon 8-15 fisheye, the Nikkor 8-15 fisheye or the Tokina 10-17.

In the example CFWA photo at the top of the page, you can see from the image’s edge distortion that the photo was taken with a fisheye lens. The central coral subject appears to be very large, and certainly dominates the image, but in fact it’s very small, and the camera is just extremely close to it. Using a wide angle lens for this, instead of a macro lens, allows the whole thing to be in the image, including its surroundings.