How Do I Do This?

[Magnum]

Being quite new to photography, there is something that has been bugging me and I'm not sure what the answer is.
When photographing something very tall or long in the distance, I can only zoom in so much because the whole thing won't fit into the view finder.
There have been a few things I wished I could have zoomed in on better and got more detail, but I could only zoom so much because of the fitting it all in problem.
I was talking to someone the other day and they mentioned that you can buy a lens that fits onto your existing lens (or something to that effect) which would enable me to do this.
Is this true, and if so can anyone advise me what I should be looking to get (I have a Minolta dimage Z2)
I would just like to be able to fit more into my pics when I zoom, nothing drastic, just a bit more than I already can!

Julia

[another view]

I think you might be talking about a panoramic image. Are you looking for a long skinny print, maybe 4" x 10" or similar proportions? You could shoot as you have been and either trim an 8x10 or make that crop in Photoshop.

If this isn't the case, then another option might be to get closer and use a wider lens. This changes the perspective a lot, and might give you a much more interesting shot. Move around to different spots to shoot from and see what effect this has on the shot - the wider the lens, the better.

[Magnum]

I think you might be talking about a panoramic image. Are you looking for a long skinny print, maybe 4" x 10" or similar proportions? You could shoot as you have been and either trim an 8x10 or make that crop in Photoshop.

If this isn't the case, then another option might be to get closer and use a wider lens. This changes the perspective a lot, and might give you a much more interesting shot. Move around to different spots to shoot from and see what effect this has on the shot - the wider the lens, the better.

Yes! Wider lens is what I was talking about. How do I know which is the best to use for my camera?

Julia