Wide angle

I've been wanting to do this for a while now--since my new camera has a "wide-angle lens"--to take pictures with the new camera, and with the old camera, from the same place, to see the difference in how much you can see from a regular camera, as compared to a wide angle camera.

This was taken with my old Minolta:

And this is with my new Panasonic:
Of course, neither one is being displayed at their full resolution, as Blogger doesn't allow pictures larger than 1600x1200.

Why is this wide angle important? Well, for instance, if you were hanging out with a group of friends, do you need to get some extra space in order to fit all of your friends into the frame? Sometimes you might not have that extra space available to you. When the camera has a wider angle, you won't need as much of that extra space.