Amongst other things it means you can shoot two people talking in your living room without having to knock a hole in the wall so you can get the camera back far enough to see both of them at the same time :).

That's actually a serious problem with a lot of consumer cameras: they advertise their huge zooms, but the wide-angle isn't wide enough to get a decent shot in a confined space.

Wide angle lenses are often used for action scenes because the focus area is so much deeper and movement in and around won't require a focus puller adjusting the focus.

Wide angle lenses also create a feeling of vast distance between distant and close objects whereas a telephoto makes things look really close together (also used for a lot of action scenes to make a train look really close to a car or whatever).

RJSchwarz
San Diego, CA