50mm “lens” for landscape photography

[Anthony MD]

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1 minute ago, Anthony MD said:

This one I managed to get all in…📷

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These I didn’t…!

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[Anthony MD]

These buildings inspired the design of the Twin Towers…!

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[jakontil]

42 minutes ago, erl said:

You are missing the point of choice. The motif MUST decide which lens, according to the influence you wish to and can impose on it.

If you only have one lens, there is only one choice.

Imagine standing at the base of the Eiffel Tower with only a 50mm lens. You certainly will not get all the tower in a picture. But you might get an interesting section of the structure, but that is not the same thing.

I will take that chance… just which looks? Modern or glowing looks? Eiffel tower during daylights might reflects some lights on her steel which result in blooming effects or aberrations as we call it… some say leica looks 

erl apologize i havent taken my coffee enough 😅

[erl]

1 hour ago, jakontil said:

I will take that chance… just which looks? Modern or glowing looks? Eiffel tower during daylights might reflects some lights on her steel which result in blooming effects or aberrations as we call it… some say leica looks 

erl apologize i havent taken my coffee enough 😅

If you call past, I will ensure the best coffee in Sandringham is served to you.

[Derbyshire Man]

13 hours ago, Anthony MD said:

 

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Step away from the brink! I don’t know if you are a medical MD or if there’s another reason for your username but whatever, clear the diagnostic section of you brain, ignore the referral letter or the note from ED and consider the underlying issues.

That article says a 50mm lens has the same field of view as the human eye. Look out of your head, do you see the same as a 4:3 shot with a 50mm lens, test it, pick up a camera, take the photo, now look at the image, again look straight ahead, does it look the same?

The reason it doesn’t is in part that we have two eyes and binocular vision. Look up the field of view of a 50mm lens and then look up the field of view of human vision. The numbers are very different. Look up the field of view of a single human eye, again much larger than a 50mm lens. (I hope you’re not an ophthalmologist!🤣)
 

The only way that a 43-50mm lens is ‘normal’ is that the relative magnification of objects by distance appears the same as the human eye, unlike a wide angle lens for the ample where the size of things up close are much larger than things further away. 
 

Essentially the internet is full of recycled twaddle, much of which is at best half baked and plenty just wrong. Things being endlessly repeated does not make them true!

Open your eyes🤣

[Ko.Fe.]

4 hours ago, jakontil said:

So which lens to go if only one? 😝

back to square one 

It very simple . How far you need to zoom in or out.

For wide spaces like Vermont I choose 50. For cities in Europe it is 21.

 

[pgk]

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2 hours ago, Derbyshire Man said:

Essentially the internet is full of recycled twaddle, much of which is at best half baked and plenty just wrong. Things being endlessly repeated does not make them true!

How absolutely accurate, and its not just the internet.

A quick story. If you look up in many books you will see that the shallow water Anglerfish is known to take young birds swimming in shallow water. Its an interesting fact and as such has been quoted many, many times in books, over the decades. A marine biologist friend decided that this was actually a weird fact and researched it to discover that back in the 19th century there was one eye witness account of such an event and it was recorded since it was very unusual. Most likely it was a fortuitous happening which an Anglerfish took advantage of to have an unusual snack. But once published it has been quoted ever since and it is an established fact that Anglerfish eat young birds. This is potentially how somw folklore or misinformation starts - a single, unrepresentative even.

Or in the case of lenses, the fact that the origin of 'standard' lenses was forgotten and then it was assumed that because some camera viewfinders magnified the image to match that we saw outside the viewfinder, that standard lenses approxiated to what we see. Errant nonsense as is obvious by just analyising what we see with our ultra wide angle, binocular vision and eye/brain interface - we don't see simple images at all, we perceive them in ways which are complex and interpreted by various factors including experience and what we are expecting to see. Example; if a post box is seen in our peripheral vision we percieve it as being red, but we have no colour sensors in our peripheral vision .....

[Anthony MD]

3 hours ago, Derbyshire Man said:

Step away from the brink! I don’t know if you are a medical MD or if there’s another reason for your username but whatever, clear the diagnostic section of you brain, ignore the referral letter or the note from ED and consider the underlying issues.

That article says a 50mm lens has the same field of view as the human eye. Look out of your head, do you see the same as a 4:3 shot with a 50mm lens, test it, pick up a camera, take the photo, now look at the image, again look straight ahead, does it look the same?

The reason it doesn’t is in part that we have two eyes and binocular vision. Look up the field of view of a 50mm lens and then look up the field of view of human vision. The numbers are very different. Look up the field of view of a single human eye, again much larger than a 50mm lens. (I hope you’re not an ophthalmologist!🤣)
 

The only way that a 43-50mm lens is ‘normal’ is that the relative magnification of objects by distance appears the same as the human eye, unlike a wide angle lens for the ample where the size of things up close are much larger than things further away. 
 

Essentially the internet is full of recycled twaddle, much of which is at best half baked and plenty just wrong. Things being endlessly repeated does not make them true!

Open your eyes🤣

MD refers to the MD in Leica M-D 262.  

If you understood my post, my reasoning simply shows the 50mm has a more natural rendering with less distortion than the other focal lengths.

I didn’t write the article and open your eyes and see you might not understand everything either…!

Edited May 10 by Anthony MD

[Anthony MD]

3 hours ago, pgk said:

How absolutely accurate, and its not just the internet.

A quick story. If you look up in many books you will see that the shallow water Anglerfish is known to take young birds swimming in shallow water. Its an interesting fact and as such has been quoted many, many times in books, over the decades. A marine biologist friend decided that this was actually a weird fact and researched it to discover that back in the 19th century there was one eye witness account of such an event and it was recorded since it was very unusual. Most likely it was a fortuitous happening which an Anglerfish took advantage of to have an unusual snack. But once published it has been quoted ever since and it is an established fact that Anglerfish eat young birds. This is potentially how somw folklore or misinformation starts - a single, unrepresentative even.

Or in the case of lenses, the fact that the origin of 'standard' lenses was forgotten and then it was assumed that because some camera viewfinders magnified the image to match that we saw outside the viewfinder, that standard lenses approxiated to what we see. Errant nonsense as is obvious by just analyising what we see with our ultra wide angle, binocular vision and eye/brain interface - we don't see simple images at all, we perceive them in ways which are complex and interpreted by various factors including experience and what we are expecting to see. Example; if a post box is seen in our peripheral vision we percieve it as being red, but we have no colour sensors in our peripheral vision .....

Well, accurate or not, the 50mm renders a more natural lifelike rendering without the distortions found in other focal lengths which is the most important characteristic for me…😁 

[Anthony MD]

5 hours ago, Ko.Fe. said:

It very simple . How far you need to zoom in or out.

For wide spaces like Vermont I choose 50. For cities in Europe it is 21.

 

The Leaning Tower of Pisa didn’t fit until I walked further back…🚶

[lct]

Excerpt of Erwin Puts, Leica Lens Compendium, § 6.1

Quote

The focal length of 50mm has been designated as the 'standard' for the 35mm format [...] There is a psychological and a technical argument that can explain the preference for the 50mm length. If we look at a print with dimensions 15 x 20cm (diagonal 25cm) at the closest normal viewing distance (25cm) the eye is located at the so-called centre of perspective, corresponding to the optical centre of the taking lens. From that location of the eye, we look at the picture as if we were standing in the centre of the negative at the sharpness plane. At this distance the eye can capture the whole print area without eye movement, providing for easy viewing. Technically the focal length of 50mm is a very good compromise between high speed, small dimensions and excellent optical correction [...]

 

[pedaes]

11 minutes ago, lct said:

Excerpt of Erwin Puts, Leica Lens Compendium, § 6.1

Erwin is much missed. His insights  based on science and fact set the standard.

I, too, regularly return to his books.

Edited May 10 by pedaes

[Anthony MD]

50 minutes ago, pedaes said:

Erwin is much missed. His insights  based on science and fact set the standard.

I, too, regularly return to his books.

I have them all downloaded…!

[Anthony MD]

4 minutes ago, Anthony MD said:

I have them all downloaded…!

 

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[Anthony MD]

19 minutes ago, Anthony MD said:

 

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Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

Some are very expensive in book form…📕

[pgk]

1 hour ago, lct said:

Excerpt of Erwin Puts, Leica Lens Compendium, § 6.1

Still wong. Erwin didn't get everything right. I suggest you have a look at "Applied Photographic Optics" by Sidney Ray (a full-time professional lecturer in photographic science). And in another of his books "The Photographic Lens" he defines the 'standard' lens as being one whose focal length is equal to the diagonal of the format. At no point does he attempt to compare the human eye/brain system to the 'standard' lens, but he does trace the history of the 'standard' lens from camera obscura through stages of development including Petzval (with caveats), symmetrical (RR), double Gauss, triplet (Cooke - then Tessar, etc.) and so on. The point being that 'standard' lenses are called 'standard' because of their evolved design characteristics, not because of the perspective they record.

In "The lens in action" he goes on to explain about the eye (at rest) perceiving sharply about* a 50 degree angle, and that 'diminished perspective results from viewing a wide-angle image from too close or a telephoto image from too far. As ever thins aren't as simple as 'the eyes sees roughly like a 50mm lens' but shifting belief structures is sometimes difficult because the real problem we have here is that people don't seem to want to appreciate that things might not be as they think (or are told by lots of incorrect sources) they are and that photographic history is different to folklore.  Carry on folks.

* As ever people vary.

[Anthony MD]

I’ll still “put” him on the top of my reading list…📕

[pedaes]

29 minutes ago, Anthony MD said:

Some are very expensive in book form…📕

I was fortunate to purchase when published direct from Erwin. He signed Leica Compendium for me at a weekend event . This (Compendium 3rd Edition) is the one to have, as  the others rely on exerts from it. The exception being Leica Practicum which is quite heavy going as it is so scientific and theory of optics laden.

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[Anthony MD]

16 minutes ago, pedaes said:

I was fortunate to purchase when published direct from Erwin. He signed Leica Compendium for me at a weekend event . This (Compendium 3rd Edition) is the one to have, as  the others rely on exerts from it. The exception being Leica Practicum which is quite heavy going as it is so scientific and theory of optics laden.

They’re worth a lot of money…💵

[lct]

5 minutes ago, pgk said:

Still wong. Erwin didn't get everything right. I suggest you have a look at "Applied Photographic Optics" by Sidney Ray (a full-time professional lecturer in photographic science). And in another of his books "The Photographic Lens" he defines the 'standard' lens as being one whose focal length is equal to the diagonal of the format [...]

I'm not qualified to say who's right or wrong but according to E. Puts again (same source):

Quote

For a 24x36mm negative the diagonal is exactly 43.27mm. In reality most standard lenses of 50mm focal length are closer to 52mm. That is a difference of almost 10mm and too large to be inconsequential [...]