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The 'nifty fifty' view, taken at 51mm equivalent (34mm APS-C) |
How much do photos show a landscape as it actually appeared, that would look the same to someone else standing in the same spot? I don’t mean the same colours, the same light, the same sky, of course. They change all the time. I mean the perspective, the relationship between different parts of the image. If there’s a tree in the foreground and hills on the horizon, is the scale of both the same in the photo as in the actual view?
It all depends of course on the focal length of the lens. The
wider the lens the more of the scene is in the view but the smaller distant
objects appear and the larger close ones appear. The opposite happens with a longer
focal length.
So what’s the focal length that’s closest to what you
actually see? Traditionally it’s 50mm, the ‘nifty fifty’ in the full frame/35mm
format. When I was learning photography, with a 35mm film camera, I read this
in many books. I never really thought about it though. I just accepted that if
all these photographers said it then it must be so. But must it?
Recently I read a number of online articles, like this
one, about focal length and human eyesight and began to wonder. In different places I read that 43mm and 70mm were
correct, not 50mm. They couldn’t both be! I looked at some of my photos of
views I can see from home taken at around the equivalent of 50mm (33-36mm on my
APS-C camera) and then looked out of the window. The mountains in the distance
looked smaller and further away in the photos (see picture at the head of this article).
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How it looked to my eyes. 73mm (49 APS-C) |
A practical test was needed. I went outside to see which focal length looked the most accurate to my eyes. I picked a spot with some stones not far in front of me so I could check their size against the trees in the mid ground and the hills in the distance, I used a zoom lens (all the images in this piece were taken with a Sony 18-135 zoom lens) and looked at the view and the camera screen while zooming the lens until the proportions looked the same for both.
When the image in the viewfinder and what I could see
matched near enough I pressed the shutter. The focal length was 73mm. That’s
49mm on an APS-C camera so 50mm is the right focal length for the world to look
as I see it! But not in full frame/35mm terms.
If someone stood on the same spot and looked at that view
they would see everything in proportion as in my 73mm photo.
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Cropped wide angle image |
Does that mean having everything in proportion results in the best photograph? Only if that’s what you’re trying to capture. I don’t think the 73mm image is the best from this spot. Or at least it’s not my favourite. I prefer a wide angle image cropped to a panoramic format. I could only see it looking like that through the lens though. It's worth nothing that the dramatic view in a photograph may not look just the same in reality!
Put of curiosity I am going to go out with just my 50mm lens (75mm equivalent)
and see what results I get.
Here are some more photos taken from the same spot at
different focal lengths.
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31mm (21mm APS-C) |
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111mm (74mm APS-C) |
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202mm (135mm APS-C) |
Interesting post. My favourite is the middle one ie 74-111mm. Have you tried stitching several photos together for a panoramic photo? I'm trying to get the camera clicking a bit more. Posted a couple vids on my photo channel I'll try to do more on there.
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