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Today we use crappy phone lenses and force ourselves to think that they're wonderful, but I have very fond memories of that Canon 50mm lens on my Canon film camera.
This article was actually published more than 20 years ago, https://web.archive.org/web/20020603153119/http://vothphoto.... Some of its advice is timeless, but its context is back when your phone did not take great pictures. Instead, most people carried around no camera at all, and events went undocumented. Then, among people who decided they wanted to take pictures of wherever they were going, they bought point-and-…
Arguably your phone still doesn’t take great pictures in the situation the author is describing: indoors, medium to low light. In this situation the advice is still timeless, a camera with a 50mm ~f1.4 can create a truly great photo (skills outstanding), while the best phone will still produce a “good” photo.
> As your spouse proudly holds the baby up you raise the camera to your eye. How did you just happen to have the camera with the right lense right at the moment? For truly spur of the moment, have to use whatever you have at hand and not worry about tech, usually a cell phone. > The viewfinder seems a little dim in the room light On the other hand if you have a little more time, just click live button and tap viewscr…
The one lense that is on most of the time, especially when travelling, is a 24-120.
I still would recommend a 50mm, simply for its convenience, low light performance, small size, incredible sharpness, speedy AF and beautiful image characteristics from backgrounds to sun stars.
If pointing someone to a single "normal" lens as a prime, I'd point them to a 40mm, not a 50. When I work with a 50 (which I very much enjoy; used one yesterday), I find that it is tighter in composition than my normal field of view. The 40 much-better matches my own perception and experience. The 50 is a more-careful tool. 35 is a little wide for me (but perfect for human/photojournalism work). If you want to try ou…
The article does have a section on exactly the issue (FOV) you note - it identifies that the 50mm lens is not the same with modern cameras (which have smaller sensors than 35mm film cameras), and recommends a 35mm lens for these cameras. Personally, I have a 35mm prime lens and quite like it, and I think it did help me improve my skills when I can't just zoom to get what I want in frame.
One, the recommended 50mm focal length lens here is specific to full-frame cameras with 35mm sensors. If you have an APS-C camera, which is quite common, then you want a ~32mm lens, and if you use M4/3 like I do, then you want a 25mm lens, to achieve this same effect.
Of course it's a lot simpler to abstract away the camera sensor size and simply look at field of view, which for a 50mm full-frame lens is about 40 degrees. This is actually not that much; it's quite "zoomed-in" in appearance compared to everything you can see at once through your eyes, which is at least 90 degrees field of view plus more for your peripheral vision. So the following quote from the article is definitely inaccurate:
> The 50mm lens is called a “normal” or “standard” lens because the way it renders perspective closely matches that of the human eye.
To really match the experience of being there, you need an ultrawide lens to capture the full human field of view. The 40 degree field of view of a nifty fifty is like looking through a narrow doggy cone of shame.
A few caveats to this. One, the recommended 50mm focal length lens here is specific to full-frame cameras with 35mm sensors. If you have an APS-C camera, which is quite common, then you want a ~32mm lens, and if you use M4/3 like I do, then you want a 25mm lens, to achieve this same effect. Of course it's a lot simpler to abstract away the camera sensor size and simply look at field of view, which for a 50mm full-fra…
It's not the same effect, far from it. It's different focal length, that will render different image.
> As your spouse proudly holds the baby up you raise the camera to your eye. How did you just happen to have the camera with the right lense right at the moment? For truly spur of the moment, have to use whatever you have at hand and not worry about tech, usually a cell phone. > The viewfinder seems a little dim in the room light On the other hand if you have a little more time, just click live button and tap viewscr…
A 50 mm is one of my special occasion lenses, the others being a 80-200 and a 300, the latter often combined with a TC. The 50 is great for low light, for street photography and small enough to carry with you. Street ohotography because you stand out much less with a DSLR without battery grip and a lens as small as a 50 mm. Low light, because of f1.8. The one lense that is on most of the time, especially when travell…
A few caveats to this. One, the recommended 50mm focal length lens here is specific to full-frame cameras with 35mm sensors. If you have an APS-C camera, which is quite common, then you want a ~32mm lens, and if you use M4/3 like I do, then you want a 25mm lens, to achieve this same effect. Of course it's a lot simpler to abstract away the camera sensor size and simply look at field of view, which for a 50mm full-fra…
This entirely depends on the size and perspective from which your photos are viewed. If you're taking photos that will be printed in 8 foot posters to be hung on a wall and viewed standing right in front of them - yes, a wide-angle lens with 90-degree or higher FOV will resemble the perspective you see through your eye.
However, most people view photographs at smaller scale - on their computer screen, their phone, (long ago) in index-card-sized prints, or in medium-sized prints they hang on their wall in a frame and view from some distance.
If you're looking at a photo on your phone - that kind of is a narrow doggy cone of shame, and a photo taken with a 50 mm lens and displayed on your phone will still resemble the same perspective you'd see viewing that scene with your eye.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you ever used a manual focus lens on a mirrorless camera with focus-peaking[1] on? It's so easy to focus, it feels like cheating. It makes a 50mm usable wide open. (This is assuming your subject is relatively static or at least cooperative. Small children and animals really benefit from autofocus or a smaller aperture.) 1. For those unfamiliar with the term, focus peaking is a feature of most mirrorless cameras…
Sure, but using auto-focus is even easier. I can achieve focus in under a second. And with subject detection + eye-AF, there really is no comparison. In my opinion, focus peaking is somewhat useful for video, macro and astro. I say somewhat because it depends on the implementation. Some implementations (e.g. Sony) also apply in-camera picture settings (which adds sharpening to the output of the JPEG engine - which fe…
A few caveats to this. One, the recommended 50mm focal length lens here is specific to full-frame cameras with 35mm sensors. If you have an APS-C camera, which is quite common, then you want a ~32mm lens, and if you use M4/3 like I do, then you want a 25mm lens, to achieve this same effect. Of course it's a lot simpler to abstract away the camera sensor size and simply look at field of view, which for a 50mm full-fra…
> If you have an APS-C camera, which is quite common, then you want a ~32mm lens, and if you use M4/3 like I do, then you want a 25mm lens, to achieve this same effect. It's not the same effect, far from it. It's different focal length, that will render different image.