Lens choices

Blog writing for myself: I realise that no one really reads these, so I decided to write it down because I like it, for myself. Like journalling but then public, still there to see in 5 or 10 years time.

What I want to get on paper today is about what lens to chose, or more specifically: what focal length? I am the last person to say that lens choice is only about focal length! There are lenses with character; jewels, magical lenses as some call them. I agree, but that very subjective matter is not the focus here. 

Regarding focal length then… This is my personal opinion, but I see many successful photographers approach it is a similar manner, so there must be something humanly meaningful about it. 

Subject is important, and let me start with the first of two I discuss here, being Landscapes. Natural landscapes, city landscapes, interior landscapes… they are pretty similar I think, regarding the choice of focal length. 

To rationalise things let’s first equal lens choice to focal length, end then focal length to angle of view. That is the angle of your vision field, as seen through the lens. 

For those not immediately intuitive with angles, here is the useful reference.

• a 90 degree angle is a perpendicular angle, with the two lines that form the angle perpendicular to each other. Like a corner of walls of a (squarely built) room.

• a 45 degree angle is half that. You can form it with your hands.

These give you an idea.

Now here are the rough and precise angles of view for most used lens focal lengths (all in full frame equivalent):

• 50 mm —> ±45 deg. —> 46 degree to be exact

• 35 mm —> ±60 deg. —> 63 degree to be exact

• 24 mm —> ±90 deg. —> 84 degree to be exact

• 80 mm —> ±30 deg. —> exactly! (although most use a 85mm lens which equates to 28 deg., roughly the same)

Remember that lenses are not always accurate in what they say: your 24mm lens may well behave like a 22 or 26 mm… So these rough indications work just fine. 

If you use a crop sensor camera, like I do, you convert the focal lengths, you are probably already familiar with that (becoming 35mm, 23mm and 16mm respectively for the angles listed above). 

For landscape I like wide angle or tele. For wide angle, I start to like a landscape scene framed in 35mm (FF equivalent, or 60 deg. FOV). It is a little wide, which allows multiple large landscape features in a frame, creates a little perspective-depth that still feels very natural, and it is possible to capture some perspective line-elements for composition. I think for this reason 35mm is the most natural FOV, for landscape and city/street! I also really like it for people shots, as long as it is not to cropped at their face/chest, but more a full body view. 

From here I often like to go wider toward 24mm or 15mm. The perspective increases dramatically, which gives a beautiful surreal effect, I think. But most important it the amount of large scale features that you can fit in your frame. If they are not suitable, then don’t go this wide or you will fill your frame with too much stuff and it becomes messy, uninteresting. 

The alternative here of course is to get ver close to a foreground (subject). The frame gets filled with recognisable objects that fill a larger area of the frame that gives much better balance. The perspective-depth between fore-/background becomes strong and surreal. I like it most of the time. 

Now, you can argue that these FOV are unnatural, because the human eye sees with the equivalent of a 50mm lens (45 degree FOV). I disagree. I know that the human eye can have a field of view that approaches 180 degrees (!), although it gets blurry at the edges we still see moving shapes there. What we actually project into our brain as our FOV depends on what we mentally focus on. If we concentrate our attention on a subject, as we most of the time do, our FOV narrows. If we do the opposite: we maintain an awareness of our wider visual field, we can see ultra-wide. 

When I am at my most happiest in nature, I am immersed in it, be that a landscape of forest or what have you. I am hyper alert and taking it all in at the same time. And both metaphorically as well as literally, I see the scene with a much wider field of view. That is why I like my landscapes with a wider angle: frame it the way I saw it, with wide awareness. 

There are exceptions of course; I also like a tele-lens framing of a landscape. Like a mountain wall, cliff or cliffs. Or a beautiful tree against a distant atmosphere. Or a meandering river… The tele lens beautifully crops a detail in the frame and flattens the perspective. Depth disappears. All becomes surfaces, areas, lines, texture. And nature has many beautiful variations in these so I also like tele. 

Now the second subject, people. How do you see people: as intriguing beings you like to get to know a little better, or as a ‘colony’ of vast numbers that appears if endless shapes and colours, always moving around in this ‘living space’ you find yourself in? Well, that determines the best lens to use to capture it the way you see it. If the first, then a 50mm lens with a 45 degree FOV is indeed very suitable, I find. It is slightly focussed (zoomed) in on our human FOV, giving more attention to the other being, but in a very natural, restful kind of way. 

The portrait lens of say 85mm (roughly 30 degree FOV) here gives even more attention to the person, really framing them, separating them from the background. You can go further of course, make this more extreme, which is a classic way to shoot fashion or beauty shots with a 70-200mm zoom lens. 

In summary:

My preferred ‘lens’ for landscape is 35mm to 15mm with a sweet spot probably in 21-24mm, for a wide immersed, slightly surreal perspective, and ability to frame large landscape features into one shot. 

For people I prefer 35mm to 50mm, for the natural perspective, giving some attention to the person whilst still having an environmental perspective. I love these two focal lengths, they are my most used and most favoured prime lenses, and I could shoot 90% of my images if I had just these two lenses!
I hope this was useful for the imagined reader…