59yo and I define "normal" purely in terms of the amount of magnification the lens provides. On my camera, I see the same magnification through the viewfinder as in real life at about 70 mm so I'd call that "normal." This has nothing to do with the photos themselves, as like most others I find myself usually shooting wider than 50 mm.
I feel like my one eye has 14-16 mm field of view, and compression like 40-60 mm. Our vision is not full frame + its binocular, so it feels like telephoto and at the same time ultra fisheye wide.
50 mm is good lens, but it is not even close to "normal" in terms of field of view. 24 mm is def more normal. But my vision feels like six-eight 50mm photos stiched togeather with f2.8-4 DoF but 1.2 transmission and super extra clean 25600 ISO with great DR
I am 54, 24mm is my "normal" lens. By the way, I notice at home (indoor) or outdoor, most of the time, you use Sony camera to film your youtube video but Canon, may I know the reason? Sony is better than Canon for youtube video content? Thanks.
I'm 73. I've always thought 50mm was a bit telephoto. To me, an important consideration is not comparing a lens to a human's peripheral vision since much of a human's periphery is blurred and distorted (which is why you had to wiggle your fingers to see them). So for me, it comes back to replicating magnification. Tamron once claimed that 43mm was the lens equivalent to a human's normal perspective when they were promoting their now discontinued 45mm lens. I had it for a while and did like it since it wasn't quite so zoomed in as my 50, but in the end I've decided that 35mm is the sweet spot.
I remember long time ago that 50mm lens were keeping the subject in proper perspective. Wider lens would distort like a convex mirror: big nose and ears farther away. It would also make the background further away. And it would bring the foreground so much closer Longer lens would flatten the face. It would bring the background closer. And the foreground would seem closer to the middle subject. That is what I remember during my early photography classes. 50mm was the preferred beginner "normal lens" because it was reflecting the most natural perspective for the whole scene.
........of course a lens does not actually alter perspective. It simply magnifies and focuses light. A lens cannot change the laws of physics. Telephoto lenses compressing the scene & wild-angle expanding it, is one of those myths continually perpetuated though the photographic community & often written in books. The Photography Channel (youtube it) had a nice segment dis-proving this myth & also in one of the Ansel Adams books, he again disproves this myth.
@@wibbley1 Well you are partially right. If taken from the same distance with the same size sensor there is no difference in perspective between wide and tele when you crop to keep the subject the same size. However, that is not what people usually do. If you keep the subject the same size (in camera frame) you will have to get closer to your subject as you go wider angle. This will certainly distort features (from what we see out of our eyeballs) and the opposite is true of tele lenses. you will have to back up to keep the subject the same size. This will result in a difference in the ratio of the distance from the front of your subject to the back. That is what perspective is. A difference in ratio from the closest to the most distant object in the frame. It has nothing to do with physics. It is optics (and math) and that can be just as confusing as physics.
@@Buddha1992 Hi, I take things correctly, not literally. A correcting lens will make things seem bigger, as it is magnifying, exactly what a lens does. The confusion comes as peeps will move closer with a 35mm lens, to get the same framing and move back with a 50mm lens. It is the distance to subject that changes, the wide angle lens is not magically changing the laws of physics. Problem is, the compression/expansion myth has been peddled for so many years, appears in text books & even gets taught in photography lessons. Ansel Adams disproved this myth in one of his books.
@@JHuffPhoto Exactly, it is the distance to subject that changes. Not the camera lens defying the laws of physics. Just think how amazing it would be if one could purchase a lens with the specification 'moves background 2X closer' or 'will shrink a nose by 20%' Understand this fact will help in composition, how big do you wish the subject to be in relation to the background, how close/far can you get to the subject. Ansel Adams documented much of this in his great books, alas many later photo-book writers & teachers have never read it, yet alone actually gone out with a bunch of lenses & proved it. Even when I proved to my photo teacher years ago, it was still not believed. Lets hope @TonyNorthrop is reading this and can do an in-depth myth busting video,
63 years old with a 25-year career in news photography, now ended. The 35mm focal length would be more of a "normal" lens for me. Yes, a fast 50 was the lens I started with on my Minolta SR-T 201 film camera but I must say that in all my years covering spot news, sports and features, I very rarely saw a 50 in the hands of any of my colleagues/competitors, and I really didn't use one either.
@ElfTaleFilms I love the 70mm It feels comfy Maybe because I like taking portraits and not being that close to the subject is good for me. Maybe I should try an 35mm I'm 17
I started with 50mm on full frame but find myself using 35mm now as general purpose lens for family outings. Got tired of having to take 2 steps back to capture a shot. I do think smart phones have conditioned me to expect wider FOV and be able to take casual pics of people very close to me (2-4 feet)
Yea. The 35 sing more to me than 50. Everytime i use a 50. I just feel i need to move back more than I need to move forward when i have a 35. Especially when I just want to take photo of food.. or fren in a restaurent etc. the 35 usually work better for landscape than 50 to since 35 is still consider wide.. sort of. And if I need portrait or closer shot. I just move forward or use the 85 instead. So. 50 is not quite a thing for me. I tried but just not for me. But. Everyone is different. So. I can understand.
One quick thing: our peripheral vision may provide us with a very wide FOV, but if you notice, things off to the side aren't clear. If you look straight ahead, your clear vision is probably a lot closer to a 50mm FOV.
Yep. You can even feel your eyes position differently for peripheral. Try Tony's finger wiggle experiement, but focused straight ahead; while you can detect motion, you have to bring them in way more to get anything like detail view. Still, I think Tony has a good point. It's useful to think about the desired effect, not some historical "normal"
Acutally your eyes can only see detail in a small area, the fovea which is I think about 2 degrees of vision. This is why your eyes move around when reading. Your brain does a very good job of piecing together a detailed view, and often fills in the gaps according to what it expects. I guess you don't tend to move youe eyes outside of a certain central region, hence the central vs peripheral vision disctinction.
I think the choice of a 24mm main lens on modern phones has more to do with a compromise between not wanting to go too wide and not wanting the camera bump to be too thick as they increase the size of the sensor. I often find 24mm too prone to distortion for many subjects. It has it's place as a tool, but I think focal lengths in the 28-40 range are better do-it-all lenses.
I am 72 years old and serious about photography since circa 1970. Never did care much for 50 mm. I favor 35 mm and 24 mm. Your explanation of normal is the best I ever heard. It works for me!
33 year old teacher here. When I did online teaching during Covid I picked a 35 mm lens (Canon RP) and it felt pretty much perfect. Plenty of room to move while not being too "formal" or "intimate." For me, 28-35 is what I consider normal. Also, love the content guys. Been watching for years and I appreciate the effort :)
I never had a concept of a normal focal length. I always saw focal length as something I choose for practical and artistic reasons - nothing more, nothing less. I did take an intro to photography class and was taught that 50 mm was "neutral" in the sense that it was what your eye saw with respect to foreground/background compression/expansion. I never ran tests to verify that. Perhaps that's something that Tony can do as follow up to this video. 🙂
@@PedroPabloCondeChao Yet there is no compression/expansion. This is a myth. A 50mm-ish lens will give a similar field of view to that which we see with our normal forward vision. If you want the background to look bigger, walk closer to it. If you want somebody's nose to look smaller, walk away from it. Walking away will make the nose look smaller (obviously, as you are further away) but peeps mistake this as compression/expansion. A wide angle photo will need cropping, to give the same filed of view as a photo taken with a telephoto, but the proportions will be the same.
I do not think that our vision is Full Frame equivalent... I feel like our eyes have 40-60 mm compression wise, but somethng like 16-24mm field of view, like large format, but wrapped into ball
I love the 50mm focal length and I’m 46. It may not be normal, but it sure is nifty. I really would like to try some fast primes in the 40-45mm range. I’ve really liked the results I get with zoom lenses in that range. However, I’ve read that the field of view where both eyes overlap is about 43 degrees-very close to the field of view for a 50mm lens.
I appreciate what you shared. I've had the same frustration. I've always approached lens choice with the mindset of "am I trying to 'push' the subject away from me or 'pull' the subject closer to me?" The "neutral" position of keeping the subject where it is usually ends up being 35mm. 50mm and up - pulling. 28mm and wider - pushing.
I'm 65. I've never understood why 50mm is always touted as 'normal' and have always treated 40mm as my default 'normal' (it's much nearer to the optical geometry in the human eye). 24mm is an excellent contender for the reasons you state.
Being 33 years old my "feeling" with my photos is that 35mm (on full frame) feels "right". 50mm feels to far away most of the time. And my actually most used lens because of family pictures is 24mm - because it always tells a story by showing enough of the surroundings to put a context to the situation. And finally... 20mm "feels" to wide - because the subject is either forelorn or to close to the camera... :)
Im 23, 9 years using mirrorless cameras, 40-50mm FF equivalent is what I consider normal for everyday documentation photography, it’s not distorted and is imo about how wide of a view human can focus/concentrate on
50mm being the base 'normal' focal length makes sense to me, as 50mm is the same perspective as the human eye of any given object when viewed from the same distance and so looks very 'natural' (nothing to do with the field of view). That's why I've always liked it for product photography as what you see in the image is literally what you would be seeing if you were stood there with no 'lens trickery' to distort the proportions of the subject. That said, obviously, much wider perspectives are 'normal' now (using a totally different meaning of the word) due to smartphones, which is what you're getting at... But when discussing lenses the current terminology makes perfect sense.
It's a mythunderstanding that focal length controls perspective. Perspective just comes from distance - any lens will give the same perspective as any other, or as the human eye, if they're all at the same distance from the subject. A longer focal length doesn't change the perspective if you stand in the same place, it just makes everything bigger. You can try comparing the effect of changing lens to digital zoom aka cropping. In terms of perspective it's exactly the same. Digital zoom just reduces image quality.
This so much this!!! how it was described when i did my photography degree. Lenses around 50mm on a 35mm film camera have a normal perspective. The objects in the frame are true to life. 50mm is slightly tighter than an average humans FOV. But you know no objects in the frame will be distorted. That is not to say you always want things to look exactly like they are in real life, using a wide angle lenses or telephoto lenses to get your desired effect is important in art too (and fiction), I'm sure we've all seen the photos of giant rats etc, held at arms length and photographed with a wide angle lens to make them look 4 foot long
@@barneylaurance1865 What is this nonsense. No you can match the portrait framing between a 16 mm and a 80 mm and the subject and background look completely different. That's a different perspective inherent to focal lengths changing the angle of light. That's how long focal lengths give magnified look. It's not even close to cropping or digital zoom.
25 year old and I think around 40-50mm is normal in terms of what my eyes see, everything is pretty much in proportion to each other the way I see things. I find 24mm too close or intimate for me (if I'm doing street photography) but that's because I'm introverted and don't feel comfortable being up-close to people. My preference is usually 85mm or so, because that's how I view the world in terms of isolating a subject in front me, if that makes any sense, so 85mm is normal for me :')
I like how you introduced personality into discussion. As a introvert myself I prefer to shoot and watch photos of unfamiliar people shoot with longer lenses, for family and close friends I use 45mm and I do find that lens to feel "normal"... Even in this video when Tony switched to "intimate" focal length I felt uncomfortable 😅
I think your second example hits home. For me, it's about the magnification through the lens being comparable to what our eyes see. If you put the camera up to your right eye and the magnification matches what your left eye sees, that's normal. For me, that's 50mm. That said, I honestly don't think about it much as I just use a zoom and only actually know what focal length I shot something at when I edit it and see the metadata. I'm a boomer.
I also like the flexibility of a zoom. The most used for me is 18 to 140 mm. Covers most of what I need. I like not having to do a lens change very often.
That really depends on your camera's viewfinder magnification, though. For example, the Fuji XPro1's viewfinder has 0.37x magnification, but the XPro3's magnification is 0.52x. Does that mean the two cameras have a different 'normal' lens, despite having the same size sensor?
(34yo) I mostly use a 24-105mm on full-frame so don’t consciously think of a specific focal length as ‘normal’, but I’d probably say I default to 40-50mm for most images as it looks similar to my regular field of view. While we have reasonably good peripheral vision, the area which is actually seen in detail is relatively narrow: I might be able to see my fingertips in my peripheral vision at ‘24mm’ but the area that I’m seeing at any one time with any degree of visual quality is more akin to 40mm, for example. My eyes are like a 24mm lens that has horrendous distortion in the corners, so the images are cropped to 40mm by default by my brain unless the periphery is needed in an emergency. If I want to see/photograph something in the corners I can move my eyes/lens but the corners of the new image still suck, they’re just shifted.
I think our vision works kinda like an anamorphic lens, a 50mm with 2x squeeze factor is way wider than a typical 50mm lens for FF sensor (35mm film), yet everything still look ''normal'' with little to no distortion and the background is not compressed or the other way around, the background doesn't looks stretched with everything so distant like we see on wide angle lens.
I'm 32 and 50mm has been my probably most used focal length since I've always had a 50mm prime in my bag. But I have both a 35mm and 50mm primes and I struggle to decide which one to use. They both are similar yet very different at the same time. But I agree with you assessment, 35mm being a more comfortable focal length but 50mm being more formal. When I use 50mm, I often seem to be more "creative" with my photos and isolate subjects more whereas 35mm I feel like I "document" the scene more. I don't think one is better than the other, but It depends on how you see things and how you want to capture those things. Great video Tony!
I love this video and approach! I'm in my mid-forties and 35mm has always felt the most 'normal' to me. Not ideal for landscapes or portraits but it can handle anything.
Hey Toni, I am 51 years old. First I would suggest a small correction: most smartphones use 26 to 28mm as normal lens (not 24 as you claimed). As a prime shooter for some years I really came to love 28mm lenses. I tried for one year the 24mm (24GM) but it felt to wide for people quite often (so I sold it after one year, even it delivered nearly perfect optics, and switched back to 28mm). For me 28mm is the perfect "normal" focal length (one prime lens for the island). Usually I like to complement it with a UWA (14-15mm) and a 50-58mm (my personal "small tele") and a 85 (my "normal tele"). And I have to add to the story that I mostly use my A7IV for photography (and take it everywhere) and my smartphone only in emergency cases for photography. I try 35mm but feel it is often to tied, but works sometimes - but not my favorite (feels like sligthly wider 50mm lens).
I consider a normal lens as being one that keeps the apparent spacing between objects which are at various distances from the camera looking like they do to my eye. I consider something like 55 to 70mm to be normal. Over that and the background objects have moved closer to the foreground. The picture has tightened up. Less than 50mm and the spacing between objects has increased. The picture has opened up. This effect can be seen in this video with the trees and shed in the background appearing to move further away and get smaller as Tony drops the focal length. How old? I bought a brand new Pentax K1000 when they first came out. I'm old.
Precisely! In the mid 1950s I used a Kodak Signet 35 w/ fixed mount f3.5 50mm and my father's Leica III-F bodies mostly with a 50mm Summicron. In 1968 the wedding gift from my father was a Konica Minolta with an f1.8 58mm. My father usually used his 55mm Micro Nikkor. I now find my most frequently used focal lengths are 35mm and 70mm. I can walk around with either.
I always assumed 40-50ish mm was meant to be similar to foveal vision, the part of the eye with high resolution and good color depth. Since people's eyes are somewhat unique to each person then the focal length of the foveal vision of each person is somewhat different(equiv full frame). I like how you talk about focal lengths as personal distance or intimacy. I think it is a more useful definition. Something in the mid to low 40 mm has felt "normal" to me.
Yes, I had thought it related to what we could actually consider 'in focus' - we may have a 180 degree field of view, but try discerning fine details on the edges whilst looking straight ahead.
@@stevepritchard3970 This is exactly it. When we look around a printed picture, the edges of the frame don't expand in the way the edges of our vision would. A picture is a representation, a snapshot, of a scene. The extent to which we can take in a scene in real life is a combined effort of both our eyes and our brain. Most of our moment to moment "vision" is a construct from our memories, because we can't properly "see" everything at once. As you pointed out, most of our periphery vision is garbage. Sometimes, when we are focused (both physically and mentally) on a distant subject, our vision can feel quite telephoto (aka, tunnel vision). Lifting a camera with a 50mm lens to our eyes to shoot such a subject can leave us feeling disappointed in how distant the subject appears in the frame. I'm sure it varies a lot from person to person, but for me 35mm is the closest to "normal" FOV. When I see pictures taken with a 35mm lens, they feel very documentary. Which is why I actually favour either a 28mm or a 40/50mm, because I find the slight exaggeration of reality to be more interesting/artistic.
The fovea is tiny; it only has a about a 5 degree field of view, so the fovea corresponds to about a 500mm focal length on a full frame camera. That's where our peak resolution is. This doesn't correspond with people's subjective impression of their vision, but it's easy to demonstrate.
I am 72 and also think 35mm is best for capturing most situations with people. For potraits however I would use 85mm or 105mm. I have always seen the 50mm as a compromise when you could only choose one lens. I still have the Nikon F I bought in 1968 with a 35mm and the famous 105mm. That was what I could afford back then at the age of 17.
Nice video, as always. For me the 50 mm "normal" label feels more about the distortion and compresion of the final image being closer to reality. I'm 57 btw, and have love that focal distance since I begun borrowing my father's Pentax at 13!
I've always noticed 70mm gives me the same compression/distortion (zero, in other words) as my eyes, which is my definition of "normal". 50mm does stretch things unnaturally a little. Field-of-view is an entirely separate matter that can't be compared directly to the human eye without multiple exposures. Edit: I'm 47. And I've actually tested this with different lenses.
I agree that "normal" should probably be measured by how natural the perspective and distortions of human subjects appear. This largely depends on the distance to the subject which aligns to Tony's concepts of "formal", "casual", and "intimate". Most of us know that taking a photo / video of a human face at less than a metre will result in an unnatural look - mainly because we're not used to interacting with anyone other than intimate partners at that distance. Similarly when you get into telephoto territory (say >70mm on 35mm equivalent sensors), facial features start to appear unnaturally compressed. I tend to like 30-40mm as general purpose focal length for stills because it has minimal distortion for human subjects at comfortable distances from the subject. Even if 50-70mm gives a more "correct" image, closer to the human eye's perspective, if requires getting 2-3 metres from the subject for a medium or 3/4 shot, and often has too narrow a field of view for taking group photos in many settings. For video I find I'm nearly always wider than this, unless filming someone talking to camera. I could do just about everything with my 8-18mm MFT lens (approx 16-36mm FF equivalent), and can "extend" to a 50mm equivalent with a pixel-to-pixel crop mode on the camera. I don't often go below 20mm equivalent because I do notice unnatural perspective effects on some shots, and I notice vignetting with some of my filters. That said, a 16mm ultra-wide is good for some wide establishing shots, and particularly around or inside buildings. I'm in my 50's BTW.
All wide lenses can give the telephoto look if you crop into them enough even ultra wide angle ones. Distortion doesn't come from the type of lens you use but from the distance to your subject. Take an image of anything with an 85mm lens and then without changing your distance from the subject switch lenses and use a 14mm. Then crop the image of the 14mm as to frame it exactly as you did with the 85 and you will end up with the exact image you got with the 85mm minus the bokeh of course. The telephoto "compression" look will be the same in both photos.
Tony, I think the objective definition should or could be a focal length that keep objects of various depths in the image appear with the same ratios to each other as we seem them with our eyes. In other words, zero positive or negative compression (expansion). What focal length creates this image? Also, wouldn't the calculation using the diagonal of the sensor be incorrect unless the sensor was square and the image was project accurately to the edge of the sensor? Thank you for all your contribute to the photography world!
I primarily shoot wildlife. My understanding is 50mm equals 1x in magnification so 500mm would equal approximately a 10x binocular. I general carry either a 8 or 10x binocular with me and that gives me a decent approximation for when I’m shooting either 400 or 500 mm lens.
50 mm is roughly what you can comfortably look without turning your head. But I think 35 mm is more what I would consider normal. It is the sensor width so you you get as much horizontally as the distance is. When I first bought a 50 mm (32 mm actually because of the crop) prime I found I had to step back often to get the photo.
One of the reason why I so love this channel is that I pick some random video to watch while snacking, and it casually rewrites how I think about lenses and their focal lengths. Thank you for this content
i like to think of focal length exclusively in term of distortion. If I want relatively little distortion I'm at 100 and when I want distortion I go wider. i don't aim to capture what i see but what picture i intend to make. it's really weird to me to let the lens "drive" and find the shots through the viewfinder instead of thinking of an image and making it by creating the right conditions, producing the right light, and using the right lens.
@@davidvictory9764 it's not the focal length that causes distortion, it is the perspective (excluding optical imperfections like barrel distortion). Distortion is not inherently bad either. But as a general guideline, pick a lens that lets you stay 6 feet away from your subject if you want to minimize distortion.
I remember taking a photography class at a local university on composition using 35mm SLRs. He specifically mentioned the 50mm as being "normal" because the viewfinder "mirrored" what the human eye saw from the same location. Telephoto made objects look closer, but you lost "wideth" in the frame. Wide angle lenses gave you greater frame width, but objects looked further away. Age is a factor. I am now a 62 year old retired educator and am rediscovering photography via a D850. My favorite prime is a 85mm f1.4. My travel lens is a 24 - 70mm f2.8 zoom. Smart phone cameras do tend to force one to be too close to their subject.
I wonder what the relationship is between 50mm (or other focal length) and the fovea or other aspects of human vision; my peripheral vision goes all the way out to 180 degrees, but a significantly smaller area is actually in focus, and though I can "see" my fingers wiggle at the very periphery, I get basically no color or shape information there, and I mostly notice the simple presence of motion occurring.
Foveal vision is only about 5 degrees, which would correspond to a 500mm lens. Very little of our visual field is sharp at all. 50mm is about how much we can keep track of with "moderate watchfulness" or a similar level of effort, given cetain kinds of detection tasks. It's an answer, but hardly the only answer, to what a "normal" lens should be.
normal refers to the lens itself and the elements of the lens. a 50mm lens can have the element at 50mm away from the sensor. a telephoto lens is one with a telescopic element. a wide angle lens is one with a retrofocal element.
2:40 That's the point. It's not about the field of view, but about the "geometry". So the question was: what focus length do you need for the same sensation of depth and angles etc. (no fish-eye and no tele compression)? As far as I learned the "focus length equals diagonal" is a result of this question, the choice for 50 mm then possibly a simplification. So maybe 50 mm is not "normal" because the Leica had it, but the Leica had it because it is "normal". Of course you are right at 4:15 with the idea of how people consume the footage, how big (and how far awy) it is later on. Because then again the picture spans a field of view that might or might feel natural depending on the chosen focus length. Oh, and I forgot: With my close to 40 years I feel like something around 35 mm (23 mm on APS-C) feels more "normal" but still prefer to shot with slight telephoto (50 - 90 mm on APS-C).
I love that you're challenging this "rule". I have always felt that "normal" represents more of the "feeling" than look or field of view. I think lens manufacturers get this wrong a lot. Your subject ultimately kind of determines "normal". For me, shooting flowers at "eye level" with the flower feels right semi telephoto. Cutting out a lot of background in a portrait of a human feels "intimate", because you feel close to the subject with regard to him/her being singled out in the image, while including more environmen feels less intimate. But so too does 24mm feel intimate in a vlog type of scenario, or a tutorial at your desk. I also buy or use lenses based on how close I can or need to be to my subject. For instance 18mm on Fujifilm is my indoor lens. 1.4 still isolates my subject, but I can shoot from 4 feet away and still get good framing.
33 M SOCAL: Natural 24, Least distortion 85-135mm. My first 2 GM lenses have been the 24GM and the 135GM and they are both absolutely fantastic for different reasons and scenarios.
Normal in my book is twofold: 40-50mm puts a slight emphasis on your subject while still set it in its environment. People in my experience just love the look of this. And if you print pictures a little bigger the usual viewing distance equates about the diagonal of the frame plus one or two steps. That’s about 50mm converted to the sensor diagonal. So the distortion seems natural given the viewing distance.
I've always thought it was because the relative distortion (not the field of view) was close to that of the human eye. Like when you held it up to your eye and looked through and noticed things were about the same level of magnification through the viewfinder. For most full frame cameras I can slap a 50mm on there look through the viewfinder and it's almost like working with an augmented reality effect when shooting with both eyes open, you can see a box cropped from your field of vision but you can look and focus the camera to match your open eye and still see stereoscopically. (assuming your viewfinder is calibrated correctly) You can't really do that at 35mm or 70mm instead if you try to shoot both eyes open you'll kinda have a double vision effect until you train your brain to focus on one eye or the other. As a cinematographer this is actually an exercise one of my instructors use to have us do back in film school to get use to shooting with both eyes open, which is a critical skill to have when you're in fast paced documentary settings but need to have a constantly rolling camera. The goal was to eventually train our brains to be comfortable with two eyes open at any focal length. With modern LCD's on the back of cameras and viewfinders becoming less commonplace this is a much less useful skill.
Wikipedia has a good explaination on this. TLDR: 50mm is reasonably close to "normal" vision and is a nice round number which is why we use it. The eye actually has a 17mm focal length, but we have two, and our brains process objects in a way that flattens them out to make them easier to track in space: " The eye has a nominal focal length of approximately 17mm, but it varies with accommodation. The nature of human binocular vision, which uses two lenses instead of a single one, and post-processing by the cortex is very different from the process of making and rendering a photograph, video or film. Accommodation is the process by which the vertebrate eye changes optical power to maintain a clear image or focus on an object as its distance varies. In this, distances vary for individuals from the far point-the maximum distance from the eye for which a clear image of an object can be seen, to the near point-the minimum distance for a clear image. Mammals, birds and reptiles vary their eyes' optical power by changing the form of the elastic lens using the ciliary body (in humans up to 15 dioptres in the mean). "
no human eyes = 3 focal lengh combine and the total give you something like 43.26mm. For immersive Vr try a 17-26mm and we will laugh, next try a 45mm. 45mm combined with 2 cameras give something more natural than 17-26mm. In fact shooting in vertically is the best solution but in real it's more easy to rec horizontally.
when viewing the 50mm thru the EVF, you also have to factor in the magnification of the EVF when comparing it to your open eye. everyone has slightly diff "focal lengths' for their eyes.
I started photography in a time when you bought a 35mm SLR and it normally came with a 50mm lens. I also used TLR cameras that came with lenses about 80mm which gives a similar field of view. I think a "normal" lens is not matching the field of view of your eye but is matching the field of view of what you are looking at. When I'm looking at things I'm paying attention to what is somewhat in the center of my field of view and ignoring the peripheral vision. A "normal" lens would approximate that. However I always felt that "normal" on a 35mm negative should be a lens of about 40mm focal length.
I am 72 yro and started with film in 1968 with a 50mm "normal" lens with 35mm SLR. I quickly realized that my "normal" soon became a 100mm lens because that seemed to be the way I viewed the world for street photography. Your analogy that 50mm was not "normal" because our eyes has more of a 24mm FOV is interesting, but I'd propose the 100mm FOV was where our eye sees the world with the most actuity. As you probably are aware the fovea of our eye is the location where the eye has the most actuity and is where we actually "see" and visualize the world. An example of what I mean is when we drive we do not concentrate our vision at 24mm but more at 100mm. Food for thought.
I’m 22 years old and have been doing photography for a couple of years now, and I can say for certain that some of my favorite photos I’ve ever taken are of my significant other with the main shooter on my phone (24mm). You’re absolutely right that it feels much more “intimate” at this focal length than it does at 50mm, and I really enjoy the friendly feeling of the photos that I take with that lens. Awesome video! (:
For me 50mm is my go to for "natural" looking photos due to the lack of distortion you would have on a subject with a wider lens. At 50mm faces and objects feel more natural as compared to standing closer with a wider lens. Longer lenses separate the subject from the background and remove context for the shot and further flatten the subject, making it feel more like a spotlight on a subject.
Nailed it. 50mm has the same magnification and perspective of the human eye in terms of foreground, background and the subject. No distortion. It’s always my go to prime lens.
Back in the early 90s when I was learning photography I was always told that the 50mm lens was the standard. I tried it for a while but I did not like it. I found I preferred the view that the 35mm lens gave me and that became my standard or normal lens. For me the 24mm lens is a wide angle lens even though it’s the typical standard on smartphones. I’d love to see a high quality 35mm (equivalent) lens on a smartphone but I don’t see that happening any time soon unfortunately. By the way, in terms of zoom lenses, the 24-85mm was my standard lens.
I'm 33 and I like to shoot street photography. For me 35mm seems to be where I'm most comfortable. When I put my 50mm on it feels restrictive. I often find I'm seeing a shot and then having to take a few steps backward to get the framing I want (which is annoying). As a result I rarely use it as it just slows me down and I miss "decisive moments". However if I was to shoot portraiture I definitely would not want to be using anything wider than a 50. This video is a great example of the impact of focal length and distortion. As you go wider Tony looks more and more bobble-head like!
I am 36 and I find 50mm to be about normal. I see it like this: I imagine interacting with the world through the viewfider of my camera: -With anything wider than 40mm, I feel like there is too much distraction on the sides to be "normal". -With longer than 75-80mm focal lengths I feel constrained to a point that I feel I am way too close to be "normal". The middle ground is about 50mm, and I call it normal.
43-year-old here and my normal focal length is 50mm. In my opinion, you forgot to mention what parts of the model are going to show in the frame. I tend to use 50mm all the time because I like that focal length for some reason. I use it as much as to easily be able to judge where I need to be to fill my frame the way I want to. The other lens I use is a 135 and I am in love with that lens. I do not shoot identical photos with it. The focal length allows me to shoot even tighter so I am usually relatively close to my subjects even with a huge lens like 135mm.
I think you have to take into account the comfortable viewing distance to a printed photo of a given size. If you're looking at an 8x10 photo, for example, you might hold it about 2 feet from your face, which would be pretty close (roughly) to the 45 degree viewing angle of a 50mm. If it were a larger 24x36 poster, you'd want to stand a bit farther back to see the whole image, so the viewing angle would still be about the same. Right?
I think Normal lenses are considered normal, when they have a similar compression as what we see with the human eye, not compressing or decompressing near and far parts of the image. That said, that focal length is not as wide as we see. If you cover one eye and look, it's closer to being correct. I personally prefer a FF equivalent of 35mm. Most of the images I take tend to be centered around that focal length as well. At one point, I went all Prime lenses, and bought every one I thought I'd need. I found out that most of the time, I kept my 35mm lens on. Now that I shoot medium format, that's my 45mm lens, though I use zooms now as well because they're just so darn convenient.
Thank you, Tony. Agree with everything, but you skipped my favorite, 28 mm. I know it has fallen out of favor these days, but then, I am > 65. BTW, If I wanted a bit more formal but still comfortable, 35 mm would be it. The 50 mm never felt right to me. BTW, if only given a choice of 24 mm and 35 mm, I would likely use the latter.
Interesting discussion. Way back (70's), I was in photography school in upstate NY. A college named Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). In our freshman year - this was discussed. Meaning why is 50 mm considered a "normal" lens. BTW, as the film or sensor size goes up - so does the "normal" lens size. On 2 1/x4 1/4 (medium format), it was 80 mm. One 4x5, it was 210 mm. For those of us old folks, we used to print images back in the day. One of the most popular print sizes for display was an 8x10. As the professors explained it to us, normal lens was based on what made a "normal"/not distorted, not flattened perspective image when printed on an 8x10 AND viewed while holding it in your hands. So I'd agree, "normal" is very much dependent on viewing image size and distance. A small print viewed up close would have a different "normal" lens than a 40x60 image print viewed at 10 feet.
A suggestion : go to your ( I assume) vast database of pictures taken with a 24-70 , and see what average focal lens you did use the most . I checked my Lightroom : efs15-85 , on 5700 photos , about 10% were in-between 30 an 35 ( 50mm equivalent) . On my EF 24-105 , 6000, again. 10% in-between 45 and 55 and 10% for RF 24-105 . On the 3 lenses, 24-26 mm were 20--22% of the pictures taken, more than twice as much as the 50 range.
I don’t think there’s a very precise angle of view that is normal or natural. But I do think that super telephoto and super wide angle can be considered unnatural. Even though human vision is 180 degrees it is nothing like a super wide angle experience. That is because it is a very small part of our vision that we use to see with. The compression that super telephoto lenses make is equally unnatural. I think that a rule of thumb for what is normal or natural is the angle of view that you get when admiring a painting at a preferred distance. If you look at a large painting you will naturally want to step back. When looking at a small painting you will naturally want to get close. My guess is that that angle of view from your eyes to the edges of the painting is about equal to the angle of view of a 35mm to a 50mm lens on a full frame camera.
I bought and use the 50 because of the perspective distortion that distance gives me. I believe the human eye analogy came from the focused angle of the eye in a relaxed "normal" state somewhere around 50 and 60mm, not the total field of view. Maybe this is why there is a lot more variation in this part of the range with 50mm 55mm 56mm 57mm 58mm 60mm maybe this is pleasing to the eye no matter the size you watch it on, because you only see sharply 50mm no matter how close you get so you are the most familiar with that perspective distortion. Try to read a paper, or watch your monitor, you can't see sharply the whole at the same time. If someone would create a camera lens with the view angle and sharpness of the eye it would be a really bad lens :D This is my guess. And maybe easy to manufacture it too, because some of them are dirt cheap and still great :D
Greetings guys! So, I was a professional photographer in the early 70s and an assistant manager for a camera store in California. Of course, we dealt with all of the other camera stores and professionals as well! We used to teach and explain the 50 mm lens was the “normal“ lens, as it represented the relative view of the eye when you look through that lens. As if you were holding a square with your fingers out in front of you to capture that image. In other words, if you look through a 50 mm lens and look with the other eye, the images are almost exactly the same in distance ratio. This was the perspective from shooting a 35 mm film camera. This idea did not translate very well to my Hasselblad. That being said, we only taught people using 35mm cameras, so that general concept was accepted throughout the industry in California back in the 70s. That is where, probably, that the 50 mm lens was considered a normal viewing lens. As we all know, sometimes things grow legs! Keep up the great work! Love you both!
In terms of comparing focal length with the visual fields of the eye, you need to account that central vision covers a much narrow angle than the total visual field. This is due to the fovea where sharp central vision is found. You might have a very wide-angle of total vision but the peripheral areas are only good for picking up gross visual changes such as movement or change in light intensity. For example, try reading a book which is directly in front of your eyes vs at the edge of your peripheral vision.
I always thought normal was matching the magnification of your vision at what ever distance and started learning with the 50mm kit lens which gave me a good perspective to base my choice of lens for what ever I wanted to capture. I don't think it matters what your normal may be but I thought 50mm was a good tool to begin my creative journey with. and still consider it normal, and I thought this was an interesting question so I had to jump in. I am 64
I always assumed when people said that 50mm was similar to the human eye, they meant a single eye - because when you look through the viewfinder, you are looking through it with only one eye. In your test with your arms out to the side, you had both eyes open.
I’m 51, and my father was a photographer since he was a kid back in WW II. When he explained to me the “normal” focal length, he told me to keep both my eyes open, and look through the viewfinder with a zoom lens. Then, zoom in/out until I see things in the view finder at the same magnification as my other eye. This was happening at around 50~55mm. I guess “normal” is just an arbitrary definition, as “full-frame”, “medium format” etc.
I bought a Pentax K1 II AND a 43mm F 1.9 lens precisely because no other company offered that focal length in a prime lens. I have been singing the praises of 28mm for 1.5 crop, and 43mm for 135mm format for many years now. I'm 64, and have been making photographs FAR longer than Tony (1968 is when I started)
I've always maintained that it's somewhere between 35mm and 50mm. I remember hearing a long time ago that 50 was basically 1:1 with your eyesight like you mentioned, but the more I got into it, I noticed that it wasn't always 1:1. Same goes for the 35. I'm more inclined to think 35mm is the "right" choice over the 50mm, but go back and forth. Now if only we could find someone to make a 180 degree 35-50mm to test this hypothesis... Also I'm 41.
I’m 65 and have always preferred 35mm and 24 mm. If I use something around 50 mm, it’s a 55 mm macro because when you’re doing that kind of photography, that lens provides a comfortable working distance for close-up photography and it always felt like flash for macro works optimally with that focal length. I do have a 50 mm lens I haven’t used in years.
I’ve been enjoying your videos and books for over a decade. In 2023, I’m still learning from you guys. I’m 48, my everyday walk around lens is 24 pancake lens on a Canon 5D/4. When I want better range and neck pain I bring out the 24-70 2.8. I enjoy shooting wide city scenes architecture and landscape.
I'm 67 yrs.old. Back in the day when you bought a new camera(film) it "NORMALLY" came with a 50mm lens; therefore we referred to it as normal. As a newspaper photographer I rarely used 50, my go to was 35mm. JT
This is a great discussion! When I bought my camera (full frame) a 50 mm lens was included and since lots of people said that it was "normal" I started using it everywhere. Unfortunately there were a lot of situations where it wasn't viable, like group photos in smaller rooms, so I wondered why people meant with "normal" for it certainly wasn't the viewing angle. I bought a 24 mm and I was able to do so much more, even though people looked a little weird sometimes so I thought that was much "normaler". Maybe they mean that with 50 mm things aren't distorted compared to the human vision? Also I wouldn't like to call the 24 mm more "intimate" because it doesn't go well with architecture and landscape photography, you wouldn't say you get intimate with a big vista.
Same for me. 50 mm was my first fixed focal length and escpecially indoors I struggled to capture the amount of context I wanted my portraits to provide. Now with two never resting kids I found 35 mm to be the sweet spot for me. I agree on your point that referring to 24 mm as "intimate" only works in the situation above, when you move the camera to get the same upper body shot, but scrolling through my 24 mm lens smartphone photos, portraits are somewhat rare.
As artists, yes we do, as part of expression. It's what "humanizes" things. Photography is a form of human expression, not just a technical mathematical whatnot. Imagine me calling your most beloved masterpiece "just a bunch of photons captured at a certain moment"
I'm 29 and I think that 50mm is a pretty good benchmark for "normal" as a focal length, for compositional reasons. The fact that it gives a view through the viewfinder that kinda matches your view with your eye (I'm even on an APS-C camera and it still works that way) gives you less work when composing shots with just that lens. An inexperienced photo'er like myself would need less forethought in composing shots by just composing a box with our fingers over what we're looking at and taking said picture with our camera. This "eye-viewfinder-match" focal length is probably why early 20th century camera manufacturers chose it. It helped sell more cameras to people who started learning photography after they bought their first film SLR right before the family vacation. Simply recording what your eye sees needs very little training and helps to sell a lot of cameras. Smart phones still sell cameras that work this way to this very day.
50mm I would say it's the "smallest" focal length that does not cause the image to get elongated at the edges at all. With a 35 the image looks a bit elongated towards the edges and with a 85+ you need to stay a lot farther to take the same shot. 50 lets you get nice photos while being close enough but not on top of your subject. Also, even if we have wide view angle we only see colors and details in the middle of our view. You can see something moving with the corner of the eye but you can't tell what it is until you turn your head.
The human eye and brain are constantly sampling and forming composite images. I have often wondered why anyone says a lens is "normal" because the fovea of the eye gives quite a narrow field of view, but this is superimposed on our low-detail wide-field vision. Then, we constantly move our fovea around to generate whatever composite detailed FOV we need at the time. So essentially "normal" is a constant change depending on the subject - much like photography. Thanks for bringing up the perspective of the viewer. I think that will greatly help me to visualize in my mind, the story I try to tell in a photo or video. I'm 28mm and 47 years.
I'm 35 years old and 45mm is my favorite focal length. I think that the amount of compression this focal length provides is why I think of it as "normal". It has nothing to do with field of view (which still feels a bit too narrow).
The focal length obviously depends on what you are trying to get in the frame from where you are standing. The key is to have a range of lenses (or zooms) that match the 1.414 (or .707) ratio from one to the next since that represents a doubling of area in the picture. If you don't want a doubling either crop or use a zoom. So the lens lines were developed around some standard (it happened to be 100mm) thus 100, 70.7, 50, 35, 24 etc. and 100, 141, 199 (rounded to 200). Then the manufacturing engineers took control and said no more of this crap, were going in even increments, 100, 200, 300, 400, 600, 800, 1000. So pick your viewpoint, decide what you want to include, then pick the appropriate focal length (or zoom) from the wide variety available. I have no idea where 85 mm came from or why 141 got "rounded" to 135. This is, of course, tongue in cheek.
I am 28 years old with 11 years experience in cinematography and photography , I'm using 17-28mm f2.8, 50mm f1.8 & 85mm F1.8 all from Nikon Z S line for photography, for cinematography I'm using Dzofilm pictor 20-55mm & 50-125mm T2.8
I’m 25 and I find 50mm talking heads to be more intimate and engaging that 35mm or 24mm with typical framing. The compression helps me focus on the eyes of a presenter and not get distracted by an environment. The framing is important, because I also find I like the quirky composition of a 20-24mm talking head when it’s “uncomfortably close”; I also find that type of content super engaging.
I carry around 2 primes - 24 & 85 - but never really thought about why. Now I inundated get it. I’m either super happy to be around my subject and don’t mind getting “intimate” or would rather you keep your “distance”. Makes total sense to me!!
It relates to how we see the subject in the surroundings. The background space is just right and the field of view is blurred just right if we are looking at the subject.
I'm 67. In the past year my camera was stolen in a home robbery. Also, I had cataract surgery! With my new bionic eyes, I need to rethink what I want to purchase. I loved my nifty fifty, but your video is giving me some good information on the way forward. Thanks so much!
Hi Tony and Chelsea, this is a fascinating subject! My age? 51, born in Argentina, but living in the UK for over 20 years. When I got serious about photography, I purchased a Nikon F5(it was 1998) with just 3 prime Nikkor lenses: A 24mm f/2.8, a 50mm f/1.4 and an 85mm f/1.8. Never got along with the '50'. My best shots were always with the 24mm, and today, I understand why: Because I could be 'intimate' with my subject and portray that sense of 'intimacy' to the viewer. As I said, fascinating! Thank you for the video!
I'm 26 and I prefer focal lenghtes around 35. It just feels natural to me. Even on my phone, I tend to use something around 1.3-1.5 digital zoom even though it lowers the quality a lot on such a low pixel count. In most cases, I find 24 mm pretty unusable. Only usable when I get angle and distance right, due to wide-angle distortion.. So it's harder to work with.
Another question is why in traditional cinema was 50mm considered "normal" when they were using a 24mm x 18mm (or slightly smaller) format (4-perf 35mm). Early silent movies were almost all shot at 50mm. Was that just what focal length was easiest to build as opposed to a 35mm? Hitchcock, for example, insisted on almost all of "Psycho" (4-perf 35mm) being shot on a 50mm because it was "normal"... but when he shot in VistaVision (8-perf 35mm) in the 1950s, he also tried to shoot on a 50mm when possible, but now he had 1.5X more view on that larger format.
The first Leica was a bit different for many reasons. One reason was the need to enlarge. Contact printing was big at the time. Enlarging from proof contact sheets narrowed down the expense so you didn't have to waste money on bad shots. What was the typical enlargement size? I'm thinking about 5"x7". I suggest that for that use 50mm gave useful photos, hence it proliferated, and was considered normal. For my 71 year old use, I like 40mm. I like to print A3+. Works for me.
Thank you so much for this video. You talked from my heart. 50mm has never felt any more "normal" to me than 28mm, and I have always disagreed with those air-filled statements about human vision too. "Normal" is indeed a misleading and unnecessary term in photography, which is especially confusing in the era of APS-C cameras. I'll never forget my disappointment when I first mounted a 50mm f/1.8 on my Canon 90D, expecting something "normal". I'm 31, and 28mm is my most commonly used focal length, 70mm being a close second.
As a kid in the late 60's I was taught that 50mm was essentially 1x magnification compared to your eye for 35mm as you said. I don't have any issue understanding this, and I can scale it nicely to APS-C or any crop factor, even medium format. Yes as you say you can print the same image any size, but that has always been the case. The first 35mm camera makers needed a standard to use to gauge the lens, and I think based on what I was taught they chose magnification factor as that gauge or 'standard'. BTW - 'Taught' in the 1960's means I probably read it in a Kodak booklet or in the pages of Popular Photography magazine.
I absolutely love this framework, and it aligns with how I hear cinematographers talk about focal length more than photographers. For that reason, 28mm feels pretty normal to me, especially after hearing Bradford Young talk about it so much in relation to Arrival. I'm 42, btw.
I grew up using an 85mm f/1.8 Canon FL lens on an FT-QL as my primary lens from 1969 to 2005. Sure, I got longer and shorter lenses over time, but 85mm felt "natural" to me. (How's that for another descriptor? - I think it's all a matter of what you grew up with - like how the term "intuitive" for computer user interfaces is very personal.) When I went digital with a Rebel and the EF-S 17-55 f/2.8, I naturally gravitated towards the long end of that lens as it approximated on a Canon APS-C sensor 88mm - close to what I was used to. When I went to the 80D I got the 18-135mm nanoUSM lens and used that most of the time unless I needed the low-light capability of the 17-55 or the wide angle of the 10-18. Now with the R7 I have an embarassment of RF lenses: the surprisingly good RF-S 18-150mm kit lens, the fun 1.8 nifty-fifty for intimate parties (which feels like my old FT-QL rig), and now my first L lens, the f/4 70-200. I've even picked up the 16mm f/2.8. I was debating getting the 35mm f/1.8 as a 56mm equivalent "normal" lens but I think you've persuaded me against it - I actually never liked the framing of the 50 f/1.8 lens that came with the FT-QL.
Maybe the “natural angle of view" implies that, on the one hand, you don't have a feeling of being "squeezed" or having a limited field of view, and, on the other hand, your pupil doesn't have to move in order to see everything in that field of view. That's exactly what happens with me at 50mm! At 35mm I already have to shift my gaze a bit to see the details in the periphery of the photo better.
Great video! I didn't understand why I was so confused by everyone talking about nifty-fifty while I felt that it is rather "distant" for a close shot. I love the way you divide the focal length into distant - formal - intimate because that's exactly what i feel while choosing the lense and I couldn't tell why i don't have an intimate feeling while thinking about 50mm but it felt more like a great portrait lense that gives you a "formal" distance between your subject. If you do a reportage with 25mm it will feel so intimate.
ADD A COMMENT with your "normal" focal length (in full-frame terms) and your age. I'm 24mm & 49.
59yo and I define "normal" purely in terms of the amount of magnification the lens provides. On my camera, I see the same magnification through the viewfinder as in real life at about 70 mm so I'd call that "normal." This has nothing to do with the photos themselves, as like most others I find myself usually shooting wider than 50 mm.
I feel like my one eye has 14-16 mm field of view, and compression like 40-60 mm. Our vision is not full frame + its binocular, so it feels like telephoto and at the same time ultra fisheye wide.
50 mm is good lens, but it is not even close to "normal" in terms of field of view. 24 mm is def more normal. But my vision feels like six-eight 50mm photos stiched togeather with f2.8-4 DoF but 1.2 transmission and super extra clean 25600 ISO with great DR
I am 54, 24mm is my "normal" lens. By the way, I notice at home (indoor) or outdoor, most of the time, you use Sony camera to film your youtube video but Canon, may I know the reason? Sony is better than Canon for youtube video content? Thanks.
I'm 73. I've always thought 50mm was a bit telephoto. To me, an important consideration is not comparing a lens to a human's peripheral vision since much of a human's periphery is blurred and distorted (which is why you had to wiggle your fingers to see them). So for me, it comes back to replicating magnification. Tamron once claimed that 43mm was the lens equivalent to a human's normal perspective when they were promoting their now discontinued 45mm lens. I had it for a while and did like it since it wasn't quite so zoomed in as my 50, but in the end I've decided that 35mm is the sweet spot.
I remember long time ago that 50mm lens were keeping the subject in proper perspective. Wider lens would distort like a convex mirror: big nose and ears farther away. It would also make the background further away. And it would bring the foreground so much closer
Longer lens would flatten the face. It would bring the background closer. And the foreground would seem closer to the middle subject.
That is what I remember during my early photography classes. 50mm was the preferred beginner "normal lens" because it was reflecting the most natural perspective for the whole scene.
This is exactly why I prefer 50mm for portraits.
........of course a lens does not actually alter perspective. It simply magnifies and focuses light. A lens cannot change the laws of physics. Telephoto lenses compressing the scene & wild-angle expanding it, is one of those myths continually perpetuated though the photographic community & often written in books. The Photography Channel (youtube it) had a nice segment dis-proving this myth & also in one of the Ansel Adams books, he again disproves this myth.
@@wibbley1 Well you are partially right. If taken from the same distance with the same size sensor there is no difference in perspective between wide and tele when you crop to keep the subject the same size. However, that is not what people usually do. If you keep the subject the same size (in camera frame) you will have to get closer to your subject as you go wider angle. This will certainly distort features (from what we see out of our eyeballs) and the opposite is true of tele lenses. you will have to back up to keep the subject the same size. This will result in a difference in the ratio of the distance from the front of your subject to the back. That is what perspective is. A difference in ratio from the closest to the most distant object in the frame. It has nothing to do with physics. It is optics (and math) and that can be just as confusing as physics.
@@Buddha1992 Hi, I take things correctly, not literally. A correcting lens will make things seem bigger, as it is magnifying, exactly what a lens does.
The confusion comes as peeps will move closer with a 35mm lens, to get the same framing and move back with a 50mm lens. It is the distance to subject that changes, the wide angle lens is not magically changing the laws of physics.
Problem is, the compression/expansion myth has been peddled for so many years, appears in text books & even gets taught in photography lessons.
Ansel Adams disproved this myth in one of his books.
@@JHuffPhoto Exactly, it is the distance to subject that changes. Not the camera lens defying the laws of physics.
Just think how amazing it would be if one could purchase a lens with the specification 'moves background 2X closer' or 'will shrink a nose by 20%'
Understand this fact will help in composition, how big do you wish the subject to be in relation to the background, how close/far can you get to the subject. Ansel Adams documented much of this in his great books, alas many later photo-book writers & teachers have never read it, yet alone actually gone out with a bunch of lenses & proved it. Even when I proved to my photo teacher years ago, it was still not believed.
Lets hope @TonyNorthrop is reading this and can do an in-depth myth busting video,
63 years old with a 25-year career in news photography, now ended. The 35mm focal length would be more of a "normal" lens for me. Yes, a fast 50 was the lens I started with on my Minolta SR-T 201 film camera but I must say that in all my years covering spot news, sports and features, I very rarely saw a 50 in the hands of any of my colleagues/competitors, and I really didn't use one either.
For me normal is 70mm. 24-70mm lens exists mostly to allow photography in tight places. 70mm is also available in 70-200 lenses, because it's so good
I agree with the 35mm feeling more natural
@ElfTaleFilms I love the 70mm
It feels comfy
Maybe because I like taking portraits and not being that close to the subject is good for me.
Maybe I should try an 35mm
I'm 17
I started with 50mm on full frame but find myself using 35mm now as general purpose lens for family outings. Got tired of having to take 2 steps back to capture a shot. I do think smart phones have conditioned me to expect wider FOV and be able to take casual pics of people very close to me (2-4 feet)
Yea. The 35 sing more to me than 50. Everytime i use a 50. I just feel i need to move back more than I need to move forward when i have a 35.
Especially when I just want to take photo of food.. or fren in a restaurent etc. the 35 usually work better for landscape than 50 to since 35 is still consider wide.. sort of. And if I need portrait or closer shot. I just move forward or use the 85 instead. So. 50 is not quite a thing for me. I tried but just not for me. But. Everyone is different. So. I can understand.
Your eyes expect wider regardless of what dumb phone you have
One quick thing: our peripheral vision may provide us with a very wide FOV, but if you notice, things off to the side aren't clear. If you look straight ahead, your clear vision is probably a lot closer to a 50mm FOV.
Yep. You can even feel your eyes position differently for peripheral. Try Tony's finger wiggle experiement, but focused straight ahead; while you can detect motion, you have to bring them in way more to get anything like detail view. Still, I think Tony has a good point. It's useful to think about the desired effect, not some historical "normal"
My "clear" vision is probably about 2000mm. It's just a tiny dot in my visual field. I scan around to build up detail.
that's pretty ablest. when between 55%-90% of people wear glasses at least some time.
Acutally your eyes can only see detail in a small area, the fovea which is I think about 2 degrees of vision. This is why your eyes move around when reading.
Your brain does a very good job of piecing together a detailed view, and often fills in the gaps according to what it expects.
I guess you don't tend to move youe eyes outside of a certain central region, hence the central vs peripheral vision disctinction.
I think the choice of a 24mm main lens on modern phones has more to do with a compromise between not wanting to go too wide and not wanting the camera bump to be too thick as they increase the size of the sensor. I often find 24mm too prone to distortion for many subjects. It has it's place as a tool, but I think focal lengths in the 28-40 range are better do-it-all lenses.
I am 72 years old and serious about photography since circa 1970. Never did care much for 50 mm. I favor 35 mm and 24 mm. Your explanation of normal is the best I ever heard. It works for me!
33 year old teacher here. When I did online teaching during Covid I picked a 35 mm lens (Canon RP) and it felt pretty much perfect. Plenty of room to move while not being too "formal" or "intimate." For me, 28-35 is what I consider normal.
Also, love the content guys. Been watching for years and I appreciate the effort :)
I never had a concept of a normal focal length. I always saw focal length as something I choose for practical and artistic reasons - nothing more, nothing less. I did take an intro to photography class and was taught that 50 mm was "neutral" in the sense that it was what your eye saw with respect to foreground/background compression/expansion. I never ran tests to verify that. Perhaps that's something that Tony can do as follow up to this video. 🙂
You just nailed it: 50mm is about right to the eye because of the compression foreground/background. Field of view is just about cropping in or out.
@@PedroPabloCondeChao Yet there is no compression/expansion. This is a myth. A 50mm-ish lens will give a similar field of view to that which we see with our normal forward vision.
If you want the background to look bigger, walk closer to it. If you want somebody's nose to look smaller, walk away from it. Walking away will make the nose look smaller (obviously, as you are further away) but peeps mistake this as compression/expansion.
A wide angle photo will need cropping, to give the same filed of view as a photo taken with a telephoto, but the proportions will be the same.
I do not think that our vision is Full Frame equivalent... I feel like our eyes have 40-60 mm compression wise, but somethng like 16-24mm field of view, like large format, but wrapped into ball
35 2 eyes, 50 1 eye
My 1 eye see more than 50mm field of view, we are from different planets then
We basically have two circular fisheye lenses with horrible edges sharpness and vignetting from hell. And every camera setting is glued to automatic.
50mm on a Hasselblad medium format or 0.5x crop. Which makes that 50mm a 25mm. I believe it!
our eyes are, approximately, 2 medium format sensors (totaling 576 megapixels) with 2 40mm f/2 lenses
I love the 50mm focal length and I’m 46. It may not be normal, but it sure is nifty. I really would like to try some fast primes in the 40-45mm range. I’ve really liked the results I get with zoom lenses in that range.
However, I’ve read that the field of view where both eyes overlap is about 43 degrees-very close to the field of view for a 50mm lens.
That's what I was thinking. I did Tony's test, but I closed one eye then the other & got a much smaller fov.
I appreciate what you shared. I've had the same frustration. I've always approached lens choice with the mindset of "am I trying to 'push' the subject away from me or 'pull' the subject closer to me?" The "neutral" position of keeping the subject where it is usually ends up being 35mm. 50mm and up - pulling. 28mm and wider - pushing.
I'm 65. I've never understood why 50mm is always touted as 'normal' and have always treated 40mm as my default 'normal' (it's much nearer to the optical geometry in the human eye). 24mm is an excellent contender for the reasons you state.
Being 33 years old my "feeling" with my photos is that 35mm (on full frame) feels "right". 50mm feels to far away most of the time. And my actually most used lens because of family pictures is 24mm - because it always tells a story by showing enough of the surroundings to put a context to the situation. And finally... 20mm "feels" to wide - because the subject is either forelorn or to close to the camera... :)
Im 23, 9 years using mirrorless cameras, 40-50mm FF equivalent is what I consider normal for everyday documentation photography, it’s not distorted and is imo about how wide of a view human can focus/concentrate on
50mm being the base 'normal' focal length makes sense to me, as 50mm is the same perspective as the human eye of any given object when viewed from the same distance and so looks very 'natural' (nothing to do with the field of view).
That's why I've always liked it for product photography as what you see in the image is literally what you would be seeing if you were stood there with no 'lens trickery' to distort the proportions of the subject.
That said, obviously, much wider perspectives are 'normal' now (using a totally different meaning of the word) due to smartphones, which is what you're getting at... But when discussing lenses the current terminology makes perfect sense.
Sorry Paul, the human eye sees at 43mm...Pentax has one if you want the natural FOV.
It's a mythunderstanding that focal length controls perspective. Perspective just comes from distance - any lens will give the same perspective as any other, or as the human eye, if they're all at the same distance from the subject.
A longer focal length doesn't change the perspective if you stand in the same place, it just makes everything bigger.
You can try comparing the effect of changing lens to digital zoom aka cropping. In terms of perspective it's exactly the same. Digital zoom just reduces image quality.
This so much this!!! how it was described when i did my photography degree.
Lenses around 50mm on a 35mm film camera have a normal perspective. The objects in the frame are true to life. 50mm is slightly tighter than an average humans FOV. But you know no objects in the frame will be distorted.
That is not to say you always want things to look exactly like they are in real life, using a wide angle lenses or telephoto lenses to get your desired effect is important in art too (and fiction), I'm sure we've all seen the photos of giant rats etc, held at arms length and photographed with a wide angle lens to make them look 4 foot long
50 mm isn't even close to the compression that human eyes sees.
@@barneylaurance1865 What is this nonsense. No you can match the portrait framing between a 16 mm and a 80 mm and the subject and background look completely different. That's a different perspective inherent to focal lengths changing the angle of light. That's how long focal lengths give magnified look. It's not even close to cropping or digital zoom.
*For a human if you can not share food it is not normal!* Because that is what we mostly differ with from other animals.
25 year old and I think around 40-50mm is normal in terms of what my eyes see, everything is pretty much in proportion to each other the way I see things. I find 24mm too close or intimate for me (if I'm doing street photography) but that's because I'm introverted and don't feel comfortable being up-close to people. My preference is usually 85mm or so, because that's how I view the world in terms of isolating a subject in front me, if that makes any sense, so 85mm is normal for me :')
I like how you introduced personality into discussion. As a introvert myself I prefer to shoot and watch photos of unfamiliar people shoot with longer lenses, for family and close friends I use 45mm and I do find that lens to feel "normal"... Even in this video when Tony switched to "intimate" focal length I felt uncomfortable 😅
I think your second example hits home. For me, it's about the magnification through the lens being comparable to what our eyes see. If you put the camera up to your right eye and the magnification matches what your left eye sees, that's normal. For me, that's 50mm. That said, I honestly don't think about it much as I just use a zoom and only actually know what focal length I shot something at when I edit it and see the metadata. I'm a boomer.
I also like the flexibility of a zoom. The most used for me is 18 to 140 mm. Covers most of what I need. I like not having to do a lens change very often.
Me too,its as simple as that
Yep, this is the answer.
That really depends on your camera's viewfinder magnification, though. For example, the Fuji XPro1's viewfinder has 0.37x magnification, but the XPro3's magnification is 0.52x. Does that mean the two cameras have a different 'normal' lens, despite having the same size sensor?
I found 60mm was matching the both eyes open magnification on my camera 😂. So view finder magnification and eye point changes how that behaves.
(34yo) I mostly use a 24-105mm on full-frame so don’t consciously think of a specific focal length as ‘normal’, but I’d probably say I default to 40-50mm for most images as it looks similar to my regular field of view.
While we have reasonably good peripheral vision, the area which is actually seen in detail is relatively narrow: I might be able to see my fingertips in my peripheral vision at ‘24mm’ but the area that I’m seeing at any one time with any degree of visual quality is more akin to 40mm, for example. My eyes are like a 24mm lens that has horrendous distortion in the corners, so the images are cropped to 40mm by default by my brain unless the periphery is needed in an emergency. If I want to see/photograph something in the corners I can move my eyes/lens but the corners of the new image still suck, they’re just shifted.
I think our vision works kinda like an anamorphic lens, a 50mm with 2x squeeze factor is way wider than a typical 50mm lens for FF sensor (35mm film), yet everything still look ''normal'' with little to no distortion and the background is not compressed or the other way around, the background doesn't looks stretched with everything so distant like we see on wide angle lens.
I'm 32 and 50mm has been my probably most used focal length since I've always had a 50mm prime in my bag. But I have both a 35mm and 50mm primes and I struggle to decide which one to use. They both are similar yet very different at the same time. But I agree with you assessment, 35mm being a more comfortable focal length but 50mm being more formal. When I use 50mm, I often seem to be more "creative" with my photos and isolate subjects more whereas 35mm I feel like I "document" the scene more. I don't think one is better than the other, but It depends on how you see things and how you want to capture those things. Great video Tony!
I love this video and approach! I'm in my mid-forties and 35mm has always felt the most 'normal' to me. Not ideal for landscapes or portraits but it can handle anything.
Hey Toni, I am 51 years old. First I would suggest a small correction: most smartphones use 26 to 28mm as normal lens (not 24 as you claimed). As a prime shooter for some years I really came to love 28mm lenses. I tried for one year the 24mm (24GM) but it felt to wide for people quite often (so I sold it after one year, even it delivered nearly perfect optics, and switched back to 28mm). For me 28mm is the perfect "normal" focal length (one prime lens for the island). Usually I like to complement it with a UWA (14-15mm) and a 50-58mm (my personal "small tele") and a 85 (my "normal tele"). And I have to add to the story that I mostly use my A7IV for photography (and take it everywhere) and my smartphone only in emergency cases for photography. I try 35mm but feel it is often to tied, but works sometimes - but not my favorite (feels like sligthly wider 50mm lens).
I consider a normal lens as being one that keeps the apparent spacing between objects which are at various distances from the camera looking like they do to my eye. I consider something like 55 to 70mm to be normal. Over that and the background objects have moved closer to the foreground. The picture has tightened up. Less than 50mm and the spacing between objects has increased. The picture has opened up. This effect can be seen in this video with the trees and shed in the background appearing to move further away and get smaller as Tony drops the focal length. How old? I bought a brand new Pentax K1000 when they first came out. I'm old.
Precisely! In the mid 1950s I used a Kodak Signet 35 w/ fixed mount f3.5 50mm and my father's Leica III-F bodies mostly with a 50mm Summicron. In 1968 the wedding gift from my father was a Konica Minolta with an f1.8 58mm. My father usually used his 55mm Micro Nikkor. I now find my most frequently used focal lengths are 35mm and 70mm. I can walk around with either.
I always assumed 40-50ish mm was meant to be similar to foveal vision, the part of the eye with high resolution and good color depth. Since people's eyes are somewhat unique to each person then the focal length of the foveal vision of each person is somewhat different(equiv full frame). I like how you talk about focal lengths as personal distance or intimacy. I think it is a more useful definition. Something in the mid to low 40 mm has felt "normal" to me.
Exactly, that's why I love my tamron 45mm f1.8
Yes, I had thought it related to what we could actually consider 'in focus' - we may have a 180 degree field of view, but try discerning fine details on the edges whilst looking straight ahead.
@@stevepritchard3970 This is exactly it. When we look around a printed picture, the edges of the frame don't expand in the way the edges of our vision would. A picture is a representation, a snapshot, of a scene. The extent to which we can take in a scene in real life is a combined effort of both our eyes and our brain. Most of our moment to moment "vision" is a construct from our memories, because we can't properly "see" everything at once. As you pointed out, most of our periphery vision is garbage.
Sometimes, when we are focused (both physically and mentally) on a distant subject, our vision can feel quite telephoto (aka, tunnel vision). Lifting a camera with a 50mm lens to our eyes to shoot such a subject can leave us feeling disappointed in how distant the subject appears in the frame.
I'm sure it varies a lot from person to person, but for me 35mm is the closest to "normal" FOV. When I see pictures taken with a 35mm lens, they feel very documentary. Which is why I actually favour either a 28mm or a 40/50mm, because I find the slight exaggeration of reality to be more interesting/artistic.
The fovea is tiny; it only has a about a 5 degree field of view, so the fovea corresponds to about a 500mm focal length on a full frame camera. That's where our peak resolution is. This doesn't correspond with people's subjective impression of their vision, but it's easy to demonstrate.
I am 72 and also think 35mm is best for capturing most situations with people. For potraits however I would use 85mm or 105mm. I have always seen the 50mm as a compromise when you could only choose one lens. I still have the Nikon F I bought in 1968 with a 35mm and the famous 105mm. That was what I could afford back then at the age of 17.
Hi Tony, I'm 56 years old and I've always thought of 70mm as my normal. Very thought provoking video.
Nice video, as always. For me the 50 mm "normal" label feels more about the distortion and compresion of the final image being closer to reality. I'm 57 btw, and have love that focal distance since I begun borrowing my father's Pentax at 13!
For me, 50mm is never wide enough. It's okay for narrow photos like a person's face. But when you get into the world, it just begs to be wider.
50mm lens is what you'd typically use in an enlarger when printing from 35mm negatives
I've always noticed 70mm gives me the same compression/distortion (zero, in other words) as my eyes, which is my definition of "normal". 50mm does stretch things unnaturally a little. Field-of-view is an entirely separate matter that can't be compared directly to the human eye without multiple exposures.
Edit: I'm 47. And I've actually tested this with different lenses.
I agree that "normal" should probably be measured by how natural the perspective and distortions of human subjects appear. This largely depends on the distance to the subject which aligns to Tony's concepts of "formal", "casual", and "intimate".
Most of us know that taking a photo / video of a human face at less than a metre will result in an unnatural look - mainly because we're not used to interacting with anyone other than intimate partners at that distance. Similarly when you get into telephoto territory (say >70mm on 35mm equivalent sensors), facial features start to appear unnaturally compressed.
I tend to like 30-40mm as general purpose focal length for stills because it has minimal distortion for human subjects at comfortable distances from the subject. Even if 50-70mm gives a more "correct" image, closer to the human eye's perspective, if requires getting 2-3 metres from the subject for a medium or 3/4 shot, and often has too narrow a field of view for taking group photos in many settings.
For video I find I'm nearly always wider than this, unless filming someone talking to camera. I could do just about everything with my 8-18mm MFT lens (approx 16-36mm FF equivalent), and can "extend" to a 50mm equivalent with a pixel-to-pixel crop mode on the camera. I don't often go below 20mm equivalent because I do notice unnatural perspective effects on some shots, and I notice vignetting with some of my filters. That said, a 16mm ultra-wide is good for some wide establishing shots, and particularly around or inside buildings. I'm in my 50's BTW.
I really like your assessment
All wide lenses can give the telephoto look if you crop into them enough even ultra wide angle ones. Distortion doesn't come from the type of lens you use but from the distance to your subject. Take an image of anything with an 85mm lens and then without changing your distance from the subject switch lenses and use a 14mm. Then crop the image of the 14mm as to frame it exactly as you did with the 85 and you will end up with the exact image you got with the 85mm minus the bokeh of course. The telephoto "compression" look will be the same in both photos.
Tony, I think the objective definition should or could be a focal length that keep objects of various depths in the image appear with the same ratios to each other as we seem them with our eyes.
In other words, zero positive or negative compression (expansion).
What focal length creates this image?
Also, wouldn't the calculation using the diagonal of the sensor be incorrect unless the sensor was square and the image was project accurately to the edge of the sensor?
Thank you for all your contribute to the photography world!
I primarily shoot wildlife. My understanding is 50mm equals 1x in magnification so 500mm would equal approximately a 10x binocular. I general carry either a 8 or 10x binocular with me and that gives me a decent approximation for when I’m shooting either 400 or 500 mm lens.
50 mm is roughly what you can comfortably look without turning your head. But I think 35 mm is more what I would consider normal. It is the sensor width so you you get as much horizontally as the distance is. When I first bought a 50 mm (32 mm actually because of the crop) prime I found I had to step back often to get the photo.
What does that mean?
All lenses project the same image on the same area.
Aren't you an EOS M shooter, by any chance (32mm gives away EF-M 32mm f1.4)?
One of the reason why I so love this channel is that I pick some random video to watch while snacking, and it casually rewrites how I think about lenses and their focal lengths. Thank you for this content
i like to think of focal length exclusively in term of distortion. If I want relatively little distortion I'm at 100 and when I want distortion I go wider. i don't aim to capture what i see but what picture i intend to make. it's really weird to me to let the lens "drive" and find the shots through the viewfinder instead of thinking of an image and making it by creating the right conditions, producing the right light, and using the right lens.
you make the most sense here......
Yeah, I'm the same
Does 70mm have distortion?
@@davidvictory9764 it's not the focal length that causes distortion, it is the perspective (excluding optical imperfections like barrel distortion). Distortion is not inherently bad either. But as a general guideline, pick a lens that lets you stay 6 feet away from your subject if you want to minimize distortion.
@@neilr7935 how do I do barrel distortion? I can't find it anywhere. NM I found out you gotta have a very wide lens
I remember taking a photography class at a local university on composition using 35mm SLRs. He specifically mentioned the 50mm as being "normal" because the viewfinder "mirrored" what the human eye saw from the same location. Telephoto made objects look closer, but you lost "wideth" in the frame. Wide angle lenses gave you greater frame width, but objects looked further away.
Age is a factor. I am now a 62 year old retired educator and am rediscovering photography via a D850. My favorite prime is a 85mm f1.4. My travel lens is a 24 - 70mm f2.8 zoom. Smart phone cameras do tend to force one to be too close to their subject.
I wonder what the relationship is between 50mm (or other focal length) and the fovea or other aspects of human vision; my peripheral vision goes all the way out to 180 degrees, but a significantly smaller area is actually in focus, and though I can "see" my fingers wiggle at the very periphery, I get basically no color or shape information there, and I mostly notice the simple presence of motion occurring.
Foveal vision is only about 5 degrees, which would correspond to a 500mm lens. Very little of our visual field is sharp at all. 50mm is about how much we can keep track of with "moderate watchfulness" or a similar level of effort, given cetain kinds of detection tasks. It's an answer, but hardly the only answer, to what a "normal" lens should be.
normal refers to the lens itself and the elements of the lens. a 50mm lens can have the element at 50mm away from the sensor. a telephoto lens is one with a telescopic element. a wide angle lens is one with a retrofocal element.
I totally love your labels of “intimate” or “formal”. Makes a lot of sense and helps to choose the lens for a photo shoot!
2:40 That's the point. It's not about the field of view, but about the "geometry". So the question was: what focus length do you need for the same sensation of depth and angles etc. (no fish-eye and no tele compression)? As far as I learned the "focus length equals diagonal" is a result of this question, the choice for 50 mm then possibly a simplification. So maybe 50 mm is not "normal" because the Leica had it, but the Leica had it because it is "normal".
Of course you are right at 4:15 with the idea of how people consume the footage, how big (and how far awy) it is later on. Because then again the picture spans a field of view that might or might feel natural depending on the chosen focus length.
Oh, and I forgot: With my close to 40 years I feel like something around 35 mm (23 mm on APS-C) feels more "normal" but still prefer to shot with slight telephoto (50 - 90 mm on APS-C).
I love that you're challenging this "rule". I have always felt that "normal" represents more of the "feeling" than look or field of view. I think lens manufacturers get this wrong a lot. Your subject ultimately kind of determines "normal". For me, shooting flowers at "eye level" with the flower feels right semi telephoto. Cutting out a lot of background in a portrait of a human feels "intimate", because you feel close to the subject with regard to him/her being singled out in the image, while including more environmen feels less intimate. But so too does 24mm feel intimate in a vlog type of scenario, or a tutorial at your desk. I also buy or use lenses based on how close I can or need to be to my subject. For instance 18mm on Fujifilm is my indoor lens. 1.4 still isolates my subject, but I can shoot from 4 feet away and still get good framing.
33 M SOCAL: Natural 24, Least distortion 85-135mm. My first 2 GM lenses have been the 24GM and the 135GM and they are both absolutely fantastic for different reasons and scenarios.
Normal in my book is twofold: 40-50mm puts a slight emphasis on your subject while still set it in its environment. People in my experience just love the look of this. And if you print pictures a little bigger the usual viewing distance equates about the diagonal of the frame plus one or two steps. That’s about 50mm converted to the sensor diagonal. So the distortion seems natural given the viewing distance.
I've always thought it was because the relative distortion (not the field of view) was close to that of the human eye. Like when you held it up to your eye and looked through and noticed things were about the same level of magnification through the viewfinder. For most full frame cameras I can slap a 50mm on there look through the viewfinder and it's almost like working with an augmented reality effect when shooting with both eyes open, you can see a box cropped from your field of vision but you can look and focus the camera to match your open eye and still see stereoscopically. (assuming your viewfinder is calibrated correctly) You can't really do that at 35mm or 70mm instead if you try to shoot both eyes open you'll kinda have a double vision effect until you train your brain to focus on one eye or the other. As a cinematographer this is actually an exercise one of my instructors use to have us do back in film school to get use to shooting with both eyes open, which is a critical skill to have when you're in fast paced documentary settings but need to have a constantly rolling camera. The goal was to eventually train our brains to be comfortable with two eyes open at any focal length. With modern LCD's on the back of cameras and viewfinders becoming less commonplace this is a much less useful skill.
Wikipedia has a good explaination on this. TLDR: 50mm is reasonably close to "normal" vision and is a nice round number which is why we use it. The eye actually has a 17mm focal length, but we have two, and our brains process objects in a way that flattens them out to make them easier to track in space:
" The eye has a nominal focal length of approximately 17mm, but it varies with accommodation. The nature of human binocular vision, which uses two lenses instead of a single one, and post-processing by the cortex is very different from the process of making and rendering a photograph, video or film.
Accommodation is the process by which the vertebrate eye changes optical power to maintain a clear image or focus on an object as its distance varies. In this, distances vary for individuals from the far point-the maximum distance from the eye for which a clear image of an object can be seen, to the near point-the minimum distance for a clear image. Mammals, birds and reptiles vary their eyes' optical power by changing the form of the elastic lens using the ciliary body (in humans up to 15 dioptres in the mean). "
no human eyes = 3 focal lengh combine and the total give you something like 43.26mm. For immersive Vr try a 17-26mm and we will laugh, next try a 45mm. 45mm combined with 2 cameras give something more natural than 17-26mm. In fact shooting in vertically is the best solution but in real it's more easy to rec horizontally.
when viewing the 50mm thru the EVF, you also have to factor in the magnification of the EVF when comparing it to your open eye. everyone has slightly diff "focal lengths' for their eyes.
I started photography in a time when you bought a 35mm SLR and it normally came with a 50mm lens. I also used TLR cameras that came with lenses about 80mm which gives a similar field of view. I think a "normal" lens is not matching the field of view of your eye but is matching the field of view of what you are looking at. When I'm looking at things I'm paying attention to what is somewhat in the center of my field of view and ignoring the peripheral vision. A "normal" lens would approximate that. However I always felt that "normal" on a 35mm negative should be a lens of about 40mm focal length.
I am 72 yro and started with film in 1968 with a 50mm "normal" lens with 35mm SLR. I quickly realized that my "normal" soon became a 100mm lens because that seemed to be the way I viewed the world for street photography. Your analogy that 50mm was not "normal" because our eyes has more of a 24mm FOV is interesting, but I'd propose the 100mm FOV was where our eye sees the world with the most actuity. As you probably are aware the fovea of our eye is the location where the eye has the most actuity and is where we actually "see" and visualize the world. An example of what I mean is when we drive we do not concentrate our vision at 24mm but more at 100mm. Food for thought.
Tony, curious with your thoughts why 50mm lens are the most affordable?
I’m 22 years old and have been doing photography for a couple of years now, and I can say for certain that some of my favorite photos I’ve ever taken are of my significant other with the main shooter on my phone (24mm). You’re absolutely right that it feels much more “intimate” at this focal length than it does at 50mm, and I really enjoy the friendly feeling of the photos that I take with that lens. Awesome video! (:
For me 50mm is my go to for "natural" looking photos due to the lack of distortion you would have on a subject with a wider lens. At 50mm faces and objects feel more natural as compared to standing closer with a wider lens. Longer lenses separate the subject from the background and remove context for the shot and further flatten the subject, making it feel more like a spotlight on a subject.
Nailed it. 50mm has the same magnification and perspective of the human eye in terms of foreground, background and the subject. No distortion. It’s always my go to prime lens.
1:33 Tony is so right. Imagine if 50mm focal range was the normal view of an eye we wouldnt be aware of our surroundings
Back in the early 90s when I was learning photography I was always told that the 50mm lens was the standard. I tried it for a while but I did not like it. I found I preferred the view that the 35mm lens gave me and that became my standard or normal lens. For me the 24mm lens is a wide angle lens even though it’s the typical standard on smartphones. I’d love to see a high quality 35mm (equivalent) lens on a smartphone but I don’t see that happening any time soon unfortunately. By the way, in terms of zoom lenses, the 24-85mm was my standard lens.
I'm 33 and I like to shoot street photography. For me 35mm seems to be where I'm most comfortable. When I put my 50mm on it feels restrictive. I often find I'm seeing a shot and then having to take a few steps backward to get the framing I want (which is annoying). As a result I rarely use it as it just slows me down and I miss "decisive moments".
However if I was to shoot portraiture I definitely would not want to be using anything wider than a 50. This video is a great example of the impact of focal length and distortion. As you go wider Tony looks more and more bobble-head like!
I am 36 and I find 50mm to be about normal.
I see it like this: I imagine interacting with the world through the viewfider of my camera:
-With anything wider than 40mm, I feel like there is too much distraction on the sides to be "normal".
-With longer than 75-80mm focal lengths I feel constrained to a point that I feel I am way too close to be "normal".
The middle ground is about 50mm, and I call it normal.
43-year-old here and my normal focal length is 50mm. In my opinion, you forgot to mention what parts of the model are going to show in the frame. I tend to use 50mm all the time because I like that focal length for some reason. I use it as much as to easily be able to judge where I need to be to fill my frame the way I want to. The other lens I use is a 135 and I am in love with that lens. I do not shoot identical photos with it. The focal length allows me to shoot even tighter so I am usually relatively close to my subjects even with a huge lens like 135mm.
I think you have to take into account the comfortable viewing distance to a printed photo of a given size. If you're looking at an 8x10 photo, for example, you might hold it about 2 feet from your face, which would be pretty close (roughly) to the 45 degree viewing angle of a 50mm. If it were a larger 24x36 poster, you'd want to stand a bit farther back to see the whole image, so the viewing angle would still be about the same. Right?
Agree! I made the same point 👍
I think Normal lenses are considered normal, when they have a similar compression as what we see with the human eye, not compressing or decompressing near and far parts of the image. That said, that focal length is not as wide as we see. If you cover one eye and look, it's closer to being correct. I personally prefer a FF equivalent of 35mm. Most of the images I take tend to be centered around that focal length as well. At one point, I went all Prime lenses, and bought every one I thought I'd need. I found out that most of the time, I kept my 35mm lens on. Now that I shoot medium format, that's my 45mm lens, though I use zooms now as well because they're just so darn convenient.
Thank you, Tony. Agree with everything, but you skipped my favorite, 28 mm. I know it has fallen out of favor these days, but then, I am > 65. BTW, If I wanted a bit more formal but still comfortable, 35 mm would be it. The 50 mm never felt right to me. BTW, if only given a choice of 24 mm and 35 mm, I would likely use the latter.
Interesting discussion. Way back (70's), I was in photography school in upstate NY. A college named Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). In our freshman year - this was discussed. Meaning why is 50 mm considered a "normal" lens. BTW, as the film or sensor size goes up - so does the "normal" lens size. On 2 1/x4 1/4 (medium format), it was 80 mm. One 4x5, it was 210 mm.
For those of us old folks, we used to print images back in the day. One of the most popular print sizes for display was an 8x10. As the professors explained it to us, normal lens was based on what made a "normal"/not distorted, not flattened perspective image when printed on an 8x10 AND viewed while holding it in your hands.
So I'd agree, "normal" is very much dependent on viewing image size and distance. A small print viewed up close would have a different "normal" lens than a 40x60 image print viewed at 10 feet.
Seem to remember something similar from my misbegotten youth as well.
A suggestion : go to your ( I assume) vast database of pictures taken with a 24-70 , and see what average focal lens you did use the most .
I checked my Lightroom : efs15-85 , on 5700 photos , about 10% were in-between 30 an 35 ( 50mm equivalent) . On my EF 24-105 , 6000, again. 10% in-between 45 and 55 and 10% for RF 24-105 . On the 3 lenses, 24-26 mm were 20--22% of the pictures taken, more than twice as much as the 50 range.
I don’t think there’s a very precise angle of view that is normal or natural. But I do think that super telephoto and super wide angle can be considered unnatural. Even though human vision is 180 degrees it is nothing like a super wide angle experience. That is because it is a very small part of our vision that we use to see with. The compression that super telephoto lenses make is equally unnatural. I think that a rule of thumb for what is normal or natural is the angle of view that you get when admiring a painting at a preferred distance. If you look at a large painting you will naturally want to step back. When looking at a small painting you will naturally want to get close. My guess is that that angle of view from your eyes to the edges of the painting is about equal to the angle of view of a 35mm to a 50mm lens on a full frame camera.
I bought and use the 50 because of the perspective distortion that distance gives me. I believe the human eye analogy came from the focused angle of the eye in a relaxed "normal" state somewhere around 50 and 60mm, not the total field of view. Maybe this is why there is a lot more variation in this part of the range with 50mm 55mm 56mm 57mm 58mm 60mm maybe this is pleasing to the eye no matter the size you watch it on, because you only see sharply 50mm no matter how close you get so you are the most familiar with that perspective distortion. Try to read a paper, or watch your monitor, you can't see sharply the whole at the same time. If someone would create a camera lens with the view angle and sharpness of the eye it would be a really bad lens :D This is my guess. And maybe easy to manufacture it too, because some of them are dirt cheap and still great :D
Greetings guys! So, I was a professional photographer in the early 70s and an assistant manager for a camera store in California. Of course, we dealt with all of the other camera stores and professionals as well! We used to teach and explain the 50 mm lens was the “normal“ lens, as it represented the relative view of the eye when you look through that lens. As if you were holding a square with your fingers out in front of you to capture that image. In other words, if you look through a 50 mm lens and look with the other eye, the images are almost exactly the same in distance ratio. This was the perspective from shooting a 35 mm film camera. This idea did not translate very well to my Hasselblad. That being said, we only taught people using 35mm cameras, so that general concept was accepted throughout the industry in California back in the 70s. That is where, probably, that the 50 mm lens was considered a normal viewing lens. As we all know, sometimes things grow legs! Keep up the great work! Love you both!
In terms of comparing focal length with the visual fields of the eye, you need to account that central vision covers a much narrow angle than the total visual field. This is due to the fovea where sharp central vision is found. You might have a very wide-angle of total vision but the peripheral areas are only good for picking up gross visual changes such as movement or change in light intensity. For example, try reading a book which is directly in front of your eyes vs at the edge of your peripheral vision.
I'm 37 and a architect, I tend to shoot wide angle for work and pleasure. 24mm has been my preferred focal length
I always thought normal was matching the magnification of your vision at what ever distance and started learning with the 50mm kit lens which gave me a good perspective to base my choice of lens for what ever I wanted to capture. I don't think it matters what your normal may be but I thought 50mm was a good tool to begin my creative journey with. and still consider it normal, and I thought this was an interesting question so I had to jump in.
I am 64
I always assumed when people said that 50mm was similar to the human eye, they meant a single eye - because when you look through the viewfinder, you are looking through it with only one eye. In your test with your arms out to the side, you had both eyes open.
I’m 51, and my father was a photographer since he was a kid back in WW II. When he explained to me the “normal” focal length, he told me to keep both my eyes open, and look through the viewfinder with a zoom lens. Then, zoom in/out until I see things in the view finder at the same magnification as my other eye. This was happening at around 50~55mm. I guess “normal” is just an arbitrary definition, as “full-frame”, “medium format” etc.
I bought a Pentax K1 II AND a 43mm F 1.9 lens precisely because no other company offered that focal length in a prime lens. I have been singing the praises of 28mm for 1.5 crop, and 43mm for 135mm format for many years now. I'm 64, and have been making photographs FAR longer than Tony (1968 is when I started)
Max you are a legend
I've always maintained that it's somewhere between 35mm and 50mm. I remember hearing a long time ago that 50 was basically 1:1 with your eyesight like you mentioned, but the more I got into it, I noticed that it wasn't always 1:1. Same goes for the 35. I'm more inclined to think 35mm is the "right" choice over the 50mm, but go back and forth. Now if only we could find someone to make a 180 degree 35-50mm to test this hypothesis... Also I'm 41.
there is a long mathematical argument that 42 mm is what best fits human vision
I’m 65 and have always preferred 35mm and 24 mm. If I use something around 50 mm, it’s a 55 mm macro because when you’re doing that kind of photography, that lens provides a comfortable working distance for close-up photography and it always felt like flash for macro works optimally with that focal length. I do have a 50 mm lens I haven’t used in years.
I’ve been enjoying your videos and books for over a decade. In 2023, I’m still learning from you guys. I’m 48, my everyday walk around lens is 24 pancake lens on a Canon 5D/4. When I want better range and neck pain I bring out the 24-70 2.8. I enjoy shooting wide city scenes architecture and landscape.
I'm 67 yrs.old. Back in the day when you bought a new camera(film) it "NORMALLY" came with a 50mm lens; therefore we referred to it as normal. As a newspaper photographer I rarely used 50, my go to was 35mm. JT
This is a great discussion! When I bought my camera (full frame) a 50 mm lens was included and since lots of people said that it was "normal" I started using it everywhere. Unfortunately there were a lot of situations where it wasn't viable, like group photos in smaller rooms, so I wondered why people meant with "normal" for it certainly wasn't the viewing angle. I bought a 24 mm and I was able to do so much more, even though people looked a little weird sometimes so I thought that was much "normaler".
Maybe they mean that with 50 mm things aren't distorted compared to the human vision? Also I wouldn't like to call the 24 mm more "intimate" because it doesn't go well with architecture and landscape photography, you wouldn't say you get intimate with a big vista.
Same for me. 50 mm was my first fixed focal length and escpecially indoors I struggled to capture the amount of context I wanted my portraits to provide. Now with two never resting kids I found 35 mm to be the sweet spot for me.
I agree on your point that referring to 24 mm as "intimate" only works in the situation above, when you move the camera to get the same upper body shot, but scrolling through my 24 mm lens smartphone photos, portraits are somewhat rare.
After at least a million photos, I have literally never considered which focal length is "normal".
Can we just stop making up names for numbers? We can just call 50mm "50mm" and 35mm "35mm". We do NOT need other names for that.
As artists, yes we do, as part of expression. It's what "humanizes" things. Photography is a form of human expression, not just a technical mathematical whatnot. Imagine me calling your most beloved masterpiece "just a bunch of photons captured at a certain moment"
I'm 29 and I think that 50mm is a pretty good benchmark for "normal" as a focal length, for compositional reasons. The fact that it gives a view through the viewfinder that kinda matches your view with your eye (I'm even on an APS-C camera and it still works that way) gives you less work when composing shots with just that lens. An inexperienced photo'er like myself would need less forethought in composing shots by just composing a box with our fingers over what we're looking at and taking said picture with our camera. This "eye-viewfinder-match" focal length is probably why early 20th century camera manufacturers chose it. It helped sell more cameras to people who started learning photography after they bought their first film SLR right before the family vacation. Simply recording what your eye sees needs very little training and helps to sell a lot of cameras. Smart phones still sell cameras that work this way to this very day.
50mm I would say it's the "smallest" focal length that does not cause the image to get elongated at the edges at all. With a 35 the image looks a bit elongated towards the edges and with a 85+ you need to stay a lot farther to take the same shot. 50 lets you get nice photos while being close enough but not on top of your subject. Also, even if we have wide view angle we only see colors and details in the middle of our view. You can see something moving with the corner of the eye but you can't tell what it is until you turn your head.
The human eye and brain are constantly sampling and forming composite images. I have often wondered why anyone says a lens is "normal" because the fovea of the eye gives quite a narrow field of view, but this is superimposed on our low-detail wide-field vision. Then, we constantly move our fovea around to generate whatever composite detailed FOV we need at the time. So essentially "normal" is a constant change depending on the subject - much like photography. Thanks for bringing up the perspective of the viewer. I think that will greatly help me to visualize in my mind, the story I try to tell in a photo or video. I'm 28mm and 47 years.
I'm 35 years old and 45mm is my favorite focal length. I think that the amount of compression this focal length provides is why I think of it as "normal". It has nothing to do with field of view (which still feels a bit too narrow).
The focal length obviously depends on what you are trying to get in the frame from where you are standing. The key is to have a range of lenses (or zooms) that match the 1.414 (or .707) ratio from one to the next since that represents a doubling of area in the picture. If you don't want a doubling either crop or use a zoom. So the lens lines were developed around some standard (it happened to be 100mm) thus 100, 70.7, 50, 35, 24 etc. and 100, 141, 199 (rounded to 200). Then the manufacturing engineers took control and said no more of this crap, were going in even increments, 100, 200, 300, 400, 600, 800, 1000. So pick your viewpoint, decide what you want to include, then pick the appropriate focal length (or zoom) from the wide variety available. I have no idea where 85 mm came from or why 141 got "rounded" to 135. This is, of course, tongue in cheek.
I am 28 years old with 11 years experience in cinematography and photography , I'm using 17-28mm f2.8, 50mm f1.8 & 85mm F1.8 all from Nikon Z S line for photography, for cinematography I'm using Dzofilm pictor 20-55mm & 50-125mm T2.8
I’m 25 and I find 50mm talking heads to be more intimate and engaging that 35mm or 24mm with typical framing. The compression helps me focus on the eyes of a presenter and not get distracted by an environment. The framing is important, because I also find I like the quirky composition of a 20-24mm talking head when it’s “uncomfortably close”; I also find that type of content super engaging.
Interesting. I like watching the environment.
I carry around 2 primes - 24 & 85 - but never really thought about why. Now I inundated get it. I’m either super happy to be around my subject and don’t mind getting “intimate” or would rather you keep your “distance”. Makes total sense to me!!
It relates to how we see the subject in the surroundings. The background space is just right and the field of view is blurred just right if we are looking at the subject.
I'm 67. In the past year my camera was stolen in a home robbery. Also, I had cataract surgery! With my new bionic eyes, I need to rethink what I want to purchase. I loved my nifty fifty, but your video is giving me some good information on the way forward. Thanks so much!
Hi Tony and Chelsea, this is a fascinating subject! My age? 51, born in Argentina, but living in the UK for over 20 years. When I got serious about photography, I purchased a Nikon F5(it was 1998) with just 3 prime Nikkor lenses: A 24mm f/2.8, a 50mm f/1.4 and an 85mm f/1.8. Never got along with the '50'. My best shots were always with the 24mm, and today, I understand why: Because I could be 'intimate' with my subject and portray that sense of 'intimacy' to the viewer. As I said, fascinating! Thank you for the video!
I'm 26 and I prefer focal lenghtes around 35. It just feels natural to me. Even on my phone, I tend to use something around 1.3-1.5 digital zoom even though it lowers the quality a lot on such a low pixel count. In most cases, I find 24 mm pretty unusable. Only usable when I get angle and distance right, due to wide-angle distortion.. So it's harder to work with.
Another question is why in traditional cinema was 50mm considered "normal" when they were using a 24mm x 18mm (or slightly smaller) format (4-perf 35mm). Early silent movies were almost all shot at 50mm. Was that just what focal length was easiest to build as opposed to a 35mm? Hitchcock, for example, insisted on almost all of "Psycho" (4-perf 35mm) being shot on a 50mm because it was "normal"... but when he shot in VistaVision (8-perf 35mm) in the 1950s, he also tried to shoot on a 50mm when possible, but now he had 1.5X more view on that larger format.
The first Leica was a bit different for many reasons. One reason was the need to enlarge. Contact printing was big at the time. Enlarging from proof contact sheets narrowed down the expense so you didn't have to waste money on bad shots. What was the typical enlargement size? I'm thinking about 5"x7". I suggest that for that use 50mm gave useful photos, hence it proliferated, and was considered normal.
For my 71 year old use, I like 40mm. I like to print A3+. Works for me.
Thank you so much for this video. You talked from my heart. 50mm has never felt any more "normal" to me than 28mm, and I have always disagreed with those air-filled statements about human vision too. "Normal" is indeed a misleading and unnecessary term in photography, which is especially confusing in the era of APS-C cameras. I'll never forget my disappointment when I first mounted a 50mm f/1.8 on my Canon 90D, expecting something "normal". I'm 31, and 28mm is my most commonly used focal length, 70mm being a close second.
As a kid in the late 60's I was taught that 50mm was essentially 1x magnification compared to your eye for 35mm as you said. I don't have any issue understanding this, and I can scale it nicely to APS-C or any crop factor, even medium format. Yes as you say you can print the same image any size, but that has always been the case. The first 35mm camera makers needed a standard to use to gauge the lens, and I think based on what I was taught they chose magnification factor as that gauge or 'standard'. BTW - 'Taught' in the 1960's means I probably read it in a Kodak booklet or in the pages of Popular Photography magazine.
I love Tony for this type of content. A different perspective, on perspective
I absolutely love this framework, and it aligns with how I hear cinematographers talk about focal length more than photographers. For that reason, 28mm feels pretty normal to me, especially after hearing Bradford Young talk about it so much in relation to Arrival. I'm 42, btw.
I grew up using an 85mm f/1.8 Canon FL lens on an FT-QL as my primary lens from 1969 to 2005. Sure, I got longer and shorter lenses over time, but 85mm felt "natural" to me. (How's that for another descriptor? - I think it's all a matter of what you grew up with - like how the term "intuitive" for computer user interfaces is very personal.)
When I went digital with a Rebel and the EF-S 17-55 f/2.8, I naturally gravitated towards the long end of that lens as it approximated on a Canon APS-C sensor 88mm - close to what I was used to.
When I went to the 80D I got the 18-135mm nanoUSM lens and used that most of the time unless I needed the low-light capability of the 17-55 or the wide angle of the 10-18.
Now with the R7 I have an embarassment of RF lenses: the surprisingly good RF-S 18-150mm kit lens, the fun 1.8 nifty-fifty for intimate parties (which feels like my old FT-QL rig), and now my first L lens, the f/4 70-200. I've even picked up the 16mm f/2.8.
I was debating getting the 35mm f/1.8 as a 56mm equivalent "normal" lens but I think you've persuaded me against it - I actually never liked the framing of the 50 f/1.8 lens that came with the FT-QL.
Maybe the “natural angle of view" implies that, on the one hand, you don't have a feeling of being "squeezed" or having a limited field of view, and, on the other hand, your pupil doesn't have to move in order to see everything in that field of view. That's exactly what happens with me at 50mm! At 35mm I already have to shift my gaze a bit to see the details in the periphery of the photo better.
Great video! I didn't understand why I was so confused by everyone talking about nifty-fifty while I felt that it is rather "distant" for a close shot. I love the way you divide the focal length into distant - formal - intimate because that's exactly what i feel while choosing the lense and I couldn't tell why i don't have an intimate feeling while thinking about 50mm but it felt more like a great portrait lense that gives you a "formal" distance between your subject. If you do a reportage with 25mm it will feel so intimate.