The Appeal of 50?

[Mike Farley]

This post by Ming Thein reminds me of something I have been meaning to write about for a while, the usefulness of a 50 mm lens on full frame or equivalent on other formats. I know some deride it for being a boring focal length, but for me it often seems to fit in naturally with my way of shooting. Whilst a zoom has a versatility which is not to be discounted, albeit with a reduced maximum aperture as a trade-off, where I have the option a 50 prime is often to be found attached to my camera when I am walking around. Most of my recent street shots which I posted a little while back were taken on an Olympus E-M10, which has a 2x crop factor, and 25 f/1.4. The sole exception was an image where I used the 9mm f/8 body cap fisheye lens. Moreover, my most successful shot ever came from the E-M10/25 combo. Which is not to say that I do not value other focal lengths, but 50 has a certain attraction which can be hard to resist in the right circumstances.

http://blog.mingthein.com/2015/08/11/th ... t-fifties/

[Rose]

It's always been said that 50mm is closest to what we see with the human eye - but they are now saying that it's more like 35mm.

[Mike Farley]

It's always been said that 50mm is closest to what we see with the human eye - but they are now saying that it's more like 35mm.

And I have heard that the actual figure is around 42 mm, neatly bissecting the two.

I am not sure how much difference it really makes. I often find that I adapt my vision to whatever happens to be on the camera and shoot with that, especially if it is a prime. It's a wonder I ever change lenses at all.

[Mike Farley]

Coincidence, maybe. Kirk Tuck chimes in with his views of an inexpensive Nikon 50.

http://visualsciencelab.blogspot.co.uk/ ... -lets.html

[GrahamL]

Fully support Ming Thein's view on 50mm being a difficult focal length to compose easily with, particularly depth of field-wise. Though a 35mm lens on a C-APS body is sort of the same creature viewing-wise I presume you don't probably have quite the same layering control that Thein talks about with a 50mm lens.

One aspect Thein could perhaps have talked about more is the narrow depth of field that you get with a low f-stop 50mm and the resultant ease of generating bokeh. I recently fulfilled a long-standing wish to own/use a 50mm f/1.2 Nikkor, courtesy of HDEW's competitive pricing. While I've had a 50mm 1.8D for a long time I found my new ability to have a really narrow DoF harder to handle than I'd expected, especially when coupled with purely manual lens control. However it certainly concentrates the mind on what result you're trying to get and how to get it, hopefully the results will be worthwhile.

Good article.

Graham

[Mike Farley]

I find that I often tend towards a slightly telephoto focal length, where based on the "natural field of view theory", a 50 is right at the low end. This helps simplify the composition and avoid issues with a wide-angle lens with its tendency to include too much of the scene. That makes the shorter focal lengths much more difficult to use IMO.

Any lens with a wide aperture is difficult to use at full bore because of the limited DOF you mention and most DSLRs do not help as they usually rely on AF, so omit focussing aids. Some high end models do allow the standard fresnel type screen to be replaced by one which features a split image or microprisms, which can help. That said, I know someone who had a Canon 5DII and such a screen so that he could use a Leica R 80 f/1.4 (a phenomenal lens*), but he found that the alignments were not sufficiently tight to be able to achieve accurate focus.

You might have better luck trying your new 50 on a mirrorless body which has focus peaking, but then you are in a whole new world of expense, of course.

* I turned down the opportunity to acquire one as I could not focus it on my DSLR. Since then they have shot up in price, so had I known I could have simply acquired it as an investment.

[Mike Farley]

I opened my copy of this month's Black and White Photography magazine and inside Lee Frost is extolling the virtues of the focal length.

There seems to be a Fifties revival going on.