Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2004/05/19
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Neil, Thanks for your explanation and, even more, for your reference to http://www.camerahobby.com/EBook-Perspective_Chapter17.htm. Rather than having to "Try it" myself (and thus reinvent the wheel), the website enabled me just to learn from someone more experienced and knowledgeable, someone who had already tried it. Gratitude is due! :) Art Peterson Alexandria, Virginia -----Original Message----- From: Beddoe, Neil [mailto:nbeddoe@lehman.com] Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 2004 9:06 To: 'Leica Users Group' Subject: RE: [Leica] 50mm lenses should be compulsory. No, light doesn't go round corners. Try it. Take a photo with a 35mm lens then, from the same place, take one with a 90mm lens. Crop the centre of the 35mm shot and it will appear identical to the 90mm shot or 2000mm shot for that matter (but the grain would be pretty big). Perspective is determined only by where you are in relation to the subject (at least for a non-fisheye non-shift lens). All you are doing with a longer lens is optically cropping part of the picture. Wide angle lenses appear to alter perspective because they allow you to get closer to the subject for the same field of view. Neil -----Original Message----- From: Peterson Arthur G NSSC [mailto:PetersonAG@NAVSEA.NAVY.MIL] Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 2004 1:43 PM To: 'Leica Users Group' Subject: RE: [Leica] 50mm lenses should be compulsory. Neil, Not trying to speak for Buzz but only for myself, a valid point I get from what he wrote might be exemplified as follows: if you take a photo with a 15mm lens, you could certainly crop it to print the identical area covered by another photo taken with the same camera pointed in the same direction but with a 400mm lens. Yet the two pictures would not be at all the same. In the cropped 15mm photo, the foreground would be exaggeratedly close and background objects exaggeratedly distant, whereas in the 400mm photo the distance between foreground and background objects would be exaggeratedly compressed. I seem to recall hearing (or reading) somewhere that, for 35mm photography, an 85mm lens (or something in that neighborhood) produces pictures with a foreground-background relationship approximately the same as what's seen by the human eye. I think I'm right about that, but someone please correct me (i.e., educate me) if I were wrong. Art Peterson Alexandria, Virginia -----Original Message----- From: Beddoe, Neil [mailto:nbeddoe@lehman.com] Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 2004 7:32 To: 'Leica Users Group'; 'Leica Users Group' Subject: RE: [Leica] 50mm lenses should be compulsory. " Lenses of different focal lengths do have characteristics, based on their focal lengths, other than getting more or less in the frame." I disagree. Take a picture with a 50mm lens (or even a 21mm lens) and crop to the middle of the picture and you've got the same shot you would have got from the same spot with a 90mm lens(grain and DOF excluded). You are right about my choice of lens though ( at least it made for a provocative subject line). I'm sure that if my M6 had come with a 35mm I'd be raving about that. The point is that the lens you use is usually much less important than where you stand. Neil I am pleased that the 50mm lens worked for you, especially when it was your only lens. However, I submit for your consideration that its being a 50mm lens had far less to do with your success than the discipline enforced by using only one lens. It could have been a 35mm, it could have been a 90mm, but it is the fact of having only one lens that made you work harder at each picture you took. Buzz Hausner -----Original Message----- From: lug-bounces+buzz.hausner=verizon.net@leica-users.org [mailto:lug-bounces+buzz.hausner=verizon.net@leica-users.org] On Behalf Of Beddoe, Neil Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 2004 5:49 AM To: 'Leica Users Group' Subject: [Leica] 50mm lenses should be compulsory. As everyone knows, you don't alter the viewpoint when you switch to a wider or longer lens, you just get more or less in the frame. In most cases, you can do this by walking forwards or backwards and at the same time see what changing perspective does to your shot which is much more interesting than just optically cropping the photograph. I like feet but I hate zooms. Neil _______________________________________________ Leica Users Group. 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Therefore, we do not represent that this information is complete or accurate and it should not be relied upon as such. All information is subject to change without notice. _______________________________________________ Leica Users Group. See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information