50mm - seems 'right'

dee

dee

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I love the pancake 27mm [ 47?] on my Fujis - X-Pro1/X-T 1/X-T 100/ X-M 1 , but king snapshots of London from a bus , I also tried the the Pentax K-S1 with 35 [ 50 in old money ]
It just feels 'right' .
Yet it's not that much different from the 27 .
Is this imprinted from the 70s when a 50 came with an SLR , or is it that the field of view is most 'natural' ?

Either way , I have to sell some stuff to acquire Fuji's new affordable [ £200 ]all plastic 50mm F2 for the Fujis.

i have several kit zooms gathered from the various cameras which , together with the 27 are all i need for buildings and things which don't move .LOL

Regards
dee
 
To me, the 27mm is 40.5mm and that’s closer to 35mm than to 50mm. The Fuji 35mm is basically a 52.5mm lens. There is a big difference to me and I also prefer 50mm to 40mm.
 
A 50mm (+/-) seems right to me as well. My most used lens for Fuji is the 32mm Zeiss or one of the Fuji 35mms. On Nikon I use one of several lenses between 45mm and 60mm and they all feel comfortable to me.
 
to me, the 42mm (27 - 28mm on APS-C) offers the most "natural" FoV.
However, I prefer 50/52/55/58mm (32 - 35mm on APS-C) because the pictures simply get better.

but, as a second lens, I usually have a 20/21mm (14mm on APS-C) with me.
 
I use 50mm most often with my 35mm cameras, too. I like standard lenses; I most often used the 75mm lens on the Mamiya 6 system I used to have and the 80mm on my Mamiya 645.
 
50 feels like yesterday. Only one focal length I used to have for years. My current Nikon slrs kit is three film cameras, two 28, one 24 and 20. I don’t even want 35 for it.
But if I switch from Canon DSLRs to mirror less. I would like to get 50L back. One of the best lenses, IMO-
 
jsrockit said:
I think you are right since the majority of photos made today are with a 28mm or wider lens on a cellphone...

All the more reason to explore other focal lengths.
Click to expand...

After our wedding photography with our fed 2 fiasco we jumped to wide lens P&S. It was no regrets.
I took some family pictures with 50L much later on. I didn’t find it to be universal, but rendering was like nothing else.
 
dee said:
[...]35 [ 50 in old money ]
It just feels 'right' .
[...]
I have to sell some stuff to acquire Fuji's new affordable [ £200 ]all plastic 50mm F2 for the Fujis.[...]
Click to expand...


Seems contradictory. Did you mean you need to acquire the 35 f/2?
 
50mm (in 35mm/FF) is god's focal length. All others, shorter or longer, are just for "effect".

(ok, ducking now...)
 
A fast 'normal' lens is the best general purpose lens for most of my photography.

For me this means anything between a 35mm and a 60mm on "full format" or 24x36mm negatives: There are more good, fast 50mm lenses for this format than any other, so that's what I tend to have at hand most of the time. (I have both Summicron and Summilux 50mm lenses for both Leica M and R cameras; they're all excellent quality performers.)

For APS-C, this means approximately a 35mm lens: for the Leica CL, I have a great old Summilux 35mm f/1.4 (version 2 circa 1972) almost always on the camera. I also have the similarly excellent but very different in rendering qualities Pentax-L 43mm f/1.9 Special for this camera.

I enjoy other kinds of lenses on all my cameras as well, but the fast normal is a special case due to its versatility. On my iPhone 11 Pro, I tend to use the 2x option more than the 1x because 28mm (the usual 1x option) is a touch too wide for 'normal' shooting, for my eye. :)

G
 
lawrence said:
Wedding photos with a Fed 2? Presumably you wanted a Soviet-era look :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Ugh? It was taken place and time during USSR last year or next it collapsed.
It was worse than corona now in stores. I purchased flash, but no cord. And I never used flash before. We still have official part photos taken professionally, with crooked horizon.
We also used Royal spirit to make drinks from it. I purchased Russian Standard yesterday, Royal was better.
 
When I started shooting I went wide. I spent years with a 24mm on my camera, then shifted to a 35 for a while and finally landed on the 50mm as my go to lens for the past 8 years or so and I couldn't be happier...
 
jsrockit said:
I think you are right since the majority of photos made today are with a 28mm or wider lens on a cellphone...

All the more reason to explore other focal lengths.
Click to expand...

Same for me, too. For more than a decade, a 50mm lens (usually a Cron) was my go-to lens--and, at times, my only lens. However, having become much more comfortable with significantly wider lenses than that, I currently have only a Q-P with 28mm lens ... I was aware of this transition in recent years, but am not really sure what led to it. Change in photographic interests? No. More time to shoot? Definitely. Gradual improvement as a photographer? I hope so.
 
I own several 50s, but very rarely use them. I much prefer something wider. 35 is about perfect for me.
 
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