Are you a 50mm lover?

I wish more manufacturers made more compact 50s as not everyone is a bokeh fan.A modern reimagined 50mm f3.5 Elmar LTM would be a dream.
 
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There's something special about a fifty on full frame 24x36. Equivalents on APS-C and MFT are... fine, I guess... but a true fifty in its native format is in another league. Maybe not my most used focal length (40mm is probably that), but I do love what I can get with it.
 
agentlossing said:
There's something special about a fifty on full frame 24x36. Equivalents on APS-C and MFT are... fine, I guess... but a true fifty in its native format is in another league. Maybe not my most used focal length (40mm is probably that), but I do love what I can get with it.
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Crops are not native formats. But every time I look 1:1 at m43 it reminds me 135 film scans. 🙂
Fifty on FF is old good days. They were special 🙂
 
chuckroast said:
I own and use four:

50mm f/3.5 Uncoated Collapsible Elmar LTM
50mm f/2.5 Color-Skopar LTM
50mm f/2 V3 Summicron M
50mm f/1.4 Nikkor AIS F mount

Other than the Elmar, all of these are excellent performers limited primarily by the resolution possible with the small 35mm negative. The Elmar, being uncoated, is a specialty lens that "blooms" in really interesting ways when pointed at light sources, reflections, or specular highlights. This can be exploited to good effect for aesthetic reasons.

But... my goto for 35mm on all brands is 35mm or 20/21mm focal lengths. These wider views are far more natural to me. Contrary to what has been repeated for time immemorial, a 50mm lens does NOT mimic the field of view of the human eye. Neither do either a 35mm or 21mm. It's pretty easy to demonstrate the the human field of view is very nearly 180 degrees (see Barry Thornton's "Edge Of Darkness").
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Yes, 180 degrees view if you look around you with a lost and unfocused vision. The same kind of vision that blind people have: bland stare in the infinite.

But as soon as you start looking at things normally, your vision sharpens and it focuses on a narrow band, deleting a lot of the 180 degrees polluted vision.
The more we are focused on something, the more our vision becomes 50-ish and beyond.

We actually frame things with our brain. We can also have a 200mm vision if we concentrate on far away things. Our brain does the work.
 
Ororaro said:
Yes, 180 degrees view if you look around you with a lost and unfocused vision. The same kind of vision that blind people have: bland stare in the infinite.

But as soon as you start looking at things normally, your vision sharpens and it focuses on a narrow band, deleting a lot of the 180 degrees polluted vision.
The more we are focused on something, the more our vision becomes 50-ish and beyond.

We actually frame things with our brain. We can also have a 200mm vision if we concentrate on far away things. Our brain does the work.
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Absolutely correct. The human field of view in any given situation is determined both by our hardware and software.

But the point remains that 50mm is not some magical angle of view. It's nothing more than the approximate diagonal of the film format, which is what has kind of been the default "normal" lens for all formats.
 
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Yes, diagonal of the film format.

However, one amazing thing is that mathematics, and science in general, are largely infaillible and they tend to explain things. How else could we fly a metal coffin safely across the ocean?

The beautiful thing about the diagonal of any given format is that the fov always matches across all formats: 2.5 meters for a full body shot, regardless of the format, translates into what is a “normal” field of view.

The diagonal calculation thing is simply a way standardize things across platforms and keep one standard language for a whole industry.

I am pretty okay with the fact that 43mm is calculated as being the most normal fov for 135. After all, it is indeed focal length that exhibits the very least distortions; nor stretching, nor compressing. It is physically the most perfect, thus most boring, thus most normal focal length.

I accept that the diagonal calculation is naturally the most correct.
 
For many years my favorite FL was 21mm, but in recent years my primary shooter has been a 50mm.

Unlike some others here, I have to justify to resident boss what I purchase and hold on to - so I must limit my 50mm inventory to three.

Current 50s:
Leica 50mm v4 Summicron - pretty much permanently mated to my M6
Leica 50mm Asph Summilux
LLL 50mm Asph "1966" f/1.2 (Noctilux clone) - currently my primary go-to

I'd love to have hung on to my CV 50mm Nokton f/1.1, but I couldn't justify it.

Note: this could all change without notice or provocation.
L1100040BW copy.jpg
IMG_20240605_122737293[13018]BW.jpg
 
I go back and forth between 50 and 35 and have one of each - both Summarit 2.5. Don’t feel a need for more or see either as particularly advantegous. I find 50 a more relaxed way to work, but I often appreciate the better zone focusing capability of the 35.
 
Ororaro said:
Yes, diagonal of the film format.

However, one amazing thing is that mathematics, and science in general, are largely infaillible and they tend to explain things. How else could we fly a metal coffin safely across the ocean?

The beautiful thing about the diagonal of any given format is that the fov always matches across all formats: 2.5 meters for a full body shot, regardless of the format, translates into what is a “normal” field of view.

The diagonal calculation thing is simply a way standardize things across platforms and keep one standard language for a whole industry.

I am pretty okay with the fact that 43mm is calculated as being the most normal fov for 135. After all, it is indeed focal length that exhibits the very least distortions; nor stretching, nor compressing. It is physically the most perfect, thus most boring, thus most normal focal length.

I accept that the diagonal calculation is naturally the most correct.
Click to expand...

I'm not quibbling with the utility value of the 50mm/diagonal standard, only that's not some immutable law of nature. What is "normal" is entirely byproduct of how we each see things and what/how we shoot. I find 21mm, and 35mm focal lengths far more natural for my way of shooting. For me, the most "normal" way to frame a scene is with a 35mm lens. Arbitrary standards are exactly this.

Jumping OT: As someone who studied science and engineering, and then later briefly did applied research, I can say with considerably authority that science isn't remotely infallible. At best, it provides a likely explanation for observed physical phenomena, but it's always subject to revision. Even well established phenomena like gravity are, after all, still called "theories" and are open to revision. More importantly, while the methods of science do everything possible to avoid human bias, scientists themselves are not. Who gets funded, who gets to be the Principal Investigator, who gets what lab assistants and equipment and so forth are most often political processes which very much skew what science even gets done. I realize this is a nit, but one of my pet peeves are claims giving science far more power than it actually has. Let's not forget that the science itself once held to a geocentric theory that put earth at the center of the universe ...
 
chuckroast said:
I'm not quibbling with the utility value of the 50mm/diagonal standard, only that's not some immutable law of nature. What is "normal" is entirely byproduct of how we each see things and what/how we shoot. I find 21mm, and 35mm focal lengths far more natural for my way of shooting. For me, the most "normal" way to frame a scene is with a 35mm lens. Arbitrary standards are exactly this.

Jumping OT: As someone who studied science and engineering, and then later briefly did applied research, I can say with considerably authority that science isn't remotely infallible. At best, it provides a likely explanation for observed physical phenomena, but it's always subject to revision. Even well established phenomena like gravity are, after all, still called "theories" and are open to revision. More importantly, while the methods of science do everything possible to avoid human bias, scientists themselves are not. Who gets funded, who gets to be the Principal Investigator, who gets what lab assistants and equipment and so forth are most often political processes which very much skew what science even gets done. I realize this is a nit, but one of my pet peeves are claims giving science far more power than it actually has. Let's not forget that the science itself once held to a geocentric theory that put earth at the center of the universe ...
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You're a riot! Next you're going to tell us that the earth revolves around the sun! 😉
But seriously, "normal" is also about what we're accustomed to, and for a very long time that has overwhelmingly been the look of a 50mm. When I was coming of age in photography, in the sixties, it was very rare to see anything shot with a lens shorter than 35mm, and one had to be wealthy indeed to afford the 21mm that is now your "natural" choice. As extreme lenses have become more widely used and available, their look has also come to seem more normal. But whatever works best for you, is best!
 
When I think of a camera, I think of a camera with a "normal" prime lens, even though I do almost all my shooting with an 85mm or a 28mm. I have a number of 50mm lenses (and 58mm, 55mm, 45mm, and 40mm).

Recently, I went out shooting with a friend. I wanted to "keep it simple," so I loaded a roll of slide film into my black-body Minolta SR-T 102 with 50mm 1.4 lens, and it was perfect.

- Murray
 
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