Favorite Lens length

Favorite Lens length

  • 20mm

    Votes: 26 2.4%

  • 24mm

    Votes: 33 3.1%

  • 28mm

    Votes: 80 7.4%

  • 35mm

    Votes: 353 32.7%

  • 40mm

    Votes: 124 11.5%

  • 50mm

    Votes: 400 37.1%

  • 75mm

    Votes: 29 2.7%

  • 90mm

    Votes: 28 2.6%

  • 135mm

    Votes: 5 0.5%
  • Total voters
    1,078
Bogotron. I've got the Ultron 28/1.9 and you can do the same thing with it. Focus at 2m, stop down, and away you go. My favorite for this kind of street shooting is the Olympus XA, because apparently Olympus anticipated this sort of use: 3m on the distance scale and f:5.6 on the aperture ring are printed in orange. All the rest are printed in white! So everything from about 9 feet out is in focus. As the next closest number on the distance scale is 1.5m, I usually leave it between 1.5 & 9. Works great.
 
Voted 35...BUT, I use the 28 as much.... Just depends on my mood :)

I like the 28 more for waist level shooting outside, and the 35 for both waist and eye shooting outside. Inside family homes...35mm..it is a f/1.4 while the 28 is f/2..and I do like to shoot at wider f/stops inside with a 400 film.
 
28mm. I like the 2/28 Nikkor and the SMC-Pentax 2/28 very much. And now that I have a 2.8/28 Ricoh GR LTM lens (with M-adapter) I will have to buy a camera for it, maybe a Bessa R4a or...
 
First camera I was able to get pictures with, was SU FED-2 with Industar-26m. It was the only lens I used for several years.
Still, like to use it.

50mm on 135 RFs and with FF DSLR. Works as portrait, short tele, reportage kind of lens.
On the street and elsewhere it allows to minimize unnecessary details around main subject.
Followed by 35mm (XA lens and CS 35 2.5P) on film RFs, which is wide range for me. Street photography, if I want to get very close to people and landscape.

If I want it wider - I have panoramic Holga 134 with 55mm lens.
On MF I prefer it longer, for better separation of main object from background.
Love my 6X9 folders with 100+ focal length for landscapes too.
 
The length of my favorite lens is 85mm, but that's a slightly different question.

If "favorite" means "the one you own more examples of" the answer is 50mm.

If it's "what you enjoy using most" ... check back when I've tried out my 40mm some more.

My least favorite was much easier!
 
50. Right now it's the f/1 Noctilux that stole my heart. Hopefully I'll get to wrest it from my Monochrom and use all my other lenses.
 
50 plain & simple ...
Perfect distance & view between Me & the Subject
V3 50 Summicron & Nikkor 50 f2 hc ltm make me Smile the most,
just Love the way they Render Life & Light ;)
 
http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=737

http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=737

I simply prefer the 50mm.
I seem to have lots!
Only the 50mm Summicron for my Leica M boxes.
The viewpoint of one eye.
The straight simplicity, the compact size,
the fast aperture,f2.0 is plenty fast enough,
best price as regards quality.
The 35mm is a good second choice.
 
50mm is the best for me but I was using 35mm before. So I am switching between the two. It makes me feel better.
 
For over a decade, my main lens focal was 105mm; which I diccovered with the the rangefinder 105 mm.F/2,5.Not greatly useable with rangefinders ; but with SLR Nikons and viable lens.

In a review of the Classic "Citizen Kane" I learned that Greg Toland had chosen a 25mm lens for the extreme wide angles i the movie. (The depth of focus augmented by split-diopters)

The point being that the "Normal"lens in Motion Pictures being the 50mm— which in cine format translated to 100mm equivalent ( Leica Format ) What were had been seeing in motion pictures was based on a 100 mm perspective— not the 50mm ( equivalent Leica )
perspective.

Today, I use the 105mm/ 50mm.24mm.as my standard trio.
 
50mm on a SLR (ease of focus is one reason, plus I sort of grew up with the 45-50mm lens) and 35mm on a rangefinder (it just seems so natural), but I voted 50mm because both the interchangeable-lens RFs I have at the moment only have 50mm lenses on them...
 
Timestep said:
In a review of the Classic "Citizen Kane" I learned that Greg Toland had chosen a 25mm lens for the extreme wide angles i the movie. (The depth of focus augmented by split-diopters)

The point being that the "Normal"lens in Motion Pictures being the 50mm— which in cine format translated to 100mm equivalent ( Leica Format ) What were had been seeing in motion pictures was based on a 100 mm perspective— not the 50mm ( equivalent Leica )
perspective.
Click to expand...

The 50mm lens when used with the Academy format (as with Citizen Kane) equals 82mm horizontal FOV in Leica format. And Toland's 24mm would be around 39mm equivalent. Note that in cinema noone cares about diagonal FOV, unlike the world of stills.

It should be noted though that widescreen cinema has largely been shot with much wider normal lenses. The idea being that screen-to-audience distance remains the same (compared to the silent 1.33:1 and Academy's 1.37:1), but the screen goes wider (1.85:1 and 2.39:1 are the current standards). Most directors of photography nowadays use a normal in the 27-35mm range, which roughly translates to the 40-52mm range in Leica format.
 
My preference for a "favorite focal length lens" would be a 35mm because my vision favors the field of view that this focal length provides. In fact most of my favorites fall within the realm of the wide & ultra wide focal lengths, with 24mm just barely being beat by the 20/21mm focal length. Even though I admit to having these "wide tendencies", :rolleyes: I find it odd to find that I do not like the 28's & never have enjoyed working with one.

Referring to the telephoto & short telephoto lens,
I prefer the 85 over the 100/105 focal lengths. When "birding" I like zoom tele's that fall in the 85-400 range, with the 400 being the longest focal length I'm comfortable hand holding. When I'm using telephoto, I'm in my work mood & it's not until I'm back to my standard/wide lens do I find myself relaxing again... :) ​
 
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