Short tele better for landscapes ?

[ddunn]

In my experience, the human eye tends to isolate the subject it is looking at, even if much else is in the field of view. That's one reason why many people like the look of midrange telephotos.

The fovea of the eye provides the sharpest image. Many years ago I read somewhere that the 90mm lens on a 35 subtends about the same angle of view as the fovea. [In other words, the 90mm captures what you are seeing the sharpest.] That bit of knowledge got me hooked on the 90 as my "normal" lens, with the 50 as my wide.

 

[OldNick]

This was shot with a zoom at the equivalent of approx. 105mm. It was necessary to use the tele in order to avoid unwanted wires in the field of view. As it turned out, the FL was about optimum for this shot.

 

[jaapv]

Short tele's??? Who needs them?😉 Leica M6TTL, Telyt-V 280. Kodachrome 64

 

[jaapv]

The fovea of the eye provides the sharpest image. Many years ago I read somewhere that the 90mm lens on a 35 subtends about the same angle of view as the fovea. [In other words, the 90mm captures what you are seeing the sharpest.] That bit of knowledge got me hooked on the 90 as my "normal" lens, with the 50 as my wide.

That must have been a long time ago... This is true only when you look at a 6x9 contact print. In the fifties when this was the norm this argument was indeed used to call 9 cm focal length the most "natural" . Not that the nowadays much larger print size makes a 90 mm focal length less nice, it only causes our "normal" feel with 35 mm lenses. 🙂

 

[uhligfd]

Something is completely wacky with jaapv's reply above:

"That must have been a long time ago... This is true only when you look at a 6x9 contact print. In the fifties when this was the norm this argument was indeed used to call 9 cm focal length the most "natural" . Not that the nowadays much larger print size makes a 90 mm focal length less nice, it only causes our "normal" feel with 35 mm lenses."

A 90 mm lens on a 6 by 9 cm film is slightly wide angle. The diagonal of that film size is 108 mm. The diagonal of our beloved 35mm film is around 43mm. So, in fact he refers to the "naturalness" of "normal lenses" such as the 45mm on 35mm film or to 105 mm lenses on 6 by 9 cameras.

It all depends on the angle of view, not the focal length. Enlargements etc (of the full frame) do not affect the angle of view. 90mm on 35mm film is not the "normal eye view" at all, but selects a small setion of our normal viewing field. Sorry. And for a 6 by 9 camera this selective tele angle of view would require a 226 mm lens or nearly so. (226 = 90/43 * 108)

 

[photophorous]

I just returned home from a backpacking trip in Colorado, where I took only a 35 and a 50 mm lens. I was seriously considering buying that C/V 21mm because I thought the wide open vistas, high in the mountains, would benefit from a wide angle lens. It turned out that the only time I wished for the wider lens was when I was confined by rocks or trees and wasn't able to back up enough to include everything I wanted to include. That was rare. After looking at my photos for the past week, I think the 50mm lens did best in the wide open areas. I probably would have used a 75mm more than the 21mm, but I used the 35 and 50 about the same amount.

One thing did occur to me, though. Most of my sharpest photos are from the 50mm lens. With that focal length, I was less likely to have near and far subjects in the same shot. That meant I could focus at infinity, and use f8 more often than with the 35mm lens.

Paul

 

[payasam]

The slight foreshortening that a medium long lens gives is often an advantage. More obvious is the fact that it makes it possible to isolate certain features.

 

[wolves3012]

i don't really do landscape stuff anymore but when i did i quickly discovered, for me, that a longer lens actually gave mw more of what i was looking at when i was looking at the landscape.

it helps to isolate. a wide lens includes to much as often you can't get in close enough for a landscape pic.
a wide view dilutes the majesty of a grand scene into tiny details on the film and subsequent print.

go a little longer...

joe

I'll second that. Landscapes are amongst my favourite shots and when I first tried them I applied the logic of "go wide, get the full vista that you'd get sweeping your eye across a scene". Wrong! The results were very disappointing because the majestic mountain is reduced to a pimple on the horizon and only the foreground has anything discernable. I soon learnt that a 50-plus is usually the only way to go. Pick out a dominant feature and use a tele to bring it in. Isolate the most interesting part of a sweeping vista because you'll never get the impression you had when you were there anyway. There are times when a wide-angle is justified but my experience suggests it's not often.

My two-pence worth anyway but it's exactly that, an opinion. Judge as you see fit when the scene is before you.

 

[40oz]

^ I agree.

It obviously dpends on what you are shooting and where, but I've found that a longer lens lets me get the features I want without destroying the sense of scale I am trying to convey. A wider lens is good for a panoramic kind of impression, but poor for landscape features, if that makes sense.

 

[trittium]

I usually shoot landscapes with a 90mm

 

[rxmd]

The problem with wides for landscapes is the projection. If you want a similar visual impression as your eyes would deliver, using a normal lens or a short tele and then stitching panoramics might be an interesting alternative. You get a different projection which doesn't reduce individual details to insignificance so much.

 

[richard_l]

Nowadays I prefer 40mm, 50mm, and 35mm (in order of frequency of use) for mountainous landscapes.

Richard

 

[lZr]

I think the object scaling in the landscape leads me to shoot best scenes. I go distant from the scene and shot real tele. 300 mm at least.

 

[semilog]

35mm is my go-to FL for landscape. Sometimes wider, sometimes a 50, almost never a tele. The compression that you get from 135 up too often looks artificial, IMO. Obviously, some people do use longer lenses and get more natural-looking results. Similarly, I don't shoot landscape wider than 24. For me the two-lens kit would be a 35 and a 24.

 

[arpy]

Thread tangler? 😉

After this interesting thread was reopened; according my style, the ninety suits my landscapes in the most cases.

(But I'm afraid I'm still indecisive about my second one for this purpose as well as the big one for cityscapes etc., the fifty or the thirtyfive?) :bang: 😀

 

[semilog]

Thread tangler? 😉

Your avatar is my favorite lens – for street and landscape, both. 😎

 

[tbarker13]

Hmmm. The poll is missing an option for those of us who shoot most of their landscapes with a long telephoto.
When I do landscapes, I primarily use a 70-200.

 

[gilpen123]

Short teles and normal for most of my landscapes as I can bring in some details and point of interest closer. Wides can be difficult at times as you almost always require a good foreground.

Sample taken with 50 with an RD! making a 75 crop

 

[tstermitz]

Well-stated comments pointing out that it depends. I find that I need both wide and tele for my pictures.

A Tele is very useful for isolating the subject, for sure: Portrait-style berries or leaves against a dark background, or when you want shallow depth of field to throw the background into softness. With reflections in lakes, ponds or buildings, a longer lens might be necessary to capture exactly the part of the reflection you want. I like my 90mm, but often find I want a 135mm or longer and I have to reach for my DSLR long zoom.

With big skies or sunsets, you often want to capture a wide angle across the sky. In my specific usage, hiking the Colorado high-country, some of the cirques are so narrow and peaks so high that I lose images unless I have a 24mm or even 21mm.

 

[peterm1]

I often use short teles for a whole range of work outside of their normal forte - portraits. Including landscape.

Wide angles leave you with the dreadful problem of what to do with the foreground. Tele's do not and they allow you to get closer to the subject without having to crop strongly later on. Besides Robert Capa once said that if your photo is not good, you are not close enough. Same can sometimes be said for landscape work- picking out details is a valid way of shooting landscapes ond often much more effective than going for the same old boring over all shot taken with a normal or wide lens.

And what's more, while on the subject, I think that there is nothing in the rules of landscape photography that say you must have everything in sharp focus. It sometimes works fine to use selective focus, just as you would for any other photo genre and of course short teles are great for that.

Samples of various landscape type shots taken with a short tele portraying various ways of using them................................