The Wonderful 50mm Lenses

[Bertram2]

. To me, strong graphic design means the exclusion of any image elements that distract from, and do not add to, the desired image. With wider lenses and their greater angle of view, this usually becomes more of a challenge in a typical outdoor picture taking situation.

Frank, this is my personal experience too: From my first 28mm Minolta MD on in the late 70s I thought o.k., a lot of angle now but what for ? Always lot of distracting stuff to be seen, too much sky or too much foreground and so on..Later I learned the art of w-a composition but nevertheless in principle i still use the wide angles only if I really NEED them depending from given circumstances, in a crowd for example. I use it (almost) never to create a certain style of shooting or, to get a certain look .
The 50mm helps me to concentrate and to avoid a later cropping, not only downtown, even landscapes got better after a while with my 50s.
I regard the ability of concentrating as an essential condition for good photos and I try to do it with the lens, not with PS which can kill all the harmony you saw when you pressed the button.
Bertram

 

[FrankS]

kindred spirits

 

[Nikon Bob]

Funny how different the personal point of view can be. I'd taken exactly these words for the 35mm. Too wide to be selective enufff but not wide enuff if you can't step back and need some more angle..
I'd accept it only if I can take only one single lens with me, but as the jack you mentioned above.

bertram

You could say that about any fixed focal length lens if you wanted different framing and could NOT move forward or backward to get it. OTH there are zoom lenses to solve this problem but not commonly available to RF users. Again, there is no holy grail as to which focal length is the best to use most of the time as a standard lens for everyone. I think you find one FL that works most of the time for you and build around it and sometimes FL preferrences change over time.

Bob

 

[pukupi]

Although the 50 mm gives me the best optics and speed, I often find myself out of space indoors so I've tended to favour 35 mm recently. I imagine I'll move back to the 50 when we move to a wider country .