What about the "normal" lens?

[f16sunshine]

What happened to the so called normal lens? You know 40-45mm RF compacts and the 50mm +SLR combos from the golden age of film?
It seems like any high end compact now has to have a 35mm or wider equiv. FOV.

Fuji x100.... 35 fov
Ricoh GR .... 28fov
Sony rx1 .... 35 fov
Leica Q .... 28 fov
Nikon A .... 28 fov
Fuji x70.... 28 fov
.... who's next ?





Why all clustered up?
Does Leica think a 50mm Q would "cannibalize" sales of lenses and M240's ?
Do any of these makers have the stones to make a High end compact that moves away from the pack?
Are they all trying to compete with how we see through our cel phones which are,... typically a similar fov as the cameras above..?
I don't get it? Where is the "normal lens" in high end fixed lens cameras?

(and yes.. I just want a 50mm X100 😀 )

 

[kshapero]

Agree, so right now my Leica M4-2 with a Zeiss 50/2 will have to do (and it does do very nicely).

 

[Merkin]

I hate to say it, but a lot of it has to do with Selfies. You can get more than one or two people in a selfie with a wide angle lens, whereas you are stuck with pretty much one or two in a selfie with a fifty.

Also, the wide angle has become the standard way of photographic seeing these days. You mentioned cell phones, but it is also because of gopros, and even things as simple as back when people had digital point and shoot zoom digital cameras, the default setting of the lens when you turned the camera on was wide angle. It also has to do with the fact that it is easier to get a large aperture with a wide angle lens, which means that the digital sensors in these devices don't have to be as good/expensive.

These days, telephoto lenses are associated with pretty much only two things- sports and paparazzi, and normal focal lengths just kind of got lost in the middle.

 

[pvdhaar]

I hate to say it, but a lot of it has to do with Selfies. You can get more than one or two people in a selfie with a wide angle lens, whereas you are stuck with pretty much one or two in a selfie with a fifty..

While I agree that this may be a driving force at the moment, the trend towards wider was already on full steam in the '90s.. E.g. the Olympus XA and MJu line of cameras, Konica Hexar, Minolta TC-1 to name but a few.

35 and wider allow tourist to get at least some environment in when shooting in a confined city environment..

The only odd one out at the time was the Leica Minilux with its 40mm lens..

 

[FrozenInTime]

One bright light is the new iPhone 7 plus with it's 28mm wide and 56mm 'telephoto' lens pair.

For a long time I've wanted a digital Barnack with 50mm view as a companion to the Ricoh GR .

 

[michaelwj]

They can be made more compact, and no longer have to be as fast or have space to hold a focus or aperture ring.
It's also part of a general trend to go a bit wider. Standard zooms used to start at 35, then 28, now 24mm.
Look at the evolution of the M line, M3 widest is 50mm, M2 a few years later and we get 35mm (obviously not a technical limitation), then we get 28mm framelines on the M4-P (again, not a technical limitation). Look at the lenses, the first summilux 35 appeared in 1961 while the 50 was released in 1959 (the 1.5/50 ten years earlier), and the first summilux 28 only appeared this decade. While I understand a lot of it is due to technological advances, it is also a shift in viewpoint.

 

[dee]

35 MM. lenses seem quite popular -and inexpensive on apsc.
I use a 35mm CV on the M8 and 27mm on the Fuji X-Pro 1.
Again,relatively inexpensive lenses .
But I was put off 35mm compacts because of the wide angles.

 

[radi(c)al_cam]

What happened to the so called normal lens? You know 40-45mm RF compacts and the 50mm +SLR combos from the golden age of film?
It seems like any high end compact now has to have a 35mm or wider equiv. FOV.
[…]
I don't get it? Where is the "normal lens" in high end fixed lens cameras?

I guess the main reason is as follows:

During many decades (unless one was using a waist level finder, or a 1:1 viewfinder/rangefinder), people were accustomed to shoot their pictures having one eye closed, particularly when they were using a non-standard-lens.

Now to an extent we encounter the return of some sort of waist level finder on many digital cameras — you can judge the picture you're going to take having both your eyes open.

Hence it doesn't matter whether you have a classic standard lens, or not.

 

[robert blu]

For many years my most used was the 35 cron on the M7 and the 24 = 36 eq of the Leica x1.
Recently I have gone back to the 50 on the M7 which I enjoy much.
Not sure but just an idea today most of photos are just seen on the web, on the phone or a tablet but (unfortunately in my opinion) not printed.
A wide lens can be cropped to normal but a normal cannot be enlarged. Could this be a reasons? Just asking myself.

Another reason is that a 28 or 35 is easier to focus (more DOF) if closed enough and for not photography trained people could be an advantage.

And yes, the mob.phone photography has changed many of the usual parameters or habits we were used to.

robert

 

[radi(c)al_cam]

A wide lens can be cropped to normal but a normal cannot be enlarged. Could this be a reasons? Just asking myself.

Absolutely, yes.

Another reason is that a 28 or 35 is easier to focus (more DOF) if closed enough and for not photography trained people could be an advantage.

And yes, the mob.phone photography has changed many of the usual parameters or habits we were used to.

… and apparently they love their wide-angle «portraits» («selfies») despite the distortion of their faces! 😀

 

[f16sunshine]

Anytime a new system camera is released, the first prime to be offered is a normal(50ish).
There must be some logic or research put into that choice.
It just seems like one of these makers would want to try and move away from the pack.

Can you imagine a Leica Q with a nice compact Summarit f2.5/50mm ?
Or An x-100 with an f1.7/30mm ?
How many on our forum would buy?

With this new iPhone and its dual lens "bokinator" engine..... maybe phones will again lead the trend for compacts (if they are indeed leading it now and... it seems they are).

 

[f16sunshine]

Absolutely, yes.




… and apparently they love their wide-angle «portraits» («selfies») despite the distortion of their faces! 😀

Maybe some love it because of the distortion rather than despite of it. 😀

 

[Roger Hicks]

Ilford Advocate, 1949-1957: 35/4.5 Dallmeyer, then 35/3.5 Wray Lustrar.

Cheers,

R.

 

[icebear]

Anytime a new system camera is released, the first prime to be offered is a normal(50ish).
There must be some logic or research put into that choice.
It just seems like one of these makers would want to try and move away from the pack.

Can you imagine a Leica Q with a nice compact Summarit f2.5/50mm ?
Or An x-100 with an f1.7/30mm ?
How many on our forum would buy?

....

I have the Q and for a fixed lens camera the 28 seems to be the perfect choice. I do have a MM and use 35 and 50 most of the times, but sometimes I need a wider angle and put on a 25 Biogon. So having only one lens and no option to change it the 28 covers most ground and the IQ of the full frame sensor gives plenty of latitude to crop pretty close... in post that is. I never used the in camera crop mode.
A 1.4/50 monochrome Q, ....drool 🙄

 

[radi(c)al_cam]

Ilford Advocate, 1949-1957: 35/4.5 Dallmeyer, then 35/3.5 Wray Lustrar.

When a camera maker acknowledged already in 1949 that scale focusing with a standard lens IS difficult, they were ahead of their time … but that was a tad too avant-garde for the consumers then, I suppose.

 

[jsrockit]

Yes, I'd prefer a 50mm fixed lens camera, but many people prefer 28mm to 35mm these days due to many of the reasons stated here. It's just part of how people have changed in the way they take personal photos. That said, it is so easy to put together a small 50mm equiv these days... a Fuji X-E2 with a 35mm f/2 for example.

 

[lawrence]

I hope no one minds a fairly long quote from an article by Richard Benson at the back of 'Lee Friedlander's 'In the Picture: Self Portraits 1958-2011' giving a fascinating historical perspective on this subject:

The focal length of photographic lenses changed as photography evolved. In the beginning, photographers used long lenses, which described the world in a fashion similar to that seen in nineteenth century paintings. The perspective was calm and perfectly drawn, portraits had noses of the right size, and feet at the bottom of the frame didn't distort or enlarge to an embarrassing degree. These early long lenses were also the best that could be made at the time -- the state of optics wasn't sufficiently advanced to produce a short-focal-length lens that could adequately render a wide angle view. The pictures of photography's first half century retained that comforting and proper appearance that was similar to what the mind thinks the eye is seeing, an ordered vision of the world that was acceptable in the art of its day. In spite of this, critics and scholars were hesitant to admit photography into the higher realm of artistic expression; for some reason they thought the camera to be a more complex machine than a paintbrush, which is a delusion absent in the mind of anyone who has used both these devices.

Things started to change visually around the turn of the century, when radicals such as Eugene Atget began to photograph with short-focal-length, rapid rectilinear lenses. This early design could be stopped down to a tiny aperture, used for long exposures on a tripod mounted view camera, to produce sharp pictures with a novel wide angle of view. The elegant carved empire vases in French gardens loomed huge and overwhelming in Atget's photographs disrupting the calm order imposed by the landscape designers who laid out the gardens a century before. Modern photography was born out of this change in the nature of its description, and a rich adolescence developed when wide lenses were soon adopted to the new hand-held cameras of the early twentieth century. The history of photography is one of a steadily increasing angle of view as the focal lengths became shorter and shorter. Nothing is more archaic today than the pictures made by tourists using zoom lenses, which can extend their length back into the nineteenth century as they make compressed, comforting and deeply boring views of flowers and distant landscapes.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

40-50 were easy to made, I guess.
And in the past people counted every frame. Most of the time it was a portrait. With digital you go wide, snap all have you eat (even if it looks like after it was eaten), thousand pictures of your dog (same as million others) and ... Same amount of valuable portraits.
Plus, people are inside of cars, condos and food consumption dwellings. It is better served with wide. Who goes on the river bank for picknick these days where you'll have some space to step back...
28mm will not hurt girlfriend in yoga pants on cavalerist legs. 50 is for ladies from the past with long dress.

 

[Kent]

Those are digital cameras. It's pretty easy to crop out a "50mm FoV" from a 28mm digital picture. The Leica Q does that even "in cam".
So, I guess many producers (and users) think it's better to have a wide angle lens and then be able to crop instead of having a 50mm lens and no chance to get more in the frame.

 

[daveleo]

Normal to me was always the 35mm(fov); 50mm has always been a tight for general shooting.
I often choose on the wide side because as noted, I can always crop a bit.
Also I like to be physically close to my subject and 28-35 helps me do that.