Why is 24/25mm better than 28mm?

[Richard G]

Well... 28mm is wide. And 25mm is wider.

So it's got more wideness in it, which makes it better, just like a Marshall amp that goes up to 11 and has more loudness in it.

That was a Marshall amp? I'm away at the moment. When I get back I'll check on mine. I'm pretty sure mine only goes up to 10.

Gotta go now and wait for the limo in the foyer.

 

[ChrisPlatt]

Try as I may I have never gotten on with the 28mm focal length.
As I see things 35mm is normal and 24mm is wide. 28mm is neither...

Chris

 

[Dguebey]

About quality : historically, I remember 24mm had more elaborated design (8 elements, floating elements) than much 28. Of course, they were more expensive. I presume this has evoluted.

During 20 years I made a significant part of my slides with 24mm Nikkor and Minolta MD, and enjoyed it very much.

I found 28 is a kind of improved 35 🙂 very good for humanistics but often narrow with architectural environment.

 

[jojoman2]

If I could only have one lens it would be a 28. Most of my pictures of people are within 2 meters of them for candid shots. You need to get 2 or 3 steps closer with a 24, which surprisingly feels much wider than a 25 in use, at least for me. I have a 21 3.4 super angulon, a 25mm zeiss, and a 28mm summicron and use them all. The 28 is just a perfect all around lens with low distortion; it is more forgiving than wider lenses if you are shooting pointed down or with a tilt. Once you start getting into 25mm territory it becomes super important to bend your knees while shooting to be lower than eye level of your subject. Otherwise people all come out dead center in the frame for vertical portraits (I'm 5 ft 10).

This shot was taken with a 25. I was just about level, or so I thought, with the kid's face. See how much forward tilt registered on the film? That's why lenses wider than 28 require much more care in use. Check out my work on Flickr if you want to see more examples of 25mm vs 28mm, I tend to list what lens I used for the shot.

Cheers and remember to get close.

 

[SamShio]

I enjoy my 21mm now and if I need something closer I have my 35. I haven't though of a 24/25/28 yet...

 

[Ernst Dinkla]

Notice this. 25mm X 1.414 = 35mm. 35mm X 1.414 == 50mm. And 1.414 is the square root of 2. Long story short, this means that a 25mm lens covers twice the picture area of a 35mm; which in turn covers twice the area of a 50mm. So these three focal lengths make a nice system together, well spaced--not too close, not too far apart. And if we wanted to go wider, the next one to add at the wide end would be 17.5mm (in practice, 18mm is close enough). The next one to add at the long end would be 70mm (for Leica M, make it 75mm).

How to fit a 28mm into a similar system? Like this: 20-28-40 makes a good start. The next step would be add a 56mm. So in a Nikon system, we could use the 55mm MicroNikkor. And after that, the 85mm would be a fairly good fit into the square root of two progression. In the Leica system, we don't have a 55/56, and 50 is a bit too close to 40; while 75 is too long to fit the progression. Still, one could live with 21-28-40-75.

This has been my approach for primes too. And lens manufacturers catalogs show relation to that square root factor too. BTW the 20-28-40 shows roughly a 1.5x area increase compared to 25-35-50 range. Focal extenders are also aimed at those values 1.4x and 2.0x. Focal reducers the opposite.

However the square root factor already gets corrupted above 55/58mm in the old and recent manufacturers catalogs. Going down from 100mm the most common available focal lengths are 90mm (macro), 85mm (portrait), very few 80mm, rare and older 75mm, very few 70mm, with even rarer numbers in between. The focal length engraved on the ring is of course often some mm shifted from the real optical value. Growing from either 40 or 50mm it should be 57-80-113-160 or 50-70-100-140. 58mm is available in older faster lenses but not in recent catalogs. Alright 100 and 105 mm are common, either as portrait or macro lens. Short tele or portrait describes the common 135mm length but it is slightly shorter than 140mm. The 113 falls between the 105mm and the less common 120mm lens, a rare 115mm Satzobjektiv ignored. Then 160, 200, 280, 320, 400, 800mm fit above the quoted ranges but there are probably as many telelenses that fall in between those numbers.

Maybe aesthetic and practice rules had more influence on the focal length choices between 55 and 140mm where wideangles and telelenses could follow more abstract rules. Subject distance in portraiture and macro photography is a practical rule that is hard to ignore, composition in portraiture adds to that.

Given the increase in MP of digital cameras the 1.5x larger area range of 20-28-40 etc gets my preference now, there is more crop possible with less image quality loss.


Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst

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January 2016 update, 700+ inkjet media white spectral plots

 

[Capt. E]

I have a 24 Elmarit which I love. It is perfect for close quarters inside of 10 ft. I have a 35 Summicron which works for all other wide-angle needs. I do not need a 28. I have a documentary photography friend who works with a 28 Elmarit, but does not like the 24 as it just doesn't fit his "vision" (he has tried mine). I use a bright line finder, but My friend simply fills the viewfinder with his subject knowing the coverage on film is wider.
I would never say one is "better" than the other. How a lens "feels" in use is everything.