While doing a review of the pre-aspheric 35mm lens, here , I did a comparision of the 35mm and 50mm lenses. Viewed singulary, they don't reveal much. However when seen side by side, there is a demonstaritable difference between these two close focal lengths. This is not simply standing in one spot and changing lenses, but moving my position to keep the wire fence the same size. This was done for the bokeh test, but when I saw these images next to each other, I thought I'd post them in a single folder so anyone thinking about whether to get a 35mm or 50mm lens might see that they are not as close as one might think.35mm and 50mm compared

This is not art, just something revealed while looking at something else, and hopefully it might be useful to someone.

-- Al Smith (smith58@msn.com), April 21, 2002

Answers

Al:

Great example! And some reasonable proof that a picture is worth a thousand words...

Cheers,

-- J Flesher (jbflesher@msn.com), April 21, 2002.

Good job, Al.

Good reason to have both focal lengths handy, eh?

-- Steve Hoffman (shoffman2@socal.rr.com), April 21, 2002.

Excellent example--far more compelling than trying to explain the difference in words.

-- Mike Dixon (mike@mikedixonphotography.com), April 21, 2002.

When photojournalists started using 35mm equipment many of them preferred a 35mm lens to the "standard" lens sold with SLR's which in those days was a 50. Somehow this preference by a specific segment of the market got convoluted to where the mistaken notion got into a lot of publications--and is rampant on the web--that 35 is really close to 50, so much so that people are admonished to own either one or the other but not both. Wrong, wrong, wrong, as anyone with a zoom can prove in a second, and as Al has illustrated.

-- Jay (infinitydt@aol.com), April 21, 2002.

I suppose the same thing could be said for the 50 and 75, or 75 and 90 as well.

-- Charles (cbarcellona@telocity.com), April 21, 2002.

Actually I've never heard very much said in that regard about those lenses...just the 35 and 50.

-- Jay (infinitydt@aol.com), April 21, 2002.

Dudes...just get'em all : )

-- James (snodoggydogg@hotmail.com), April 21, 2002.

Side-by-side comparisons really show up differences. One comparison I look for is the 50 Elmar-M and the 50 Summicron-M. There probably are many people who have both of these.

-- Frank Horn (owlhoot45@hotmail.com), April 21, 2002.

Really useful public service, Al. A couple of pictures are indeed worth thousands of words, as you show simply.

Looked at this way, the 50 definitely is a short telephoto.

We can all slam dunk this question in the future now!

-- Mani Sitaraman (bindumani@pacific.net.sg), April 21, 2002.

Mani Sitaraman wrote:

"Looked at this way, the 50 definitely is a short telephoto. "

Or that the 35 is "definitely" a long wide angle . . .

-- Chris Chen (furcafe@NOSPAMcris.com), April 21, 2002.

Curious these optics! Although the fence is the same size hitting the negative, you can a lot more with the 35 in the background. I wonder if the 50 IS more natural in its rendering of the scene to the human eye? Perhaps this is why they say it is closer to human sight, ya got me thinking here Al!! Thanks.

-- James (snodoggydogg@hotmail.com), April 21, 2002.

50mm is a very short (emphasis on very)tele actually, 43mm being the "normal" focal length lens for a 24 X 36mm film format. After I have been using the Contax T3 with its 35mm lens and finder, the 50mm view on my M3 sometimes does seem like a telephoto.

-- Andrew Schank (aschank@flash.net), April 22, 2002.

As Steve pointed out, 35 and 50 are both the M-lenses. I have discovered this myself, too, and of all shots I take, 40-45% are with my 2/35 and 40-45% are with my 2/50. Punch line: Al said exactly the same thing too, but years ago.

-- Michael Kastner (kastner@zedat.fu-berlin.de), April 22, 2002.

I think to 50mm image has far greater impact because it is less cluttered with backround and fills the frame better. Most people walk around with the 35mm glued to their camera as their standard lens. Maybe we need to revisit the 50mm.

-- Bob Haight (rhaigh5748@aol.com), April 22, 2002.

Folks, I've been thinking about this subject the past few days. I'm buying my first Leica (yeah!), second hand, and for the moment only alowing myself one lens. Which one wasn't an easy question.

My Nikon usually has a 35 on it and that's the lens I know the best after years of use. A year ago I started using a little Retina and that has forced me to learn the 50, and I've come to appreciate what that can do. As others have said, they are two very different effects.

Anyway, since I use the 35 about 70% of the time when doing street shooting, I'm getting that (f/2 'cron) for my first Leitz lens. Considering just the foreground of a scene, that perspective has always seemed closer to the way my eyes take in a veiw. It gets the subject and the context, or the context as subject.

A fifty will follow soon. Ya gotta have both.

I'm really doing an M to get the rangefinder "thing," but looking forward to the greater image quality, too. It's exciting!

-- Carl Pultz (cpultz@earthlink.net), April 22, 2002.

Carl have fun with the Leica

-- Andy Wagner (awagner@midwest-express.com), April 22, 2002.

I would like to comment about the area of coverage between the two lenses. I think you were referring to the coverage of the two lenses. If you were not, please disregard.

I appears in an effort to keep the fence the same size when you moved closer with the 35mm, you changed the angle of the camera pointing it upward thus revelaing more of the sky and stack. This makes the coverage appear greater but ir really is a different angle of view and not greater coverage. Look at how the post of the fence is at the height of the eave in the 50mm shot and much higher than the eave in the 35mm.

-- Rob Schopke (schopke@attbi.com), April 22, 2002.

I like the 50's rendition of the bldng. and tower. Looks less distorted by quite a bit. With the 35, the bldngs. look keystoned (is that the term?), which a tilt and shift corrects for. Just some ramblings.

-- James (snodoggydogg@hotmail.com), April 23, 2002.

I appears in an effort to keep the fence the same size when you moved closer with the 35mm, you changed the angle of the camera pointing it upward thus revelaing more of the sky and stack. This makes the coverage appear greater but ir really is a different angle of view and not greater coverage. Look at how the post of the fence is at the height of the eave in the 50mm shot and much higher than the eave in the 35mm.

This is what I noticed first. The perspective is completely changed by a change in the orientation of the camera. Anyone who has been taught perpective drawing would see this immediately. I think it has far more to do with the difference in the images than the focal length. An interesting test, if you can go back, would be to maintain the relative relationship of the elements of the photo rather than the relative size of a single element. The results would probably give a different set of responses than those above.

-- Jeff Spirer (jeff@spirer.com), April 23, 2002.