I hope the moderators will forgive this blatant plug, but I have posted new content to my site that features some Leica M photography.

This article, a paean to the classic 50mm lens, is not strictly targetted at Leica users, though some of you may find it interesting as it probably validates your own approaches to photography.

Enjoy.

-- Gary Voth (garyvot@vothphoto.com), April 24, 2002

Answers

Another great article. Keep them coming! I am going to bookmark this and refer all the people at photo.net who ask the "which 28-300 cheap zoom should i buy question" to read it - they'll probably ingnore your advice because a plain 50 isn't as sexy as a 28-300 in their eyes, but at least when they finally realize their 28-300 isn't very good they'll know better.

-- Matthew Geddert (geddert@yahoo.com), April 24, 2002.

Nice Gary. I posted a link to your article on my Nikon site. There are a lot of people there that never saw a lens faster than f/4-5.6.

Those nice side-lit photos in your article might make them stow that pop-up flash and re-think things.

-- Al Smith (smith58@msn.com), April 24, 2002.

Gary - on my browser (NS v4.7) some of your images float over the accompanying text, making the essay impossible to read in parts.

Also, might be time to start photographing different topics and subjects? I know every parent is deeply fascinated by their own children, but don't assume this for the public at large. :?)

-- Andrew Nemeth (azn@nemeng.com), April 24, 2002.

Gary, nicely done & an eye-opener for many, I'm sure.

-- Patrick (pg@patrickgarner.com), April 24, 2002.

Thanks. I'll look into the Netscape/Unix issue. Probably had my target browser settings configured incorrectly. (I think I know the problem.)

Andrew, yes, the pix in this article are of my family (although only one image in the Noctilux review was), but my specific interest in this piece was in helping less experienced photographers understand there is something better than a slow zoom lens for making pictures of their own families. For other subject matter, feel free to explore my gallery.

-- Gary Voth (garyvot@vothphoto.com), April 24, 2002.

Very nice article and very valuable demonstration Gary…

Smack on the problem in the controversy between buying a bad zoom lens or a valuable 50mm so called “standard lens” on a 35 mm camera.

However, and as useful as can be a 50 mm on what base was it called a standard lens?

The truth is a standard lens for any format is generally considered more or less equal the diagonal of the format in focal length. In terms of angle covered (diagonally) it is always more or less equivalent to 45°. But everything is widely approximate here. The diagonal of our 35 mm camera image is 43mm (not 50) and if I correctly remember what angle was covered by a 43 mm it is something between 50° (this value is the one covered by the Nikon 45mm lens) and 55°… I assume nearer to 55°. It may explain why many photographers prefers the 35mm than the 50 mm as their standard and more useful lens (and why as aptly put by the author in his article it sometimes give the impression to have a small tele-lens more than a strictly standard one.

In fact if we compare the angle covered by a 35 mm so 62° and the angle covered by a 50 mm so 45° to the 55° (or so) covered by a 43 mm lens, We see the 50 mm covers about ten degrees less than the 43 mm and the 35 mm covers about 7° more. In practice, it seems we can consider the 43 mm lens is more or less exactly in the middle in between the field covered by the 35 mm and the one covered by the 50 mm. So the 50 mm appears a bit in excess in field reduction form the field covered by a lens having exactly the diagonal of the format and the 35 mm being a tad in excess in increase of the field covered by this “ideal” standard lens.

So to say, the 35 mm “wide angle” is in fact as near to the ideal 43 mm “real standard” as is the “short tele-lens” of 50 mm… And it explains why the 35 mm doesn’t show much of the characteristic modifications of the perspective which characterizes the true wide angles. As it explains why the perspective offered by the 50 mm lens is considered standard vision like despite it is in fact a very short tele-lens.

The choice between the two lenses as a “standard by defect” is however more a personal affair than something which could be demonstrated scientifically. Each of them has its own plus and minus. For example the increased DOF of a 35 mm may be a liability or an asset depending on the circumstances and the required effect. In the excellent shots accompanying the article, I remarked Gary has carefully and wisely used for its subject the absence of DOF to isolate the main subject without definitely eliminating the context. To me it is perhaps where the 50 mm is the most cleverly used and can give the observer the desire to buy or to re-use a 50 mm. Despite the author refers continually to the SLR cameras of wider diffusion than our rangefinders, it seems to me this way to use a 50 mm is really a rangefinder camera business. This article really gives me the desire to buy as soon as possible a 50mm Summicron… The emphasize the author put on the indoor performances of these lens (which combines the clever use of limited DOF and the necessities of the ambient light level) is also very welcome. In a certain way it confirms my reflection on the proper use of a 50mm as a mainly indoor semi-selective lens (semi-selective as it permits to put the emphasize on the subject properly without negating its environment). By the way, I have the feeling the 75mm can do the same outdoors when it is possible to have more distance between the camera and the subject. But as far as I’m concerned (may be because I’m myopic and see the things around more “wide angle” than a standard eye when I wear my glasses) I’m still sticking to the 35 mm to render a subject as seen with my eyes.

The question of the link between the human vision and the so-called standard lenses is also something subjected to debate. I remember reading many years ago in a French magazine (Photo-Cine Revue), long gone now, a very interesting article about the human vision (excepts the perception of depth which is linked to the binocular – or if you prefer stereoscopic – nature of it). From this article, it seems our total angle of vision is far more than any usual wide angle (180° +) but the angle we can see the things with maximum definition hardly exceeds 30°… Hence, more or less the field covered by a 85 to 90 mm lens. Of course we compensate for this limited high resolution field by the movements of our eyes and the brain does the rest. But the author of this article argued that one can legitimately call a 90 mm a more natural lens than a 50mm when referring to the human eye perception.

May I join myself to some others requiring Gary to issue us many more articles of this quality.

François P. WEILL

-- François P. WEILL (frpawe@wanadoo.fr), April 24, 2002.

Thankyou for the very informative webpage. It is people like you that make surfing the net very interesting and...ADDICTIVE

-- kristian (leicashot@hotmail.com), April 24, 2002.

Thanks for all the comments so far.

Francois (and others): in no way should this article be construed as an essay on the "best" focal length, particularly for Leica shooters. I love the 35mm focal length which I prefer for environmental portraits among other subjects!

Re. the issue on what is a "normal" focal length: I agree this is open to debate. I merely referred to it that way because it seemeed the easiest way to convey information for a non-technical reader (plus, this is how I remember all my basic texts on photography describing it). Probably what is "normal" for any of us is the focal length that best matches our creative vision.

Good shooting.

-- Gary Voth (garyvot@vothphoto.com), April 24, 2002.

Thanks again Gary,

Now look what you've done :-) I am now wondering if I should have a Summicron to join the Noct!

Greg

-- Gregory Goh (GregoryGoh@hotmail.com), April 24, 2002.

Gary,

Thanks for the excellent article. Just yesterday an experienced user was wondering on photo.net if he should switch to primes from using only AFS zooms! The article, with its pictures, speaks louder than any mere discussion forum posting. Now we can all point to your article to clinch an argument ;-)

-- Mani Sitaraman (bindumani@pacific.net.sg), April 24, 2002.

Good pictures, Gary. They remind me of the work Ken Heyman did with Margaret Mead on families worldwide.

My Netscape 4.75 also 'stacks' the pictures over each other and over text - but this also happens when I go to Steve Gandy's cameraquest site on some pages. I was able to read enough to get the gist - which is well-written and well-structured.

Regarding the 'normality' of the 50mm lens - there are arguments/ research available that make the cases that any lens from a 28 to a 105 is "normal" for 35mm in terms of matching human visual perception - the 'diagonal of the film' concept is probably just as arbitrary as Barnack's decision to choose the 50 (anybody know the history of how the 50 WAS chosen?).

Presumably Niepce and Daguerre had to make a choice of focal length for their first cameras, with NO previous standards to work from except artists' "cameras obscura" - I suspect they just found lenses already available that projected an image the right size for their film format and used 'em - regardless of whether they was 'wide', 'long', or 'normal' by present-day standards.

-- Andy Piper (apidens@denver.infi.net), April 25, 2002.

Gary, i think you have successfully conveyed the message to the intended audience of your article. those people who critize the images either didn't read the article, or they didn't understand it...tough luck.

-- Dexter Legaspi (dalegaspi@hotmail.com), April 25, 2002.

An excellent article Gary plus excellent pictures to convey the message. Regards,

Ed

-- edgaddi (edgaddi@msn.com), April 25, 2002.

Thanks Gary, another good article!

-- Eric Kragtwijk (e.kragtwijk@hccnet.nl), April 25, 2002.

Nicely done. I fwd'ed it to a friend who's in the mkt for a P&S and can't decide between a zoom or a fixed focal length.

Anything to complicate a decision, I always say...

-- TSW (tsesung@yahoo.com), April 25, 2002.

Re. the browser issue: the page renders perfectly on my system using Netscape 6.2.2. I don't, unfortunatley, have any older versions of Netscape to try it with. (Anyone know where I can find an install point for an older Netscape version?)

FWIW, techically the page uses fairly standard table and cascading style sheet tags that are *supposed* to be compatible with all version 4 and later browsers... It's built with FrontPage, but I've looked at the native HTML, and it looks okay to me. (I would like to fix it though.)

-- Gary Voth (gary@vothphoto.com), April 25, 2002.

Nevermind, I found the Netscape browser archive: http://sillydog.webhanger.com/narchive/fulldata.html

I'll experiment with this and see what I can do.

-- Gary Voth (gary@vothphoto.com), April 25, 2002.

Some great comments, thank you.

I did change the definition of "normal lens" from one based on angle of view to one based on perspective, which is more what I meant. (It's clear that the angle of view of the human eye cannot easily be equated to that of any lens, because the reasons cited.)

Update on the browser issue: unfortunately, I've determined that my entire site is not being rendered properly by Netscape 4x (floating graphics are not the only problem).

The new Mozilla-based Netscape 6 handles it fine, as does IE. Since the problems are specific to older versions of Netscape, I'm not sure it is practical for me to fix (sorry). I've posted a disclaimer and a link to the Netscape 6.2.2 install point. (It's actually quite a nice piece of software.)

Good shooting.

-- Gary Voth (garyvot@vothphoto.com), April 25, 2002.

The new Mozilla-based Netscape 6 handles it fine, as does IE. Since the problems are specific to older versions of Netscape, I'm not sure it is practical for me to fix (sorry). I've posted a disclaimer and a link to the Netscape 6.2.2 install point. (It's actually quite a nice piece of software.)

I advise you to deal with this rather than just sweep it under the "works fine for me" carpet as there are literally millions of users with NS v4 browsers.

The common standard for www developers is NS v4.7 & MSIE v5.

(I write here wearing my professional html & cgi coder's hat...)

-- Andrew Nemeth (azn@nemeng.com), April 27, 2002.