[Leica] 50mm lenses should be compulsory.

[nbeddoe at lehman.com (Beddoe, Neil)]

No, light doesn't go round corners. Try it. Take a photo with a 35mm lens
then, from the same place, take one with a 90mm lens. Crop the centre of the
35mm shot and it will appear identical to the 90mm shot or 2000mm shot for
that matter (but the grain would be pretty big).   Perspective is determined
only by where you are in relation to the subject (at least for a non-fisheye
non-shift lens).  All you are doing with a longer lens is optically cropping
part of the picture.   Wide angle lenses appear to alter perspective because
they allow you to get closer to the subject for the same field of view.

Neil

-----Original Message-----
From: Peterson Arthur G NSSC [mailto:PetersonAG@NAVSEA.NAVY.MIL] 
Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 2004 1:43 PM
To: 'Leica Users Group'
Subject: RE: [Leica] 50mm lenses should be compulsory.



Neil,

Not trying to speak for Buzz but only for myself, a valid point I get from
what he wrote might be exemplified as follows: if you take a photo with a
15mm lens, you could certainly crop it to print the identical area covered
by another photo taken with the same camera pointed in the same direction
but with a 400mm lens.  Yet the two pictures would not be at all the same.
In the cropped 15mm photo, the foreground would be exaggeratedly close and
background objects exaggeratedly distant, whereas in the 400mm photo the
distance between foreground and background objects would be exaggeratedly
compressed.  I seem to recall hearing (or reading) somewhere that, for 35mm
photography, an 85mm lens (or something in that neighborhood) produces
pictures with a foreground-background relationship approximately the same as
what's seen by the human eye.

I think I'm right about that, but someone please correct me (i.e., educate
me) if I were wrong.

Art Peterson
Alexandria, Virginia


-----Original Message-----
From: Beddoe, Neil [mailto:nbeddoe@lehman.com]
Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 2004 7:32
To: 'Leica Users Group'; 'Leica Users Group'
Subject: RE: [Leica] 50mm lenses should be compulsory.


" Lenses of different focal lengths do have
characteristics, based on their focal lengths, other than getting more
or less in the frame."

I disagree.  Take a picture with a 50mm lens (or even a 21mm lens) and crop
to the middle of the picture and you've got the same shot you would have got
from the same spot with a 90mm lens(grain and DOF excluded).  You are right
about my choice of lens though ( at least it made for  a provocative subject
line).  I'm sure that if my M6 had come with a 35mm I'd be raving about
that.  The point is that the lens you use is usually much less important
than where you stand.

Neil



I am pleased that the 50mm lens worked for you, especially when it was
your only lens.  However, I submit for your consideration that its being
a 50mm lens had far less to do with your success than the discipline
enforced by using only one lens.  It could have been a 35mm, it could
have been a 90mm, but it is the fact of having only one lens that made
you work harder at each picture you took.
 
        Buzz Hausner

-----Original Message-----
From: lug-bounces+buzz.hausner=verizon.net@leica-users.org
[mailto:lug-bounces+buzz.hausner=verizon.net@leica-users.org] On Behalf
Of Beddoe, Neil
Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 2004 5:49 AM
To: 'Leica Users Group'
Subject: [Leica] 50mm lenses should be compulsory.


As everyone knows, you don't alter the viewpoint when you switch to a
wider
or longer lens, you just get more or less in the frame.  In most cases,
you
can do this by walking forwards or backwards and at the same time see
what
changing perspective does to your shot which is much more interesting
than
just optically cropping the photograph.  

I like feet but I hate zooms.

Neil


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