# Which Normal to Wide Angle Focal Length Matches Your Vision?



## mackguyver (Oct 11, 2013)

We all see the world differently and it's the reason why some people find the 50mm matches the way they "see" the world while others would say 35mm, 85mm, etc. I'm not talking about some scientific match to the human eye, but the way you see the world around you.

Personally, I find that 24mm matches the way I see the world around me. Maybe I keep more personal distance between myself and the people and things around me that most people, but if I go through my lens choices and EXIF, the majority of my landscape, architecture, street, and even portraits (I prefer environmental shots) are right around 24mm. Here are some examples of how I see things at 24mm:

















I'm curious to hear about other people's views (& photo examples) on this particular subject.


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## Sporgon (Oct 11, 2013)

24 mil ?! Are you talking FF ? No wonder your Avatar's an Eagle. Bet you don't see with the same degree of distortion as you have in the second picture though 

I think I am quite normal in that I consciously ( not peripheral ) see the same field of view as a 35mm on FF, with the same magnification as a 50mm. ( I don't say perspective 'cos I don't want to open a whole can of worms ). 

So if I look through a FF dslr with a 50mm on I'm getting a cropped view of how I see.

Below is one of our pictures shot with multiple focal lengths were we try to get the same field of view and magnification as we see. In other words to try and make it the same as actually being there. The trouble is though you cannot escape the fact that you are compressing a life size scene into a small paper, monitor, canvas or whatever, so inevitably the subject matter within the picture is pushed away and made smaller.

We haven't found a way round this yet other than having a life sized print.


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## surapon (Oct 11, 2013)

mackguyver said:


> We all see the world differently and it's the reason why some people find the 50mm matches the way they "see" the world while others would say 35mm, 85mm, etc. I'm not talking about some scientific match to the human eye, but the way you see the world around you.
> 
> Personally, I find that 24mm matches the way I see the world around me. Maybe I keep more personal distance between myself and the people and things around me that most people, but if I go through my lens choices and EXIF, the majority of my landscape, architecture, street, and even portraits (I prefer environmental shots) are right around 24mm. Here are some examples of how I see things at 24mm:
> 
> ...



Dear Sir, My Teacher Mr. mackguyver
Yes, Sir, I total agree with you = 24 MM Lens ( Diagonal Angle of view = 84 degree) = " I find that 24mm matches the way I see the world around me. "
Before that, I miss thinking that 35 mm or 50 mm are normal Views of Human's eyes( Yes, Human's Eyes 170-180 Degree front view angle = from Internet, But Total sharpnest = only 70 to 90 degree of our eyes )------BUT, AFTER I GET THE NEW LENS PAST 5 MONTHS, Canon TS-E 24 MM . F/ 3.5 L MK II---Yes, I change my mind. Yes Now I have this Beautiful TS-E 24 on my Canon 5D MK II = 100% of the time. ( Yes Plus 70-200 L IS. on 7D for long range shooter too).

Have a great day, Sir.
Surapon


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## Eldar (Oct 11, 2013)

This is almost funny. I grew up having been thoroughly taught that 50mm was normal. And the first couple of years in the mid-seventies, I used only a 50mm 1.8 lens. But I never thought of it as normal. In the late seventies I got a 35-70 zoom lens and I thought the 35mm end was much closer to what I thought I "saw" as normal. And in 1981 I bought my first 24mm lens and it all came together. 24mm is still my favorite focal length (excluding the super teles). It is gives me the wide angel of my normal vision, it is reasonable in edge distortion and it gives great perspective.

I always thought I was the odd ball, so here, +30 years later, I´m very happy to have met you fellow men, with similarly distorted vision


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## paul13walnut5 (Oct 11, 2013)

In terms of useful comparison, there isn't such a lens that gives a massive field of view with very small centre sharpness, but a camera body that does lots of stitching. Maybe think a 135mm format 50mm lens at f1.8 lens on large fromat body, but on a gigapan tripod. x2. Then combined.

Other than that 43mm on 135mm/minature/leica format or 28 on APS-C, should give a good similarity to the pictures your brain stitched in your head.


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## mackguyver (Oct 11, 2013)

Thanks for the interesting replies and I'm happy to see that my 24mm (on FF) view isn't too unusual. Of course the perspective distortion doesn't match my actual sight, but it does match the mental picture/memory of the scene for me.


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## Sporgon (Oct 11, 2013)

Actually I'm _really_ surprised at you guys who say 24 mil gives you a picture as you remember it. Working from the other way around, how often have you seen pictures of places, and then when you actually go to that place yourself you find it is _tiny_ compared with the views in the pictures you saw - which would have been taken on a wide angle lens.


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## Eldar (Oct 11, 2013)

Sporgon said:


> Actually I'm _really_ surprised at you guys who say 24 mil gives you a picture as you remember it. Working from the other way around, how often have you seen pictures of places, and then when you actually go to that place yourself you find it is _tiny_ compared with the views in the pictures you saw - which would have been taken on a wide angle lens.


You do of course have a very valid point. For me though, I guess it´s the width that makes it. In lens review terms it would probably be a horrible vignetting and rotten sharpness at the edges kind of lens, with clear tunneling symptoms, but still ...


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## AprilForever (Oct 12, 2013)

I see longer... My walkaround lens does tend to be a 300 2.8... Although, I do also carry a 24-105 on a 5d mkII, because my wife likes landscape images...


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## 9VIII (Oct 13, 2013)

I'm pretty sure my area of concious visual focus is around 35mm. With the T3 and 18-55, using the lens zoomed out all the way is definitely too wide. To match the size of objects in the viewfinder with my other eye I have to zoom it in all the way, it would probably have to go to 57mm to be a perfect fit. I'm not sure how the viewfinder is adjusting things though. 85mm on the 5D2 is definitely more zoomed in than what I see, so 57mm is probably correct.

Now if you want to try something trippy, get a zoom lens to match your vision, so that keeping both eyes open with the camera in front of one looks normal, just with that eye cropped, then move the camera out of focus. I can actually get my brain to clearly focus on one object in my unobstructed eye, while seeing everything else out of focus through the camera. For the first few seconds before getting nauseous it was a really neat thing to look at, kind of a super bokeh effect.


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## mackguyver (Oct 14, 2013)

AprilForever said:


> I see longer... My walkaround lens does tend to be a 300 2.8... Although, I do also carry a 24-105 on a 5d mkII, because my wife likes landscape images...


300 2.8? Where are you walking around? Sounds like an interesting perspective, though I'll say that I find the 300 doesn't seem super zoomed to me compared to my focused/central vision, unlike my old 400.



9VIII said:


> Now if you want to try something trippy, get a zoom lens to match your vision, so that keeping both eyes open with the camera in front of one looks normal, just with that eye cropped, then move the camera out of focus. I can actually get my brain to clearly focus on one object in my unobstructed eye, while seeing everything else out of focus through the camera. For the first few seconds before getting nauseous it was a really neat thing to look at, kind of a super bokeh effect.


I've done this, too, and found my visual match was somewhere between 30 and 60mm depending on how heavily I weighted my peripheral vision. It's a fun experiment...


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## Eldar (Oct 14, 2013)

Sporgon said:


> Actually I'm _really_ surprised at you guys who say 24 mil gives you a picture as you remember it. Working from the other way around, how often have you seen pictures of places, and then when you actually go to that place yourself you find it is _tiny_ compared with the views in the pictures you saw - which would have been taken on a wide angle lens.


Yes, the distance to objects changes and when I look through the viewer with one eye and directly at the motive with the other, I also find app. 50mm to be "normal". But the width of vision is more correct with a 24mm. As an example, when I see a landscape motive, I can throw up the 24mm and capture it. With a 50mm I always feel restricted and with less ability to capture what I saw. I know, more feeling than science.


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## mackguyver (Oct 14, 2013)

Eldar said:


> With a 50mm I always feel restricted and with less ability to capture what I saw.


Exactly the same, here. I've read (maybe in Lens Work?) that human vision is as wide as 15mm when viewing broad vistas with your peripheral vision, and as narrow as 90mm when your vision is focused on one subject. 

The purpose of this thread was really to find out where other photographers find themselves most often in terms of focal length, science aside. It's how you see the scenes you photograph in your mind, how you remember them, and how you choose to capture them with you camera, to either hold onto the memory or share it with others. Yes, maybe a little too deep for a Monday morning, but that's where I was going with this post.


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## danski0224 (Oct 14, 2013)

Except for the distortion, my vision is 24mm wide most of the time.


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## Dylan777 (Oct 14, 2013)

either 35 or 50mm will do it for me.


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## motorhead (Oct 14, 2013)

I use a Canon 24-70L as my standard lens, but in truth my natural eye tends towards 70mm rather than wider. Only rarely do I use my 16-35.


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## albron00 (Oct 14, 2013)

40mm


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## madspihl (Oct 14, 2013)

For me it is 35mm. I have been on a couple of trips / holidays lately where I wasn't shooting a paid job, and the Sigma 35mm f/1.4 basically moved in with the camera body and stayed there.


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## nWmR12 (Oct 14, 2013)

I would say it varies from either my 21mm or 35mm. Depending on how I am seeing things on that particular outing. For most applications I can use my 35 without any problems and can compose it very easily. The 21, I find a nice complement to 35, where I can "see" the end result without having to look through the viewfinder.


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## Rui Brito (Oct 14, 2013)

For me, 70mm on a 70-200 2.8L IS atached to a 5D MkIII, for a simple reason, with both eyes opened, one on the viewfinder, the other naked, gives me a perfect stereoscopic view like I have with both eyes naked. Only thing is that the eye on the viewfinder "gets" a dark framing. Can I see less of the world arround me? Yes, but nor bigger, neither smaller.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Oct 14, 2013)

I've never seen a photo that matches my vision, they all seem like looking down a tunnel to me. I don't have unusual vision, but looking at a print or a monitor screen is the limitation, even IMAX doesn't quite do it, but its close. I'd like to see a captured image using the full width and height of my vision, which is close to 180 degrees horizontally, but much less vertically.


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## Sony (Oct 14, 2013)

The matching focal length of a vision is different from different people because we see thing with 2 eyes or "2 lenses" which give us 3D vision, and because the distance between 2 eyes is different from individual to individual as well.
Camera uses 1 lens or "1 eye" which gives 2D vision. 
The focal length which matches human 1 eye is about 50mm (45mm to 55mm). That's why we call them normal focal lengths.
We can do an experiment: set 2 cameras on tripods side by side @ focal length of 50mm and focus to 1 point. Stitch the 2 images, we have a wide angle picture. How wide the angle depends on the distance between 2 cameras.


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## Skulker (Oct 14, 2013)

Our eyes have a cones behind the pupil and rods around the outer parts of the retina. Also our brains do quite a bit of PP on the image.

We see a detailed image of what we are looking at and a not very detailed view of the rest. Our brains make this into an image that is not an accurate interpretation of the real world. For instance how often are you aware of your blind spot?

For me I'm not so aware of the outer edges of my vision, I tend to concentrate on the central area so I use a 300mm as a walk round lens and photograph wild life and details.

On the odd occasion I use a wide lens I wonder why it has not record what I saw. ;D

The top half of this images is an accurate images of the view I was looking at. But the bottom half is what I saw. 8)


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## Pinchers of Peril (Oct 14, 2013)

40mm... my eyes are pancakes


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## RLPhoto (Oct 14, 2013)

24mm for both eyes and 50mm for a single eye. 135mm for a deep squint at something. ;D


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## BozillaNZ (Oct 16, 2013)

Lenses that matches my vision is varying between 16mm and 300mm, depends on where I am and what I am looking at. :


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## e17paul (Oct 16, 2013)

These answers need qualifying with 'full frame' or 'crop sensor'. I'm assuming full frame as the default.



RLPhoto said:


> 24mm for both eyes and 50mm for a single eye. 135mm for a deep squint at something. ;D



+1

That equates to the set of three primes I have ended up using on my OM-10, other OM lenses stay at home. I'm aiming for a similar set up for my 6D - possibly substituting a 100L macro for a 135 because of the extra versatility.

The 50 (f/1.4 and f/2.5) are the walk around lenses on both cameras (both full frame - one film, one digital), equivalent to looking in front of me without moving the eyeballs. The 24 is equivalent to standing still and taking in a scene around me, whilst the 135 is akin to focussing on a distant object with the mind's eye.


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## Woody (Oct 16, 2013)

50mm on FF format.


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## zlatko (Oct 16, 2013)

RLPhoto said:


> 24mm for both eyes and 50mm for a single eye. 135mm for a deep squint at something. ;D



I believe that 35 or 40 is about how I see, but if i had to choose just 3 primes to carry, it would likely be 24, 50 & 135. That is a great combination.


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## mackguyver (Oct 16, 2013)

zlatko said:


> RLPhoto said:
> 
> 
> > 24mm for both eyes and 50mm for a single eye. 135mm for a deep squint at something. ;D
> ...


That was my prime kit for many years - great lenses 8)


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## takesome1 (Oct 16, 2013)

50mm is about right for FOV, but that is not how the mind perceives
My peripheral is very good and closer to 14mm on a FF, of course at the edges things are OOF.
I remember things in a panoramic view, possibly 50mm stacked.
But in reality I see in video and it is in 3D.


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## docholliday (Oct 16, 2013)

I hate the 40-50 range. My vision was closest to the Hasselblad Zeiss CF50/4...so the Zeiss ZE 35/1.4 is the closest to how I see the world.


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## David_in_Seattle (Oct 16, 2013)

Since I'm a travel photographer I've become accustomed to capturing the same scenes and environments with multiple focal lengths.

To illustrate my vision I usually refer to my 17mm TSE, 16-35mm (mostly at 35mm in conjunction with the 17mm TSE), and the 50mm.


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## alexturton (Oct 19, 2013)

I used to be exclusively 50mm (i.e. 30mm on crop) until I went FF and I discovered 35mm. 35mm is so much more versitile and "normal" in my eyes. I would much rather do both a portrait and a landscape on a 35mm than a 50mm


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