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Shorter focal lengths have other purposes in street photography, where composing shots in crowded areas can be difficult or impossible with longer lenses like 8

Shorter focal lengths have other purposes in street photography, where composing shots in crowded areas can be difficult or impossible with longer lenses like 85mm. In terms of which focal lengths produce perspectives that make the most sense to our eyes, people usually point towards 35-50mm lenses. Supposedly the formula is something like "focal length = diagonal measurement of the format".

psychomugs 5y ago
I'm well-versed on the benefits of shorter lenses. Look through a "normal" lens (~42mm equiv) and you'll realize that it's actually nowhere near our field of vision (FOV), peripheral included. What a normal lens does is take a very narrow slice of our FOV and represent it neatly and proportionally, i.e. given two similarly framed portraits, a 40mm would make your nose look "normal" whereas a 28mm would make it look larger [1]. The shorter focal length dramatizes while also being closer to what we actually see; this wide perspective is why the two most venerable "street" cameras, the Ricoh GR and Leica Q, have fixed 28mm lenses. [1] https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/3/1/17059566/plastic-surgery-selfie-distortion https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/3/1/17059566/pla...
- falcrist 5y ago
  I know how lens compression works. Though I specifically used the 35mm-50mm range because it depends on whether you take the diagonal directly, the diagonal of a square with edge length equal to the long edge of a 35mm sensor, or the diagonal of a square with edge length equal to the short edge of a 35mm sensor. Something in this range will produce an image that has a "normal" amount of compression. However, these lenses will obviously not produce a human field of view. In fact, AFAIK, you cannot reproduce the field of view of a human eye without pretty severe distortions. Your eyes aren't rectilinear, so using very short rectilinear lenses don't really get you any closer to how a human sees. This choice is therefor aesthetic.
  - psychomugs 5y ago
    Hence my persistent usage of 'closer;' no camera or lens will reproduce our eyes' field-of-vision or depth-of-field or color rendition exactly, but we can approximate them to the best of our technical capacity. Shooting wide-angle in color is aesthetically and objectively closer to what we (typically) see than a black-and-white telephoto picture.
    - falcrist 5y ago
      > Shooting wide-angle in color is aesthetically and objectively closer to what we (typically) see than a black-and-white telephoto picture. I agree about color, but not focal length. Using very short focal lengths introduces highly distracting distortions. "Normal" focal lengths (35-50mm) are closer to what we experience, despite not having the wide field of view.
      - psychomugs 5y ago
        Yet this experience is subjective; the cone of visual attention is a selective cocktail party effect. In an objective measure of the physical optics, wider is truer, but note that I'm not necessarily saying 'better.'
        falcrist 5y ago
        Again, I disagree with the assertion that wider is any more true to human vision, primarily since distortions are immediately apparent as the focal length gets shorter than 24mm or even 28mm. Using very short focal lengths just compresses what would otherwise be peripheral vision towards the center. This isn't somehow "more true" to human vision. In order for such short focal lengths to truly be representative of human vision, you'd have to abandon rectilinear optics and flat media; and you'd have to graduate the level of detail such that most of the resolution was concentrated in the center rather than the periphery. If you're not willing to do so, a "normal" focal length reproducing the central vision will always be truer to human vision due to having a more reasonable perspective.

psychomugs 5y ago

I'm well-versed on the benefits of shorter lenses. Look through a "normal" lens (~42mm equiv) and you'll realize that it's actually nowhere near our field of vision (FOV), peripheral included. What a normal lens does is take a very narrow slice of our FOV and represent it neatly and proportionally, i.e. given two similarly framed portraits, a 40mm would make your nose look "normal" whereas a 28mm would make it look larger [1]. The shorter focal length dramatizes while also being closer to what we actually see; this wide perspective is why the two most venerable "street" cameras, the Ricoh GR and Leica Q, have fixed 28mm lenses. [1] https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/3/1/17059566/plastic-surgery-selfie-distortion https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/3/1/17059566/pla...

falcrist 5y ago
I know how lens compression works. Though I specifically used the 35mm-50mm range because it depends on whether you take the diagonal directly, the diagonal of a square with edge length equal to the long edge of a 35mm sensor, or the diagonal of a square with edge length equal to the short edge of a 35mm sensor. Something in this range will produce an image that has a "normal" amount of compression. However, these lenses will obviously not produce a human field of view. In fact, AFAIK, you cannot reproduce the field of view of a human eye without pretty severe distortions. Your eyes aren't rectilinear, so using very short rectilinear lenses don't really get you any closer to how a human sees. This choice is therefor aesthetic.
- psychomugs 5y ago
  Hence my persistent usage of 'closer;' no camera or lens will reproduce our eyes' field-of-vision or depth-of-field or color rendition exactly, but we can approximate them to the best of our technical capacity. Shooting wide-angle in color is aesthetically and objectively closer to what we (typically) see than a black-and-white telephoto picture.
  - falcrist 5y ago
    > Shooting wide-angle in color is aesthetically and objectively closer to what we (typically) see than a black-and-white telephoto picture. I agree about color, but not focal length. Using very short focal lengths introduces highly distracting distortions. "Normal" focal lengths (35-50mm) are closer to what we experience, despite not having the wide field of view.
    - psychomugs 5y ago
      Yet this experience is subjective; the cone of visual attention is a selective cocktail party effect. In an objective measure of the physical optics, wider is truer, but note that I'm not necessarily saying 'better.'
      - falcrist 5y ago
        Again, I disagree with the assertion that wider is any more true to human vision, primarily since distortions are immediately apparent as the focal length gets shorter than 24mm or even 28mm. Using very short focal lengths just compresses what would otherwise be peripheral vision towards the center. This isn't somehow "more true" to human vision. In order for such short focal lengths to truly be representative of human vision, you'd have to abandon rectilinear optics and flat media; and you'd have to graduate the level of detail such that most of the resolution was concentrated in the center rather than the periphery. If you're not willing to do so, a "normal" focal length reproducing the central vision will always be truer to human vision due to having a more reasonable perspective.