Well, nothing scientific here, just interesting. Taking four short-ish, normal, med-tele lenses on a little prime-only trip for a few days tomorrow...so took out the little travel bag and put each one on a full-frame body and shot my daughter's car in the driveway, mostly filling each frame with the car, opening the lens to its fullest, and zooming with my feet. The perspecitve differerences are interesting. We all know how it changes by focal length but really does make a huge difference in how the viewer sees a subject...intimate vs compressed.
In order, these are:
- 35 at 1.4
- 50 at 1.2
- 85 at 1.2
- 135 at 2.0
So this is not about lenses or aperture exactly, but perspective rendering a subject with very different looks. After a while we all just see a scene, without thinking about, reach for the lens that will give us the look we want, but this felt like a good refresher with the primes as this trip, no zooms.
Nice comparison. The most natural looking to me is the 135L shot in this case. All the lenses you've shown are heaven of course and I would have a hard time choosing between them, though I don't own the 50. The 35L is one of my most versatile primes and I use it a lot. Thinking about the new 24 too.
Dark Slider wrote:
The bumped colors and ultra-thin DOF in the 85 shot made it look to me like you shot a model, or more appropriately, had staged a "fake model" shot.
Yeah, it does sort of...I see what you mean. In camera Neutral, Sat +1, USM +3, DPP, a smidge of levels and Smart Sharpen at the end...that's it.
MSC wrote:
The perspecitve differerences are interesting. We all know how it changes by focal length but really does make a huge difference in how the viewer sees a subject...intimate vs compressed.
Just to be clear for those who might take your statement literally... perspective does not change by focal length -- it changes because distance to the subject has changed. All rectilinear lenses offer the same perspectives when the distance to the subject remains the same, though of course the size of the subject within the frame will change.
Esquire08 wrote:
Great observation (can't call it a scientific experiment, lol)! I really like this and it helps someone considering these lenses. Really cool idea.
Is the 24L bokeh always that nasty?
considering none of his photos are with the 24L, I'd have to say you are seeing imaginary lenses.
Naw, all those lenses have nice bokeh, this is back lit and I did not care about the background and you get all that spectral back-light junk. ...but the short lens here is a 35.
moondigger wrote:
Just to be clear for those who might take your statement literally... perspective does not change by focal length -- it changes because distance to the subject has changed. All rectilinear lenses offer the same perspectives when the distance to the subject remains the same, though of course the size of the subject within the frame will change.
Nice demo, BTW.
True enough...really just talking about how the eye perceives it more than anything, but good point to bring up. ...like you say, if I would have stood at the same spot with the 35 as with the 135, and cropped the 35 shot severely, it would have been a crummy photo but looked basically the same. That being said, nice to have choices in lenses as they have very different looks as we normally use them.
MSC wrote:
...like you say, if I would have stood at the same spot with the 35 as with the 135, and cropped the 35 shot severely, it would have been a crummy photo but looked basically the same.
For web-sized reproductions, it probably would have looked fine, actually. That might not be a bad companion test for this one --- you've already shot all four lenses normalizing subject size within the frame by changing distances. Now you could shoot all four lenses from the same position, and post two sets of photos. First set: the full frame from each photo, demonstrating how the subject size changes with the change of focal lengths. Second set: the 35, 50 and 85 shots cropped to the same framing as the 135 shot, showing how the perspective is the same with all of them.
moondigger wrote:
For web-sized reproductions, it probably would have looked fine, actually. That might not be a bad companion test for this one --- you've already shot all four lenses normalizing subject size within the frame by changing distances. Now you could shoot all four lenses from the same position, and post two sets of photos. First set: the full frame from each photo, demonstrating how the subject size changes with the change of focal lengths. Second set: the 35, 50 and 85 shots cropped to the same framing as the 135 shot, showing how the perspective is the same with all of them.
Exactly...saw that done once with a landscape shot from the same spot and diff lenses...and it really brings your point home! However, I'm lazy and it is now dark out...or might just do that...also assuming the car is still in driveway...not sure about that one...teens and Sat night you know.
This is actually a good visual lesson for beginners taking portraits. If the hood of the Jeep was a subjects nose, it becomes less distorted and more flattering with successively longer lenses.
dfresh wrote:
This is actually a good visual lesson for beginners taking portraits. If the hood of the Jeep was a subjects nose, it becomes less distorted and more flattering with successively longer lenses.
Mostly agreed, but there is a limit to this. 85mm to 135mm on full frame
seem most pleasing to me. I once did a self portrait with the 200/2.8L II
on a 1.6 crop. Boy, that was one compressed facial perspective. Too much,
even for my long nose.
dfresh wrote:
This is actually a good visual lesson for beginners taking portraits. If the hood of the Jeep was a subjects nose, it becomes less distorted and more flattering with successively longer lenses.
The lesson is that the "nose" becomes less distorted and more flattering with successively greater distances between the camera and subject. The longer focal lengths only help by keeping the frame filled with the subject; the perspective effects you refer to are solely a result of the camera-subject distance.
Shane, thanks for the informative sequence of photos. They illustrate two important issues related to focal length: i) the distortion of closer parts of the subject when you are near to the subject (proximity distortion), which has already been discussed; and, ii) the effect of Angle of View (AOV) on the background content, which has not yet come up. The AOV effect can be very important for shooting subjects in the near- and middlegrounds, as it determines how much of the background is visible. The narrow AOV of telephoto lenses gives the "compression" effect that people often talk about.
Comparing the first and last shots (35mm & 135mm), you see the wider angle has lots of sky, at least half of each house on the other side of the street, and a lot more "things". This adds distractions to the background, and also changes the distribution of light and dark areas in the photo.
I think the combination of proximity distortion and background content in the 35mm shot, affects the "visual flow" of the photo in a negative way. At first, I notice the front of the Jeep, but then everything in the photo tends to move my viewpoint to the background. This doesn't happen at all in the 135mm shot.
jcolwell wrote:
Shane, thanks for the informative sequence of photos. They illustrate two important issues related to focal length: i) the distortion of closer parts of the subject when you are near to the subject (proximity distortion), which has already been discussed; and, ii) the effect of Angle of View (AOV) on the background content, which has not yet come up. The AOV effect can be very important for shooting subjects in the near- and middlegrounds, as it determines how much of the background is visible. The narrow AOV of telephoto lenses gives the "compression" effect that people often talk about.
Comparing the first and last shots (35mm & 135mm), you see the wider angle has lots of sky, at least half of each house on the other side of the street, and a lot more "things". This adds distractions to the background, and also changes the distribution of light and dark areas in the photo.
I think the combination of proximity distortion and background content in the 35mm shot, affects the "visual flow" of the photo in a negative way. At first, I notice the front of the Jeep, but then everything in the photo tends to move my viewpoint to the background. This doesn't happen at all in the 135mm shot....Show more →
! Yeah, missed going to the art festival today which would have be actually interesting shooting. 