Luminous Landscape Forum
Equipment & Techniques => Landscape & Nature Photography => Topic started by: biker on May 04, 2019, 08:28:49 am
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5 Quick Reasons to Use the Nifty Fifty for Landscape Photography (https://digital-photography-school.com/5-quick-reasons-use-nifty-fifty-landscape-photography/)
Isn't that focal length usually connected with rather "unimpressive" images? The quality/price ratio may be good but what to do with the partially compressed perspective and not-enough-to-be-usable tele-lens capabilities? And stitching isn't always the option - especially with moving objects and changing light.
Shooting at this focal length forces us to focus on the most important parts of what we’re seeing around us. Trimming the fat, as they would say. In doing this, we’re also training ourselves psychologically to do the same in all of our shots.
This probably makes more sense. With a 24-120mm lens I usually have too many shots at the wide end - deleting them at home as a rubbish. A focal length like this might help one to resist the urge to have everything stuffed in one picture.
I wonder if anybody has a positive experience with a 50mm lens used in the Landscape Photography and could share some interesting shots taken with such a lens? Thank you.
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I like my 50mm. Both of these were taken with a D800 and Nikon 50mm f1.8G.
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My Nikon 55mm F3.5 macro is the sharpest lens I own. Very satisfying tool.
Gorgeous images, Mr Chairman! :)
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I think that early in one's photographic career it is good to stick with one focal length, and 50mm (35mm FF equiv) is a good choice for two reasons:
1. You soon learn to see what fits well into that view space, and
2. You begin to learn in what situations you would really like to have a longer or shorter lens.
My earliest cameras had fixed "standard" lenses, and I'm glad they did. I have worked with film cameras from 35mm to 8x10" and for the past fifteen years digital cameras with typically three lenses each. I now use zoom lenses exclusively (because I no longer like to lug several lenses and a tripod around at my advanced age) and I find that different situations invite different focal lengths.
For example, I do lots of closeups of sand forms on beaches, and on my most recent Plum Island Beach outing I used lengths varying from 24mm to 400mm, with many shots at close to 50mm.
In winter I often shoot ice patterns on local ponds. Since I shoot from the shore (valuing my life more than the images,) I find that I now use longer focal lengths more. On one winter's outing my focal lengths were from 28mm to 230mm, with several around 50mm.
With experience you should be able to guess what focal length works best for each situation you encounter.
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Just bought a 40mm lens; For me that is the best choice- a bit more space; the 50mm always felt to be just too narrow.
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On my iPhone, I only use the 56mm lens, the 27mm lens is too sloppy. I could probably live with a 20mm, an 85mm, and a 200mm for the rest of my life if I could only have three focal lengths. If I'd only have one, it'd be 50mm for sure.
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While I use wides and ultra-wides the most, for certain kind of landscapes I like the angle of view of a 50mm. To me, is not a matter of principle, but a matter of what works for each particular situation:
(https://www.vieribottazzini.com/wp-content/uploads/SL2_1386.jpg)
(https://www.vieribottazzini.com/wp-content/uploads/SL2_2725.jpg)
(https://www.vieribottazzini.com/wp-content/uploads/SL2_2727.jpg)
(https://www.vieribottazzini.com/wp-content/uploads/SL2_1294.jpg)
Best regards,
Vieri
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While I use wides and ultra-wides the most, for certain kind of landscapes I like the angle of view of a 50mm. To me, is not a matter of principle, but a matter of what works for each particular situation:
(https://www.vieribottazzini.com/wp-content/uploads/SL2_1386.jpg)
Best regards,
Vieri
Considering the strong graphical and minimalist qualities of that first image, I think it would work extremely well with a subtle, not too contrasty, b&w rendition. Well done. Looks remarkably like an imaginary picture I have on my todo list when I ever get to Tuscany. (I presume it was shot there).
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Considering the strong graphical and minimalist qualities of that first image, I think it would work extremely well with a subtle, not too contrasty, b&w rendition. Well done. Looks remarkably like an imaginary picture I have on my todo list when I ever get to Tuscany. (I presume it was shot there).
Thank you very much, glad you enjoyed my lone cypress :) Yes, it was indeed shot in Tuscany, and I agree with you about the B&W, which I use a lot for my cypress pictures - I am lucky enough to be able to go 5-6 times a year to Tuscany leading Workshops, which gives me a lot of opportunities to shoot these beautiful cypresses under pretty much any weather / sky combination... for this particular one, I found that the colours added something extra and decided to leave them in.
Best regards,
Vieri
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Thank you all for the useful opinions and the amazing pictures you've shared - they make me want to experiment with that focal length while photographing landscape!
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I don't have an image on me at the moment, but I use 21 mm, 35 mm, 40 mm pancake, 50 mm, 55 mm, 105 mm, 125 mm macro, and 70-200 mm on a full frame camera (Canon 6D). A few of these are vintage manual AIS Nikkors, including the aforementioned AIS Micro-Nikkor 55 f/3.5 1:1 macro lens, of which there are about 350,000 floating around on flea-Bay for cheap. Probably my most-used landscape lens is the lowly Canon 40 mm f/2.8 pancake lens (manual-focus-by-wire, ugh), weight 130 grams, therefore, always in my bag even if my main subject of the day is "macro" or "birds".
Certain landscapes may favor certain focal lengths. I find myself using the 40 mm a lot because it works well for woodland scenes.
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I think focal length is often dictated by the location. I find myself in deep woods often in NC, and wide is a must.
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The 50mm lens was popular when all that were available were rangefinder cameras with limited manual focusing mechanisms. When I bought my first SLR camera in 1968 I also bought a 105mm lens as that focal length provided to my eyes the most accurate rendition of what my mind saw when looking at a scene. I still use the Nikon 105mm DC lens and also their 85mm tilt shift as well as the 70-200mm zoom lens for many of my landscape images.
With digital it is easy to do stitching of multiple images so as to avoid the perspective distortion that results from the use of shorter focal length lenses. Especially with landscape photography the shrinking in size of middle and background objects reduces the quality of the image, with mountains looking like mole hills and large trees looking like large shrubs.
Shooting underwater I routinely used a 15mm ultra wide angle lens to make "near and far" images where something like a sea fan would be 18 inches from the front of the lens and at the edge of the frame and the depth of field stretched to the limits of visibility or about 50 meters. This is a very effective approach but on land I see mostly the wide angle lens used to provide a very wide angle of view and not evidence of an awareness of the perspective distortion that is also evident.
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Really depends on how you use it.
I shoot many of my landscapes as multi-row panorama stitches and like the 50mm (or equivalent) or longer when I do these.
This was shot with the Fuji GF 63mm...
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Yeah, but 24mm vertical give you more space for stitching. :D
Just kidding. Your panorama looks great. Love the colours. 8)
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Yeah, but 24mm vertical give you more space for stitching. :D
Just kidding. Your panorama looks great. Love the colours. 8)
True.
I prefer to use normal to telephoto lenses so that the background doesn't recede into infinity by taking advantage of telephoto compression. The drawback is depth of field. When necessary, I can combine focus stacking and multi-row pano techniques. Just not at sunset because who can shoot all the images that fast?! ;D (My horseshoe bend image was made from 63 images.)
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Just bought a 40mm lens; For me that is the best choice- a bit more space; the 50mm always felt to be just too narrow.
As a more general purpose lens I'd agree a 35-40mm lens works better for me but 50mm can often be effective in picking out certain more confined positions, especially in situations like woodland.
Planning towards trekking in the Himalayas this autumn and I'd considering potentially using voightlander 20mm and 40mm pancakes to cut down on size/weight plus maybe a tele zoom for the odd mountain closeup.
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Isn't that focal length usually connected with rather "unimpressive" images? The quality/price ratio may be good but what to do with the partially compressed perspective and not-enough-to-be-usable tele-lens capabilities? And stitching isn't always the option - especially with moving objects and changing light.
I wonder if anybody has a positive experience with a 50mm lens used in the Landscape Photography and could share some interesting shots taken with such a lens? Thank you.
I think 50mm normal lenses are more difficult to use in landscapes because the focal length makes it difficult to get that sense of depth. Harder to get a near, middle, and far. Harder to get leading lines. It may also require focus stacking. Of course, you can also use a normal lens just as a telephoto to get subject isolation.
Some examples of mine with a 55mm: balboa park (https://stephenbayphotography.com/gallery/city/balboa-park-keyhole.html), cityscape (https://stephenbayphotography.com/gallery/city/sunset-harbor-drive.html). These are city scenes.
The first picture uses a natural frame to get depth. The second uses vanishing points and the light trails from the cars.
Also attached is a regular landscape.
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In the days of film SLR cameras and prior to the kit zoom lenses, the SLR cameras were commonly sold with a 50mm lens. I always bought the bare camera and the only time I owned a 50mm lens was for wedding photography with the pre 2007 DSLR cameras with limited low light autofocus capabilities. A 24mm to 45mm works better for big scenes, and for realistic perspective I use a 85mm or longer lens (so mountains as visualized in a scene look like mountains in the print). There is no need to use only a single focal length lens for all your shooting and even then I would start with a 28mm or 35mm and avoid the 50mm.
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Several years ago, when I first got the Pan/Leica 25 1.4 (50mm equiv), it was SO good that I just started using it for everything, although I'm primarily a landscape and food/product shooter. Turns out, once I got the Oly 75mm 1.8 I liked that one even more.
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I have zooms that cover the ranges of 16-35, 24-70 and 100-400, and primes that cover the ranges from 28-35-50-55-85.
But looking back at my catalog, the images that I am most satisfied with, and especially the ratio of images that I am most happy with, all tend to be at 50mm, or fairly close to 50mm (on my 24-70 I often end up shooting the best images between 45-60mm). So I could probably use a 50mm dedicated and still be able to make most of the images that makes me most happy. Actually, I might just have ended up with a more consistent body of work that I am consistently more happy with. A 28-50-90 kit seems more and more appealing these days, but it is hard to let go of the flexible GM zooms that I have gathered, even though they rarely get used.
But one thing that needs to be clarified in regards to the linked article. The author of that article are talking about using a nifty fifty on a crop sensor camera. So in essence, that entire article is in reality talking about shooting landscapes with a 75mm lens. The author himself clarified this in the comment section of the article after someone raised the question:
"Sorry, yes I'm discussing a 50mm focal length on a crop sensor; the gist being that landscape shots can be captured using something other than a wide-angle lens."
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It is hard to tell if 50 mm lens is good or not for landscape photography.First of all it must know for what kind of photography a 50 mm lens was done.I shall try to exemplify that with Nikkor 50 mm f/1.2.You will see that this lens seems to be done for small distances,less than 5 m.So I think it has to take advantage of lens properties in the favour of the picture.
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I continue here
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And now the last ones
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"...the gist being that landscape shots can be captured using something other than a wide-angle lens."
Hardly an epiphany.