50mm IS NOT "NORMAL"!! I can prove it.

ADD A COMMENT with your "normal" focal length (in full-frame terms) and your age. I'm 24mm & 49.

36 y/o. Never been a fan of 50mm, it's too long for a normal shot and too short for a portrait/telephoto shot. I am more of a 35mm 85mm type of shooter. I think the 50mm is considered a natural view of how we see things in regards to compression.

Lately though i have been using my Tamron 20-40mm f2.8 for street photography. And went with 135mm f1.8 for telephoto/portrait lens.

For me, a normal lens is defined by the hypotenuse of the image formed when the lens is focused on infinity. For the full-frame cameras, that is 43mm. A 43mm lens has a 45-degree horizontal angle-of-view. I have no problem accepting a 40, 45, 50, or 55mm prime lens as a normal lens.

For a wide-angle, I like a 90-degree horizontal angle-of-view.

For a telephoto, I like a 22-degree horizontal angle-of-view.

If I need something even more telephoto, an 11-degree horizontal angle-of-view works for me.

A 5-degree telephoto would be next for me.

This would give me an 18/45/90/180/400mm lens kit on a full-frame camera.

You haven't distinguished between peripheral vision and central vision. It is a significant difference. A FL of 50mm on a full frame camera has a field of view that approximates the limit of fovial (central) vision.

I watch you on a 50” TV as it gives me the most “normal” perspective! It’s so “normal” it’s like having friends round that I dont have to make tea for…Result!

I'm 30 and 85mm is normal, 400mm is comfortable

It would make a lot more sense if photographers and cameras measured this in degrees of angle rather than mm of length. Would translate a lot better between different lens film and sensor formats. mm is also used to measure the width of the lens and width of the film so it would avoid a lot of confusion. If I was directing a movie I think my favorite would be a 60 degree lens on a steady cam rig. I would also use the full sensor so that the Blu Ray can get the full 16:9 image and avoid lens flares and anamorphic lenses like the plague.

For me 35 mm is more the normal. 50 mm is more about picking subjects so it should be more in the telephoto range.

you forgot to mention, what is the eyes' compression equivalent of a full frame...

Based on what I gather, there's no 1 size fits all. It's entirely dependent on the location and situation. Your eyes (or rather it's your brain) changes focal lengths based on the situation. Realistically It's between 17mm-50mm. Some say 135mm with compression, but idk about that. 40-45mm is probably the closest if you had to pick one focal length, on a full frame. And it's in line with the sensor size. Fov wise, I'd say it's a 20-28mm. In my personal experience, 35mm always feels too wide, and 50mm is always too tight. I don't have a 40mm lens, but when I use my 35mm with focus breathing comp, and active steady shot, it's around 43mm. But it's not a perfect focal length for all situations. When I put my 20mm 1.8 g in crop mode, it brings it to 30mm. I find that to be an absolute perfect focal range, but mostly for indoor. Especially around museums. It feels just right to me. But outdoors it can be too wide in some situations, just like the 35mm. And that's why I said from the beginning there really isn't 1 best focal range. But wider always seems to be better. You can always crop in post. I'd love a 20-50mm lens. Sony should have made that instead of a 24-50. With a 1.4 aperture lol. Ah well.

I don't think that by "normal" people meant that it matched the human field of view.... Human vision doesn't work like a camera and lens does. To get even close to a 180 degree field of view you would need a fisheye, which of course will greatly distort images. I think more accurately, when people describe 50mm as "normal" they mean that subjects when shot with a 50mm lens will appear pretty close to how we perceive them in real life. For instance, if you shoot a portrait at, say, 24mm or wider, you will get distortion of the objects that are close to the lens, and objects that are far from the lens will seem farther away. With a 50mm lens, the image will closely resemble how the subjects would be seen in real life, both the close subjects and the distant ones.

I've always thought the 50mm "matching the human eye" was either complete rubbish, or everyone but me must have tunnel vision! 35mm was certainly closer but 24 was better. I have thought that 50mm probably more closely matched the magnification level of the eye on some cameras, but then you have different magnification levels on view finders which skews that further. I don't think there is a right or wrong answer here, but if I could only have one lens I'd probably opt for the 35 over the 50.

Great video! I didn't understand why I was so confused by everyone talking about nifty-fifty while I felt that it is rather "distant" for a close shot. I love the way you divide the focal length into distant - formal - intimate because that's exactly what i feel while choosing the lense and I couldn't tell why i don't have an intimate feeling while thinking about 50mm but it felt more like a great portrait lense that gives you a "formal" distance between your subject. If you do a reportage with 25mm it will feel so intimate.

My normal on a M10 or any other M body has always been 35 mm. 75 is my studio/portrait choice. I find 50 mm boring. But that’s my choice for color photography. Working in black and white seems to work better with a 50 mm lens. I’m over 70 and have been shooting for about 60 years.

52yrs, 50mm. Has anyone thought to mention that our cameras only have one “eye”, so shouldn’t we be making this comparison with the field of view with one eye open?

My "normal" focal length is 40-45mm. Not because it matches the human field of view, but because it matches the human field of focus. 40mm feels like the sweet-spot for the boundary between our regular vision and our peripheral vision. And I'm 25, for reference

I'm old. For full frame, I prefer 40mm for general purpose every day stuff, wide would be a nice 20mm, and portrait would be a 70-200. For APS-C, wide would be a 10-18, normal would be 24mm, and portrait would be 40-70.

Whoa! Never really thought of it like that. I'm a digital character sculptor that uses 85mm to take pictures and occasionally 50mm. I haven't really tried out other sizes much.
Thank you for the video! I'll definitely have to do more experiments with a broader range of lens sizes!

When I first started to use a decent 35mm camera (a Minolta XD-5, I think), it came with a 50mm lens.

That lens was decent quality, quite light and compact, decent f-stop (1.7), and fitted into the supplied case.

As soon as I went for a wider angle or telephoto lens, I lost out. Heavier. Bulkier. Worse maximum aperture. More expensive. Less likely to fit the case. Maybe some individual lenses would be at least as good as the 50mm for one or two of these factors but they never match or beat the 50mm on more than those few factors.

On top of that, the filter thread was usually larger, leading to purchases of yet more filters. Or filter adaptors.

The wide angle lens I ended up with was actually pretty awful. Very poor contrast.

The telephoto lens I most used was a zoom and it worked OK but the limited aperture and great weight meant I only took it with me when I anticipated I’d need it - never on the off chance.

I end up thinking of the 50mm lens as being the cheapest option rather than the best. And entirely understandable why it became the default. It was the cheapest to make and buy and was pretty usable.

Now that I mostly use my phone, I so appreciate that I have the choice of 0.5x, 1x, 2x and 5x. And both the cameras I use have built-in zoom lenses which allow me to choose.

And can we please come up with a way of describing lenses which isn’t based on the size of a 35mm full frame? One that works for every frame size. Like angle? The “35mm equivalent” qualifier is, frankly, ridiculous.

I wish there was a 50mm magnification like lens, but with a much wider field of view like the human eye. It would be amazing to get the human perspective and just crop it or even do multiple crops.

It relates to how we see the subject in the surroundings. The background space is just right and the field of view is blurred just right if we are looking at the subject.

Whats "normal" any way? For what purpose? What are your preferences?
Doesnt make any sense! Trash the term and move on.

50mm just ooks weird to me. It's the worst looking focal length in my opinion. I absolutely love 85mm and 135mm look. It's gorgeous!

It's the focal length of the fovea of your eye / middle portion. Your retina is CURVED so you don't have a "focal length" for your entire eye overall, it changes from the middle to the periphery. If you had a flat retina then it would be pretty close to 50-ish mm. (Not surprising, the lens is simple and the eye is about 50mm in diameter)

After doing some tests with focal lengths and distance to subject, I've discovered that (on APS-C sensors) the 40mm lens feels most natural to me. In a pinch, 35mm would do as well. With 40mm being the middle, 20mm offers a nice addition of more peripheral vision to my natural FOV. On the other side of 40, the 85mm feels like the best focal length if I want to focus on a detail in my immediate surroundings. So I'd say 20, 40, 85 would cover all my needs, except for far-away subjects.

I think it's more about the projection. With a 50mm, the relative size of subjects at different distances are closer to what human eyes produce. I recently switched from 50mm on apsc to 35mm on apsc, to 50mm on ff. Also compared with 35mm on ff. I found 50mm on ff gives me the most natural view. It is slightly narrower than my focus area on bare eyes. But very close. I would try 40mm, but not urged. 34yr old.

You can't compare a camera with an eye, since an eye has a spherical "sensor", and with a "normal" lens, I think the reference is to the magnification a 50mm lens gives, which you quite rightly show in the video.

24mm and 25yrs

😅 I'm 105 years old, I chose 105mm lens all day long.

I don't have a strong opinion on what 'normal' focal length lenses should be. However, I do have an opinion on Tony's experiment to gauge human FOV. Our eyes are foviated, we have more resolution in the fovea of our retina (about 2deg FOV) and lower resolution that drops off around it. In fact we only have colour vision in the very centre of our vision (about 20deg) and outside of that we have no cones (colour selective photoreceptor) and only rods (non-colour selective photoreceptors). Our eyes are really weird in terms of physiology and also in terms of how our brains interpret the signals from them. I think it is completely reasonable that 50mm lenses emulate the typical attention of our eye-brain systems.

Funny video. Since I`ve started taking pictures some decades ago, I never got my head around the fact, why they called the 50 "normal". Very early "test" didn't look "normal" (as in my view) to me. I quickly preferred 35 and 28 as "normal", if I wanted some people shots looking "normal", as they look more normal to my view. Now you've put way more thought of it into and I really like the terms "comfortable" and "intimate" for 35 and 28ish. Makes so much sense to me, but I guess, the term "normal" for the "nifty fifty" will stick forever. But don't start messing around with the 35mm film as the "reference", just because Barnack needed something light to carry up the mountains. This one makes drawing the "physics pictures" in my head really easier, when comparing specs of lenses, even my first camera was a 120 folder. I guess constant ad penetration had a positive impact on "understanding the world" in that one case for me 😂.

I'm 49. I love how the 50mm stretches me, by making the backgound slightly narrow and a conspicuous choice within the frame.

By comparison, I find 35mm or less can make the background too lazily homogenous, while 70mm+ can do away with background issues through extreme subject separation.

More than the others, the 50mm has me treating the background as a second 'subject' to compose in the photo - not just something to look loosely pleasing (which is a habit I see plaguing so many 35mm or less street photos).

I like a 50mm equivalent on micro four thirds (25mm) because of the aspect ratio. I’m 28.

50mm in 3:2 feels cropped. Maybe I just prefer square-er compositions

The 180 degrees human angle of view is not relevant because we only see sharp in a smaller angle

Hi Tony, I´m 54 and I prefer the term "normal". Not because it makes much sense but because I´ve learned it and I don´t want to re-learn all the stuff. Why are you and why are we all talking about Full-Frame? Is medium format Fuller Frame or Fullest Frame? Why are we talking about electronic shutter when there´s no shutter used anymore?

"Normal" to me is a focal length that shows the subject exactly how I see it, with the same perspective.
I don't peripheral vision has any role here. Try looking straight ahead without losing focus of dead center. You can't focus and take in the whole 200 degrees of view. You'll notice something new appearing within that massive field of view, of course, but you can't really explore it in detail without turning your eyes and focusing in that direction. And the brain is also a very powerful tool that fills up missing detail based on its own algorithm.

I'm in my 50s. I think anything under 120mm is intimate. You get that close and I have to tell you to get off my lawn.

one of my favorite.

My age is 65 and I've been an amateur photographer for over 40 years. I am one of those who, once having used a 40mm lens (with 35mm film) have forever felt that this was the optimum length for general photography. I've used said focal length on trips overseas and never felt that I needed anything else; all the SLR equipment was left at home. I currently have lenses from 20mm to 135mm, and out of convenience use 50mm a great deal because the market has always favored that length. But you can bet that I have a couple of 40mm options in my kit, and I always will.

It's like "Full Frame", 36X24 mm it's FULL FRAME!!! WOW. But, 56X56mm from 120 film square standard sounds more like full frame to me. Hey, 6X7 film size, 67X56mm sounds even better. Well 5X7 inches, that sounds even more like full frame, or 8X10 inches film sheet. "Full Frame", just a convention like "normal" lens. Not a big deal really.

Two things about normal is equivalent to the perspective of the human eye but not including what we cal peripheral view (Non sharp and with depth). The diagonal of the format does apply too but in photography there are several adjustments to numbers as it happens in shorter speeds between 1/60 to 1/125 and from 1/8 to 1/15 and should be 120 and 16. So it's not exact but its an adjustment done to commercialize products in fact some cameras did have closer numbers to mathematical diagonal of the format in both 35mm and some midim formats. 50 allows to go to 100, 200, 400, 800. Its not mathematical. But strange analogy you use about feeding others...

It has to include the compression from foreground to background. This may have been overlooked in the observation. Medium format camera 80mm is considered normal. A 150mm is for a 4x5. You have to consider coverage of the format, field of view and compression of the scene.

24 mm - compared to 50 mm

a car ( ... ) in the edge is stretched

everything is smaller > four times ! 4 !

55yrs old and my everyday is a 17-70 sigma shot at 50mm most of the time. Took a chance and took a few shots of the the wife at 17mm once. My twins were born 9 months later. A coincidence?...I think not.

You really should have left the guess on the end off and did a followup video without planting the suggestion compiling the result

Awesome video. Makes lots of sense. Love my 50mm because it was cheap and good but trying to think more about what I want from my photography and what system will give it. I’d love to go wider but it gets harder to keep track of all in the frame. the names of different lenses is great. Can’t give you my favourite focal length because I’m working that out. For me focal length depends on what you want to create. Much easier to discover fav length with primes. In my early 30s. I do find it easier to isolate subjects with longer focal lengths so try challenging myself to shoot wider.

apparently a 50mm was the most common lens at earlier years of 35mm photography ( Leica and Zeiss) and in the opinion of most, the best pictures were taken on 50 mm, so maybe history established the 50mm as a standard lens , And something else I assume the 50 mm gives a similar view of of the human eye does, But close the other eye , the camera sees with one lens why compare it with both eyes open