Well you didn't list a 135mmm and standard portrait lens is more like 85mm for 35. Normal lens for a given format is determined by the hypot of the format. Thats how a normal lens is determined. It has nothing to do with how we see. Its why if you look around you will find a lot of 40mm and 45 and 43(bingo) lenses. It has to do with how light travels through optics. I have no clue why you are talking about what a normal lens is. a 50 with all things being equal will be sharper then a 200mm with will require corrections for chromatic and other aberrations. when I was shooting my Book on Vetrans my lens was a 460mm on 8x10 or about the same as 85mm on 35. None of which matters at all because you are talking pure asthetic now and nothing of human perception has it relates to awareness. MIght I suggest the TV show brain games.
On Mon, Jun 3, 2013 at 10:37 PM, karl shah-jenner <shahjen@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
----- Original Message ----- From: "Randy Little" <randyslittle@xxxxxxxxx> Sent: Tuesday, June 04, 2013 10:14 AM
Subject: Re: June 1, 2013 Reviews
where does a person place themselves when looking at a persons face? If you think it is for 47 degree coverage I'd rather never meet you, I do not like other peoples noses touching mine. How about a keyboard? you'd be about 30cm from it.. Or a book? Do you really read with your face 5cm off a paperback?On Mon, Jun 3, 2013 at 9:57 PM, karl shah-jenner <shahjen@xxxxxxxxxxxx>wrote:
most have a 185 degree field of view horizontally.
most have a 15 degree field of attention - that's when we position
ourselves such that the object of our attention feels comfortable (we stand
a distance from a person such that the face fits with this angle)
most have merely 1/60th of degree of critical focus. hold a match in front
of you and look at the top of the match head, now the bottom - you can't
focus on both at once!
what you are neglecting here is that our Peripheral vision is crap. Good
only for discerning motion. So when people where doing things like trying
to figure out formats like 4:3. They where only interested in those areas
that fell within the area of human vision that had a certain amount of
visual acuity. Less then that was then disregarded as unnecessary.
no our actual area of concentration is closer to 10-15 degrees, so 100-135mm lens looks a lot more 'normal' than 50mm ever did which is why the 'portrait' lens is 100-135mm for 35mm. you will find if you try, that people position themselves such that the thing they're looking at is most pleasing when it fills that small angle of view. 50mm (47 degrees-ish) feels too damned close. 50mm portrait pictures result in disproportionately large noses.
And, a nice pano of 180 degrees or more will command as much if not more attention than a shot taken with a 50mm and people will see it as more realistic and more in keeping with their memory of a scene than a 50mm shot, so clearly their head builds a wider image - see again, vision and seeing isn't an eye thing. We may know our outer vision is peripheral, but we then sweep our eyes about to complete the picture, locking elements in for future reference (our brain then logs this in memory) and our peripheral vision IS then used unconsciously to see, to inform us when elements change. .
anything relating a 50mm lens to normal is either a faulty rationalization or is a misunderstood and mistranslated translation of lens optical features being conveyed to eyesight.
and then there's that annoying 1/60th of a degree which is our real, actual true vision - the only bit we see clearly.
