I wrote yesterday about the process of selecting the lenses I use on my M mount cameras. A lot of that dealt with how I ended up with 50mm and 90mm lenses, and how they proved not to work for me. My original plan for my four lenses were four lenses split over two sets of characteristics, classic and modern, 35 and 75. The original name for the blog was to feature those two focal lengths. Thankfully, I decided to not name myself after the toys I own, instead of the artistic focus. But, it does show my dedication to those lenses, and reminds me that switching to 50mm lenses for a time was quite a surprising move, even to myself. As I stated yesterday, my final-four ended up being a set of four different focal lengths: 15mm, 35mm, 75mm and 135mm. I want to think a little more about focal lengths, and why I chose the ones I did, because to my mind that criteria is far more important than the actual model of lens that one might purchase.

To my mind, the logical place to start is with the first focal length I ever owned as a prime lens: The 75mm. A summary of the backstory is that I was using an APS sensor DSLR, and bought a 50mm. One funny element I skipped before, is that when I bought the first 50, I thought I was buying a Macro lens. When I started photography, I was working entirely on trial and error, and made a lot of obvious mistakes. The lens I bought was a Nikon AF-D 50mm. It had the advantage of allowing auto-exposure on my cheap camera, and I found myself using it quite a lot. Not having originally planned to have a non-macro prime lens, I ended up googling ‘What do I use this for?’ and discovering street photography, which also introduced me to the Leica brand, which I’d only previously heard in a cheesy teen movie from the early 2000’s that made a lot of jokes about it.

Ignoring the Leica as unimaginably expensive and pretentious, I set about using the 50 for street shots of cars, cats, broken paving slabs and very rarely, and nervously: people. It was months later before I understood that I was actually using what most photographers would call a ’75mm’ because of it’s cropped field of view. Eventually, the lens had a few focusing issues, and I gave it to a friend. A year or so later, I found myself missing it, and bought another, earlier version which I still have today. At the same time, I was getting more into the Street photography concept, and started referring to myself as an ‘amateur photojournalist’, taking my camera to interesting events and making poor quality shots similar to those found in the rural newspapers posted through my door. At no point did I consider trying a ‘real’ 50mm, the pretentious side of me preferring to do what I thought was unusual, and shooting at 75mm.

Naturally, this short-tele magnification did give some problems; I was forced to stand far back to get shots, and group pictures were a no-go. A useful tip for people thinking about different focal lengths; while they may be frowned upon by the prime-lens elite, the kit lens that comes with any digital camera will cover a range from around 28mm to 80mm. I used this convenient fact to experiment with street shooting at all of the common focal lengths I could find. This was where I first discovered a distaste for the real 50mm field of view, considering it a bland point between two more interesting perspectives. The 75mm was long enough to get shots more subtly, while still allowing me to be in the same space as my subjects, and not being physically large enough to seem intimidating on the streets. The 35mm view was visually interesting, with enough distortion to give the scene a new pop, without the completely unflattering view a 28mm seemed to present. By contrast, the 50mm was the worst of both worlds, bland from the oft-praised ‘natural eye-like view’ and still forcing me closer than I was always comfortable. The kit of two let me set the distance that I was happy to work at, the 50mm forced me to always be in the scene, even when I wasn’t comfortable.

I used those two lenses throughout my first experience of adult photography. Eventually a mix of external and internal pressures forced me to stop, and I started spending my time on other pursuits more accessible to me. Several years later, some of those pressures subsided and I found myself in the position of trying to take photographs again. I won’t repeat the whole history, especially as I only wrote it a few hours ago; but I will note that for a time I did find myself comfortable with the 50mm view. The problem was that I chose 50mm lenses not for my interest in the focal length, but for ancillary reasons: one was a curio I was tempted by, another came with a camera. Eventually both suffered issues, the curio was unusable on a day to day basis, and the ‘kit’ lens suffered a minor mechanical fault, so was put aside to await repair.

The final decision to return to the lenses I’d long ago fallen in love with, came because of a failing in myself. I reached an impasse where I was having difficulty finding pictures, and from that a difficulty finding motivation to go out and shoot. Wary of the risk of completely losing interest, I decided to experiment with different kinds of photography. By chance, I stumbled across a few opportunities that led me to explore portraiture and fashion photography, and when reading on this I was interested to find that the focal lengths being recommended were the same ones I had fallen in love with long ago. I spent some time playing with my 50mm lenses on a crop-sensor camera I keep for video recording, and decided that it would be worth my considering my original plan to shoot with a 75mm again. I had also found that I sometimes wanted a longer focal length, and after a little research I decided on a 135mm lens that was affordable and highly rated.

An interesting anecdote here. I’ve always been a pretty nerdy woman, I watched a lot of science fiction as a child, and at 7 years old one of my favorite books was the ‘Dorling Kindersley Science Encyclopedia’. As it turned out, science subjects are not where my talents lie, but I do take some enjoyment from interesting mathematical relationships. I’d originally bought a 15mm lens on a whim, having seen some interesting photos and deciding it would be an interesting thing to experiment with. Having crafted my new plan for a four-lens kit, I made an interesting realization about the four focal lengths. 15 and 35 have a difference of 20mm, 35 and 75, 40mm, 75 and 135, 60mm. It would not be untrue to say that this was the clincher that made the decision for me.

I spent a little time playing with other focal lengths, but these lenses are the only ones in the standard range that have such a smooth geometrical relationship. Part of me wonders if this may be a subconscious factor in why I always enjoyed the 35, 75 and 135 views on my SLR, and why I took so strongly to the 15mm. Either way, it’s a piece of trivia that appeals to me, and the set certainly contains common enough focal lengths that are widely used outside of nerdy mathematics fun.

I guess this post is probably long enough to deserve a TL;DR: Try before you buy, using a kit zoom lens to set effective focal lengths to see how you like working with them. Also, mathematics is cool.