Focal length advice please

[Dave Saunders]

I'm gradually purchasing my large format gear but I'm not sure which wide lens to get. I'm interested in landscapes so was thinking of either a 47mm or 58mm. Am I right in thinking the 47mm is about equal to 17mm on 35mm and the 58mm equal to 20mm 0n 35mm?
If so, would the 47mm start to give some sort of mild fisheye effect?

[Ken Lee]

A rule of thumb is to multiply a 35mm lens length by 3X, to get the corresponding length for 4x5.

By that reckoning, a 47mm lens on 4x5 is equivalent to 1/3 of 47, or 16mm: quite short. A 58mm lens on 4x5 would be 1/3 of 58, or around 20mm, also quite short.

These would be considered ultra-wide lenses.

Popular 4x5 wide-angle lenses for landscape are somewhere between 90mm and 120mm. These would be between 30mm and 40mm on a 35mm camera. They are easier to focus, and don't suffer from as much light fall-off or apparent distortion. Some of them are tremendously sharp.

[Ted Harris]

The practice of thinking in terms of 35mm equivalents is not always a useful way to consider LF lenses, especially when thinking wide. Most folk just 'see different' when shooting LF. Also, how often do you really use a lens wider than 24-28mm in 35. If like most people it is very seldom then you will likely use a 47 or 58 even less in 4x5. My 58 A XL is absolutely my least used lens. I use a 75 with reasonable frequency and suggest you try that before thinking wider. Ken is also right that many never want shorter than 90mm.

[Skorzen]

I have a 90 on the wide end (I'm fairly new to LF so I might be closer to where you are) I really don't feel a need for anything wider. then again I never used anything wider than a 24mm (well I had a 16mm fisheye for a while but that was just for fun) and my favorite was (is) a 28mm. What I would suggest is that you pickup one of the 90mm lenses that can be had for $300-$400 and see what that gets you (if you don't have one already), the wider lenses tend to be big $$ but I don't know what sort of budget you have. I find that to use all the movements my SA 90 gives me I would need to get a bag bellows so this is going to be even more of an issue with wider lens (I think a lot of cameras cant even focus a 47mm without a recessed board). I have at times considered trying to get something like a 75mm, but I don't know how much use it would really see.

[Ron Marshall]

Lenses shorter than about 75mm are extremely wide on 4x5. For general landscape they are less useful than lenses in the 75 to 120mm range, because of the emphasis they give to the forground.

I have a 55mm; its perspective and its exagguration of forground are great for some shots, but I don't use it often. In fact my kit used to be 75-110 on the long end, but I changed the 110 (great lens) for a 90 because, for what I like to shoot, the 75 was often too short and the 110 not short enough. The 90, for me, is perfect. When I want to go wider than 75 it is to emphasize the foreground.

Short answer: it really depends what you prefer to shoot.

[Jiri Vasina]

I'm also a relative beginner in LF (shooting only 2+ years :) ), but I'd also suggest trying the 90mm first.

Although in 35mm world I used 19-35mm lens at the wider setting (up to 24mm) a lot, I did not feel the need to go wider [than 90mm] when shooting 4×5"/9×12cm. Only once or twice. On the other hand, when composing for 6×12cm panoramic compositions, I longed for a 75mm lens quite a lot. But that is a bit different.

The best solution is the 90mm. It's wide, enough for most. If you need to go wider, you will still use the 90mm (or thereabouts) a lot, even if you had a 75mm/65mm. So it's the best start.

[Leonard Evens]

4 x 5 is quite different from 35 mm and using a view camera is different from using an SLR. First the aspect ratios are different, 24:36 = 2:3 as opposed to 96:120=4:5.. You can think of 35 mm format as 24 x 30 (aspect ratio 24:30=4:5) contained in the larger format 24:36 frame with room for moving the frame 3 mm on either side. That would be the equivalent of shifting your view camera front or back to the side by 12 mm to either side. Alternately, if you prefer the 2:3 aspect ratio, you can select an 80 x 120 mm selection from your 4 x 5 image by cropping. In the first case, you would use a multiplier of 4 to find equivalent focal lengths; in the second case you would use a multiplier of 10/3 = 3.333. Since most print paper formats are closer to the 4:5 ratio, I prefer the first method and use a multiplier of 4, but it is up to you.

As noted above, the possibility of movements also changes things. the only way you can accomplish the same result with 35 mm is either to use a shift lens or to use a wider lens than you would otherwise and crop.

As the others have said, most people find that they don't need anything wider than 90 mm for landscape photography. I have a 90 mm and a 75 mm lens, and I almost never use the 75 mm for landscapes. In fact, I often use my 150 mm or my 300 mm in circumstances where I would not use a longer lens with smaller formats such as 35 mm. I just visualize things differently with the view camera. I got the 75 mm to deal with architectural subjects which I couldn't get back far enough from. Because you don't usually view prints close enough relative to a short focal length of the taking lens, there are so-called wide angle distortions in the print unless the subject is basically flat and perpendicular to the lens axis. They just don't look very natural, and the coverage advantages of using a wide angle lens can often be accomplished by rise/fall or shift.

[John Schneider]

I use a 58XL on a Cambo Wide when I'm inside slot canyons and there just isn't room to move, but outside canyons it never gets used. It's just too wide, and for reference I used to use a 15mm with my F3. On lenses that short there is also the difficulty of keeping the standards parallel, so IMO the only real way to use such wides is on a LF point and shoot like a Fotoman, Cambo Wide, etc.

Despite the fact that the 47 and the 58 only differ in f.l. by 11mm, there is a huge difference in perspective, feel, and usability. Rent both lenses first so you can make an informed buying decision.

[Mark Sawyer]

All good advice so far, I'd say! The 90mm lenses are also much more common and a bit less expensive than the ultra-wides, so they're a good place to start. And even if an ultra-wide lens turns out to match your vision well, it's still likely that you wouldn't want it as your only lens.

[Bruce Watson]

I'm gradually purchasing my large format gear but I'm not sure which wide lens to get. I'm interested in landscapes so was thinking of either a 47mm or 58mm. Am I right in thinking the 47mm is about equal to 17mm on 35mm and the 58mm equal to 20mm 0n 35mm?
If so, would the 47mm start to give some sort of mild fisheye effect?

Aw man, you're going to hate me for this. If you're like me you won't listen either. But I'm going to try anyway because it may help you avoid some of the pitfalls I (and many others) have experienced.

LF isn't 35mm. Much of what you learned using 35mm isn't going to be useful in LF. Not that 35mm is bad in any way, it's just a completely different method of photography.

The big thing is you will no longer "frame with your feet." I did this all the time in 35mm -- put the camera up to my face and move around searching for the right perspective while looking through the view finder. This style is even more prominent when people are using zoom lenses.

With LF you'll spend a lot more time walking the scene without the camera. You have to find the right perspective first, then setup your tripod and camera in the right spot the first time. Then you'll pick a lens that lets you capture what you want from that perspective.

The best way IMHO to learn how to work with LF is to buy a "normal" lens like a 150mm or 135mm lens. I know, I know -- I never even owned anything close to "normal" in my 35mm days. But with LF, normal lenses are surprisingly useful. In particular when you are learning how to use movements. This is so because the detail on the ground glass is much easier to see -- you can see when things are in, and out, of focus much easier. With ultrawides the scene detail is just tiny and it can be quite difficult to control the plane of focus because of this.

After you've spent sufficient time with a normal lens (you'll know how long that is) you'll have a better understanding of how LF works and how you work with LF. This in turn will give you a better understanding of which lenses you actually do need. Buy new lenses one at a time and learn them. It really is the best way.

Come here and ask questions as you go. This really is a great resource with a lot of people who have stood where you are standing right now. If you want the benefit of their experience, you have but to ask.

Good luck to you on the start of this new adventure.

[Nick_3536]

Whats the widest lens you have now?

[Richard Wall]

My widest lens is a 90 and I have only rarely wanted something wider. I have done a lot of interiors with the 90, but outdoors the 90 starts to get a little short. When shooting landscapes I often find myself wanting something just a bit longer, around the 135-150 range.

r.

[timparkin]

I spent some time recently trying to come up with a definitive answer to this question (or at least try to get somewhere close).

The first thing was to make sure we really know the size of a large format and a 35mm photography. Well I thought this would be easy but there was a surprise in store. The 35mm size was not 35mm (but I think I knew this). The size was actually 36mm x 24m (35mm was the size of the width of the film strip).

You would expect large format film to be 4" x 5" but actually it's not this, it's 3.74"x4.72" (or 95mm x 120mm). This means the aspect ratio is actually 1:1.26 and you lose over 10% of the film area you thought you had :-(

So... the ratio between LF and 35mm can be calculated based on three things. The first is comparing by short dimension. This is the method I use as I used to crop my 35mm pictures to 4x5 and I now use a mask. This preserves the short dimension of the 35mm picture size and doing this gives a ratio of 3.96 to 1.

The second way to calculate the ratio is presuming that if you like the amount of landscape you can include with your 35mm camera, you should use the long dimension as as the ratio. i.e. if you decide you want to take a landscape orientation picture and you stand in front of Buachaille Etive Mor and want to get the whole mountain in, then you'll want to get the whole mountain in with 4x5 too.. So you'll need the longer side of the aspect ratio to convert properly. This gives a ratio of 3.33 to 1.

The ratio that most people use however is the diagonal. I haven't seen a single justification for this apart from "It uses bits of the short and bits of the long dimension". Anyway, this gives, 3.54 to 1, which is probably the ratio a lot of people recognise.

In summary: -

short dimension comparison gives ~ 4 : 1
long dimension comparison gives ~ 3.33 : 1
diagonal dimension comparison gives ~ 3.5 : 1

Whilst I was doing this I also used google docs spreadsheet program to calculate a few more things, like what lens distribution would you get it you use 40% spacing of focal length and worked from a 150mm lens? What ratios do Leica and Nikon recommend (based on a posting at LFP.info)? What happens if you use 40% difference in angles instead?

Visit this google spreadsheet to see my calculations.. If you want a copy of the spreadsheet just ask or I think you may be able to copy it from the google site.

I should say that the common consensus seems to be to choose your lenses so that the spacing is approximately 40% by focal length. If you want to carry less lenses, use 50%.

As an example from my spreadsheet. If we start with 150 and 210 as a couple of focal lengths that have a lot of common lenses in, we get the 40% ratio and the extrapolated focal lengths in this range would be 77, 107, 150, 210, 294, 412 or if we map to real lenses this would be 75, 110, 150, 210, 300, 400.

I chose to use slightly longer spacing at the top end and slightly shorter spacing at the bottom end. Thinking about this since, I think it might be more useful to have closer spacing at the top end. The reason is that most uses of longer lenses are to pick out details at a distance and it's harder to 'use your feet' when you are working in a 3D environment, for instance if you are on the side of a hill looking down a valley, moving 30% closer to the other side of the valley changes your viewpoint somewhat. My lenses are 80, 110, 150, 240, 360, 500 which give ratios of 40%, 40%, 60%, 50%, 40%. The gap between 150 and 240 is a bit long, I could do with a 190 or 200 to plug the gap but my pack is heavy enough as it is :-)

Joe Cornish uses (from the first light book) 58, 72, 90, 120, 150, 210, 300 (although I doubt he uses all of them at once!) which gives 25%, 25%, 33%, 25%, 40%, 43%. The steps are longer at the top end which is probably because these lengths are used a lot less frequently by Joe (although by his own admission he rarely takes out the 58).

Hope you don't mind me posting verbatim from my blog.. I've posted something else with some pictures to illustrate. The two postings are :

http://blog.timparkin.co.uk/2008/03/lens-format-equivalents-pt-iii.html
http://blog.timparkin.co.uk/2008/03/lens-format-equivalents-continues.html

Tim

[Ron Marshall]

I compared 35mm to 4x5 using horizontal angle of view.

47mm same as 14mm on 35mm.

55 same as 16.5

58 same as 17

65 same as 19

75 same as 22

90 same as 27.5

Having different aspect ratios, 35mm and 4x5 shots with the same horizontal angle of view will look somewhat different, but it gives you some idea of what to expect.

[John Kasaian]

What Bruce Watson says :)

If you're just putting together your kit, try a more normal lens first if you can't borrow or use someone else's camera. Wide on a view camera is really really wide. Wide often means less movements, too. Unless you are seriously into architectural photography where 90mm are the bomb, wouldn't suggest anything wider than a 135 or 120mm for your first lens. If that starts feeling cramped after a year, you'll have a better idea of how wide you'll really want to go and spend accordingly.
My 2-cents anyway.

[Hany Aziz]

I'm gradually purchasing my large format gear but I'm not sure which wide lens to get. I'm interested in landscapes so was thinking of either a 47mm or 58mm. Am I right in thinking the 47mm is about equal to 17mm on 35mm and the 58mm equal to 20mm 0n 35mm?
If so, would the 47mm start to give some sort of mild fisheye effect?

I would start with a 135 mm lens for landscapes. Add a 210 mm lens as your second lens. Then maybe add a 90 mm later. I do own a 75 mm lens but very rarely use it (too wide). The 58 mm and 47 mm lenses sound ridiculously wide to me. If you insist on a wide lens then you could start with a 90 mm, but I would not start any wider.

Sincerely,

Hany.

[audioexcels]

The practice of thinking in terms of 35mm equivalents is not always a useful way to consider LF lenses, especially when thinking wide. Most folk just 'see different' when shooting LF. Also, how often do you really use a lens wider than 24-28mm in 35. If like most people it is very seldom then you will likely use a 47 or 58 even less in 4x5. My 58 A XL is absolutely my least used lens. I use a 75 with reasonable frequency and suggest you try that before thinking wider. Ken is also right that many never want shorter than 90mm.

I find the 75 is an excellent length, but the 65 or a tad wider adds that extra bit that the 75 doesn't do, though the 75 is a nice focal length. I think it has a lot to do with where exactly one is going to be shooting, the context, etc. My vote would be the 72XL. Great compromise and loads of IC to work with. At the same time, for starters, the Nikkor 90/8 would be a light and excellent choice to get an idea. Guy from the Schneider site (engineer?) prefers the 72XL as his primary wide and it is understandable why...close to 75mm, not quite that extension of the 65mm, but still 3mm's less is quite a lot, though the IC is what is truly beneficial, even on 5X7/4X10 sheet of film...

[audioexcels]

I would start with a 135 mm lens for landscapes. Add a 210 mm lens as your second lens. Then maybe add a 90 mm later. I do own a 75 mm lens but very rarely use it (too wide). The 58 mm and 47 mm lenses sound ridiculously wide to me. If you insist on a wide lens then you could start with a 90 mm, but I would not start any wider.

Sincerely,

Hany.

I think it really depends. Try using a 135mm on the Pacific coastline and get in the very difficult proportions with the rocks/cliffs/ocean/etc. A 47-55mm lens would be my only guess at what could manage to get the scene in "if" you can somehow pull off movements with lenses that don't have any...

For people that live out in flat states or landscape that doesn't involve the West Coast ocean (aka N. Cali-on up), then 135mm makes plenty of sense. Then again, what about waterfalls and getting an entire scene in instead of just the waterfall. There's no way one can get tight corridors in countries around the world such as Italy without a very wide lens.

Again, it depends on the context one is going to shoot and where the person will primarily use their lenses.

I'd rent the wider focal lengths and just get an idea out in the field what they look like...can even do it in a home;)...

[tgtaylor]

For a one lens kit, I'd consider the Rodenstock 150mm apo-sironaS. It's a little pricy as far as the normal lens goes, but its sharp as a tack and has a 75 degree angle of view which gives you about the same perspective as a 35mm lens on a 35mm camera. If you find that you need to go wider, then you will probably find that a 90mm will be sufficient for most, if not all, of your wide-angle requirements.

I own the 150mm mentioned above as well as a 90mm and 75mm (both f4.5 Rodenstocks) and find that VERY few landscapes require wider than 90mm. That said, your visualization or 'seeing' could demand lenses wider that 90mm and a 75mm takes up very little pack room and weighs way less than the 90mm. Otherwise lenses wider than 90mm just end up sitting unused in your pack.

With architecture, especially indoors, its a different story: Get a 75mm and (since I don't own one) possibly a 65mm Nikkor.

Thomas

[Ole Tjugen]

Much of the time, when I use a 90mm lens on 4x5" I wish I had brought the 5x7" camera instead. So I've bought a 65mm and a 47mm.

But my local landscapes tend to be "tight", and it's very often impossible to take a step back. Even if I can take a step back, it still doesn't help when the mountain I'm right up against is 1600m high and I'm at sea level, or near that.

I have been out shooting with only one lens a couple of times, and have found that for me the best "single lens kit" is a 120mm f:6.8 Angulon! Slightly wide, with lots of coverage for 4x5" so I can use shift and rise all I want, yet small and light enough not to add to the weight of the pack. If I could bring a heavier lens, I'd much rather have several small lenses... ;)

[Hany Aziz]

I think it really depends. Try using a 135mm on the Pacific coastline and get in the very difficult proportions with the rocks/cliffs/ocean/etc. A 47-55mm lens would be my only guess at what could manage to get the scene in "if" you can somehow pull off movements with lenses that don't have any...

For people that live out in flat states or landscape that doesn't involve the West Coast ocean (aka N. Cali-on up), then 135mm makes plenty of sense. Then again, what about waterfalls and getting an entire scene in instead of just the waterfall. There's no way one can get tight corridors in countries around the world such as Italy without a very wide lens.

Again, it depends on the context one is going to shoot and where the person will primarily use their lenses.

I'd rent the wider focal lengths and just get an idea out in the field what they look like...can even do it in a home;)...

True. Lens choice does depend quite a bit on one's way of "seeing" and subject matter. I do still maintain that even with the grand vistas of the west the original poster will use a 90 mm lens far more frequently than a 58 mm, and will likely use a 135 mm lens even more. I particularly like the "gentle wide" look of a 135 mm lens and still usually do carry one despite my ideal lens spacing (75, 110, 150, 210, 300) suggesting that I leave the 135 and 90 mm lenses at home. I still find myself grabbing the 135 mm lens more than any other. Since I usually also take the 90, I do occasionally use that though I am now frequently using the 110 mm more than the 90 mm. The 110 also comes in very handy if significant movements are needed.

Sincerely,

Hany.

[jb7]

I compared 35mm to 4x5 using horizontal angle of view.


75 same as 22




Apologies for the selective quotation,
but I made a little test today-
A picture of a tall building up close with a 72mm Xl, with a lot of rise-

I also took a picture on a DX DSLR,
and taking a picture with the camera tilted up, I would have needed to shoot at 10mm (35mm equivalent 15mm) in order to leave enough image to allow the transformation of the geometry, and bring the verticals back to parallel. Those transformations would result in the loss of up to 40% of the DSLR picture area-

In this test, the width was the important dimension, (in the portrait orientation) and some of the image would be cropped off the bottom of the digital frame to match the 4x5 proportion- a virtual rise, off-axis crop.

So, as has been mentioned earlier, working with a complicated camera is completely different to working with a simple camera- though different people might have different views about which is which-

The examples you chose (47mm and 58mm) are not really representative of the view camera experience, in my opinion- neither allows much room for movements, and you might end up using them axially- just like a 35mm-

The 72mm XL has been suggested already, and if you want to go wide, that might be an optimum for length and coverage- though a 90mm might be just as good for you, with more choice for less money-

And depending on the pictures you want to make, you might not need to go as wide as you might think...

joseph