50mm Seems Much Wider!

Stitch-Up

Stitch-Up

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John
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I have a Canon Zoom Lens EF 24-70mm 1:2.8 USM lens attached to a Canon R8 full frame camera.

All the videos and a photography course I do states that at 50mm it should be closest to how we view with the eye e.g. if I set the lens to 50mm the view in the camera should be about the same as I'd see with my eye. This clearly isn't the case 70mm is a closer match! I've also attached my lens to my 5D MkIII with exactly the same result.

Can anyone shed some light on this - is it something to do with Full frame and maybe crop sensor?

ANy comments appreciated.

Thanks

John
 
That sounds about right - an R8 has a 0.7x viewfinder from a Quick Look, 50mm zoomed out 0.7x is about 71mm…

I.e. 0.7x means it will look smaller, so makes sense to me that you’d need to zoom in more to get it back to life size and the ratio checks out.

I might be missing something there but it makes sense in my head :)
 
"Eye has 46 degree view so it's between a 35 and 50mm lens on full frame."

From the Internet so it must be true
 
I read somewhere (back in the '70s!) that the diagonal of the frame (in mm) shows what focal length approximates the FoV of the eye, so a FF sensor (24x36mm) would want a 43 (or thereabouts) mm lens.
 
The 50mm = human eye vision view has never made a great deal of sense to me as we see a much wider field of view than 50mm gives. Some would argue that humans don't see clearly at the edges and it's only the 50mm bit in the middle that we see with clarity but I don't think that makes much sense in photography. What does make sense to me is the perspective you get with 50mm on FF as to me it looks pretty much like the perspective we or at least I see by eye. 70mm to me doesn't. We've also got to be careful when being specific about lenses as some aren't what they say on the box.

We can test this easily enough by standing in front of something with a background behind. Raise the camera with a 50mm to your eye and the perspective should look pretty much the same. IE. The main subject should look pretty much as it does by eye and so should the background. With wider and longer lenses things change.
 
Thanks everyone for the replies :) I'm not sure I fully understand but I'll get my head around it soon! I always thought that what I saw in the eye piece was what I'd get in the picture file - seems I get far more (wider) in the eye piece than I get in the file.
 
Stitch-Up said:
Thanks everyone for the replies :) I'm not sure I fully understand but I'll get my head around it soon! I always thought that what I saw in the eye piece was what I'd get in the picture file - seems I get far more (wider) in the eye piece than I get in the file.
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That just does not sound right. Your camera is I think mirrorless? If it is what you see in the VF should be what's on the sensor and will be in the file.

I think you need to try some sort of controlled experiment. Maybe try photographing something with identifiable features at each side of the frame.

See this... note the lamp posts at the left and right side of the frame.

1-DSC05963.JPG

That's exactly what I saw in the VF. If you try something like this and you get a wider view in the VF than the file shows then something is very very wrong somewhere.
 
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woof woof said:
The 50mm = human eye vision view has never made a great deal of sense to me as we see a much wider field of view than 50mm gives. Some would argue that humans don't see clearly at the edges and it's only the 50mm bit in the middle that we see with clarity but I don't think that makes much sense in photography. What does make sense to me is the perspective you get with 50mm on FF as to me it looks pretty much like the perspective we or at least I see by eye. 70mm to me doesn't. We've also got to be careful when being specific about lenses as some aren't what they say on the box.

We can test this easily enough by standing in front of something with a background behind. Raise the camera with a 50mm to your eye and the perspective should look pretty much the same. IE. The main subject should look pretty much as it does by eye and so should the background. With wider and longer lenses things change.
Click to expand...
This
It's not the angle of view that the eye has that approximates to 50mm, it's the perspective.

Our eyes effectively zoom (though they don't and it's weird how they work), as I'm sat here in my living room, I can see something approximating 16mm or also just watch TV and ignore it's surroundings which would be 70mm+.
 
woof woof said:
The 50mm = human eye vision view has never made a great deal of sense to me as we see a much wider field of view than 50mm gives. Some would argue that humans don't see clearly at the edges and it's only the 50mm bit in the middle that we see with clarity but I don't think that makes much sense in photography. What does make sense to me is the perspective you get with 50mm on FF as to me it looks pretty much like the perspective we or at least I see by eye. 70mm to me doesn't. We've also got to be careful when being specific about lenses as some aren't what they say on the box.

We can test this easily enough by standing in front of something with a background behind. Raise the camera with a 50mm to your eye and the perspective should look pretty much the same. IE. The main subject should look pretty much as it does by eye and so should the background. With wider and longer lenses things change.
Click to expand...
I think it's definitely more down to perspective, but also don't forget we have two eyes, if we just look through one then the FOV is probably closer to 50mm (y)

Edit: just beaten to it :lol:
 
Your natural perceptive vision is more like14-16mm. Because you see with your brain in a fancy composite mode

With that out of the way let's not worry about some fact of little practical consequence and just enjoy then lens when and where it may be applicable
 
Thanks everyone for your input - I learned from the discussion :clap:
 
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