Sunday 5 September 2010

Exercise 1 - Focal Length and Angle of View

I walked down to the local river for this exercise and decided to use the nearest bridge as a measure of  my 'standard view'.


I took my first picture with the 50mm lens:




Despite the fact that 50mm on a full frame sensor is supposed to be roughly equivalent to what you see through your own eyes, this wasn't quite the case with me, not sure why, could maybe be that I am short sighted in my left eye, but when I looked through the view finder with my right eye, the image seemed further away than through my left eye.


Wide Angle Photos


I then swapped to my 17-40mm lens (without moving my feet) and took the following two pictures.


Here the Bridge is much further away, this is the lens at its widest focal length- 17mm

Here the Bridge is a similar distance to the 50mm as this is the lens at it's narrowest focal length - 40mm

Telephoto Photos


Next I swapped to the 70-200mm telephoto lens to take the scene at a magnified focal length.


I took three images in total.


The first is taken at 70mm which is the widest focal length that this lens can manage and this is the focal length that matched what I could see through my left eye the most


Then I shot the scene again at 100mm


Finally I shot the scene at 200mm

It was interesting that 70mm was the closest focal length to my own eye sight but not too shocking as most portrait lenses that are sold are either 50mm or 85mm so at least my findings were within this range.

I returned to the same spot with the print outs of the images at 17mm, 70mm and 200mm and followed the instructions in the folder, holding them at arms length and seeing how the landscape matched the photo at which arm lengths.
I have to admit I didn't take much away from the final part of the exercise.

I do feel like I have a pretty good grasp of which focal lengths to use in which situations and I am reasonably happy with the images above. I didn't may much attention to composition and I did very little post production, apart from auto tone in Lightroom and then creating JPEGs with the exposure value and focal length.

1 comment:

  1. Looking back at these pictures, choosing a green bridge surrounded by grass and trees may not have been the best choice of subject

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