Could you please let me know the difference between 35mm, 50mm and 70mm lens in photography, at the earliest. Regards R. Rautella

-- Rajinder Rautella (tribuneadvt@yahoo.com), May 10, 2002

Answers

That is an odd question, or you must be an absolute beginner.

Basically, the angle of view of each is different so from the same point if you look throught the lens you see less of the whole image in front of you seen by the naked eye.

Basically 35mm to 50mm are used for street fotography while 70-135 are used for portraits. But that is a very general rule as some photographers also shoot faces with 50 or even 35mm. You have to get very close to the subject, which causes differences in the perspective. Try with the above lensen to make a picture from someone where he streches his hand forward. Make the pictures all the same, e.g. hand in left bottom corner, head in the right top (so for the 70mm you have to be further away from the subject) and you see what I mean. In the 35mm picture the hand will become large, while with the 70 the proportions seem to be more right.

The only way to get feeling for it is to use them

-- ReinierV (rvlaam@xs4all.nl), May 10, 2002.

Check this out...
http://greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=008GzO

-- Fred Sun (redsky3@yahoo.com), May 10, 2002.

Just for a visual comparison, I posted this last month. I shot with a 35mm and 50mm lens at the same scene. Rather than stand in one spot, I moved my position to keep the foreground (a fence) the same relative size for each shot. The effect was that the backgrounds changed enough to make a different "feel" for the same subject. This is with lenses that are only 15mm apart, and if the 70mm was included, the background would be a bit more imposing yet. From the archives, 35mm and 50mm compared

-- Al Smith (smith58@msn.com), May 10, 2002.

Dude, check out photo.net and under equipment. There should be enough excellent information about beginning photography to keep you occupied and in the right direction for a while.

-- James (snodoggydogg@hotmail.com), May 10, 2002.

Take a paper card, then make a 24X36mm hole, then put your eye (left or rigth) at 35, 50 and 75 mm, you can do this at other diferents focal lengths, what you can see at each distance is the diference, hope it helps.

Also can use the card to practice photography without wasting film.

-- r watson (al1231234@hotmail.com), May 10, 2002.