Comments on: The Forgotten Lens: 50mm

By: JW

JW — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 20:14:11 +0000

There is one thing to add to this article. A 50mm lens isn’t a 50mm lens on digital SLRs. What I mean is, due to the smaller imaging sensors in most digital SLRs, a 50mm lens on a digital SLR gives the field of view approximately equivalent to an 80mm lens on a film SLR. A 35mm lens on a digital SLR gives approximately the same field of view as a 50mm on a film SLR. Unless of course you have one of the full-field sensor digital SLRs, available in a couple Canon models and one of the new Nikon models too, I believe.

By: Ransom

Ransom — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 15:13:22 +0000

Great post — and good point! Ever since I switched from my old pentax SLR (w/ 50mm lens more or less permanently attached) to digital, my photos have way less personality.

By: TikiPundit

TikiPundit — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 14:24:24 +0000

Higgins, Dad was right. Sometimes it sucks how much you realize Dad was right as you get older.

Long time ago, I took a photography class at an overseas base; the teacher was an old salty Navy Chief Warrant Officer — a photojournalist for the Navy with about 30 years under his belt. He was tolerant of our explorations with extreme lenses (someone bought a fisheye lens and turned in assignments with it), and at the end of the course, after we’d badgered him endlessly to “put up or shut up” by showing us his portfolio, he did. He gave that he worked almost exclusively at 50mm (though he told us that 57mm is closest to the human eye), and his work was insanely great. 50mm made him look at depth-of-field, composition, shutter speed and so on, and by limiting himself, he became quite a disciplined photographer.

By: Eric

Eric — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 02:56:37 +0000

I have a hand-me-down (my mother to my aunt to my uncle to me) Minolta SRT200 (almost identical to your 201, minus the hot shoe and self-timer). Despite the fact that I have a digital SLR that I paid way too much for, I take 90% of my pictures with the 30-year-old minolta, almost always with the 50mm lens it shipped with in the 70s. The pictures it takes are way too good to switch to the digital.

Also, I’m pretty sure I could throw the thing against a brick wall and it would come out of it unscathed.

By: Bassman

Bassman — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 14:25:47 +0000

I recently purchased a very good digital in my long desire to learn about photography and capture the images my eyes were constantly composing.
I really am ignorant at this point and barely grasped alot of the info in the article, but the images were compelling and enough to sell me on the idea.
I still can’t understand how such a lens could fall out of favor. I mean, I know that with digital pianos (which possess the obvious advantage of not being the size or price of real ones)the goal has always been to replicate the sound of a real piano. Now, they even replicate the feel of a real piano with hammer action and weighted keys. And this applies to consumer models as well as pro.
Maybe it’s just that every schmuck on the block will buy a camera whereas few will buy a musical instrument.
I feel like I’ve been cheated.

By: Dave

Dave — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 03:31:12 +0000

I bought a Canon T70 in 1984; it came with a 1.4 50mm lens, and that was the only lens I used until I bought a 75-200 zoom lens for it. I found that the 75-200 worked well for some situations but I found myself going back to the 50 more and more.

I miss my SLR, but I grew tired of paying for film & processing, then scanning the photos. A digital SLR doesn’t fit my budget now (nor will it until I get a couple of kids through college), so I’ll bide my time until it does.

Am I the only one who remembers promises of “digital film” to retrofit 35mm cameras to take digital photos? That would be such a sweet alternative, and keep a lot of very serviceable old camera gear in use. Bother our disposable society.

By: Higgins

Higgins — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 23:17:48 +0000

Johnny Cat – huh, thanks for pointing that out. It looks like Mr. Voth’s site is using a ‘blendTrans’ Javascript function upon loading his page. My browser doesn’t support it, so I didn’t notice anything unusual. :)

By: Johnny Cat

Johnny Cat — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 23:10:23 +0000

Wow, man! The link to the rest of the article fades in like a dissolve! Howzzat?

By: Tom

Tom — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 19:24:14 +0000

When I was a starving college student, I scrimped and saved to buy a gray market (direct from Hong Kong) Canon SLR, but I got it with the f1.4 normal lens. Zoom lenses of the early 70s left much to be desired, and the normal lens let us shoot in “available dark” as well as explore the wonders of composition and selective focus. Foot zooms worked!

I thought Canon had actually marketed an f0.95 normal lens, but it was probably more for marketing wars than for using.

By: monkeypox

monkeypox — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 19:14:33 +0000

yeah, I got a hand-me-down pentax from my dad along with all his old lenses, including a really sharp 50mm 1.8, which I’ve been using on my pentax digital slr. amazing how well the old glass holds up, and it’s miles above the kit 18-55mm zoom lens.