Photography News May 3, 2021
Quote: “Color photography is vulgar” – Walker Evans
Articles:
Landscapes – Make It Successful with The 4-Step Simplicity Framework – 15m
Fine Art Seascape Photography at Midnight – 20m Gary Gough
Olympus Global Image of the Year Life Science Light Microscopy Awards 2020
Drastically Reduce Noise in Milky Way Foregrounds Using Photoshop
Thought for the day: Does a 2mm difference in focal length matter?
The ‘standard’ prime lens is often considered to be 50mm. If measured it may be 50mm, or a bit less, or a bit longer that the advertised focal length. And some vendors have instead of 50mm, a 55mm or similar lens as the standard. In this case the field of view changes about 3.5 degrees between 50 and 55mm. From 50 to 52mm the change would be about a degrees.
In a similar but more extreme example a 2mm change in a 200mm lens or longer is insignificant (much less than one degree).
But with short wide angle lenses 2mm may be the wrong way to measure these lenses. Instead consider the actual angle of the field of view.
Going from 20mm to 18mm results in 6 degrees more field of view. And you can now photograph the whole rainbow.
From 16mm to 14mm has a change of 7 degrees in the field of view.
And from 12mm to 10mm there is a 10 degree change in the field of view.
For wide angle lenses a change of 2mm in formal length has a much larger impact than with normal or telephoto lenses. For normal lenses this is about the same change as 50mm to 70mm.
Let’s put together a set of wide angle lenses a different way. Full frame camera, horizontal angle:
122d – 10mm
113d – 12mm
104d – 14mm – commonly used for photographing the Milky Way
90d – 18mm – covers all of a full rainbow near sunset or sunrise
74d – 24mm
Does this field of view spacing seem reasonable? 2mm can matter.
Background
Milky Way season is coming up. Many people like to use 14mm lenses to photograph the Southern Summer Milky Way. The above may help you decide if your current lenses are suitable or if you want to try something new.
Background Data
https://www.nikonians.org/reviews/fov-tables
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angle_of_view
Artist of the Week/Portfolio: Keron Psillas
Website Interview
The content of this blog post done in collaboration with one of our members, Greg Edwards: http://gregoryedwards.slickpic.site
