Another Minor Epiphany (Page 3): If you stick to a position then perspective doesn't change. If you move from that, well it's easy to get confused :)...

blackest Loc: Ireland

Peterff wrote:

You may be holding the minority view here. Not bothering to respond may be a good decision.

If you stick to a position then perspective doesn't change. If you move from that, well it's easy to get confused :)

Peterff Loc: O'er The Hills and Far Away, in Themyscira.

blackest wrote:

If you stick to a position then perspective doesn't change. If you move from that, well it's easy to get confused :)

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

blackest wrote:

If you stick to a position then perspective doesn't change. If you move from that, well it's easy to get confused :)

Or just plain stuck . . .

How can you believe a word he says when contradicts the very evidence he presents? You can't make this stuff up . . . SMH . . .

Rich1939 Loc: Pike County Penna.

Bob Locher wrote:

I live on an acreage 8 miles from a town of about 25,000 people and a few miles from a whole lot of wilderness. I love the physical beauty of the area and am primarily interested in landscape photography.

I am interested in lenses. I watch for new releases, I view YouTube reviews and read reviews on many sites. What I have noticed is that the bulk of the offerings there days tend in one direction - high speed wide angle lenses, be they fixed primes or zooms. These are of little interest to me. I have several slower wide primes, and thought they are excellent optically I rarely use them. On my APS-C Sony A6000, I mostly shoot with lenses 60 mm and longer, with also some work using a 30 mm Sigma.

So am I out of step with the rest of the world? The answer is obvious - of course I am. But then I have been most of my life on most things, so I am used to that.

Anyhow, I finally figured out where I am out of synch. And here is my epiphany: Most of the current photography world is geared towards city living and the urban experience. So. Photographers use wide angle lenses to achieve a feeling of room in a crowded environment. "Bokeh" - that term derived from the Japanese that means "$500 more" - is valuable because it tends to isolate a subject from the people around the subject. And to get decent bokeh from a wide angle lens in daylight you need large apertures. Again, shooting in low light levels is primarily an urban thing. If it is dark, there is some semblance of visual privacy from the hordes around the subject. Privacy, space, peace - these are the attributes so missing from the urban scene.

Longer lenses are rarely used; they compress too many people and too much background in an urban setting. Urban photographers are trying to find sanity in the urban rat-race, and of course that ever elusive element: "Cool".

My observation is that photographers who live away from the urban sprawl tend to use longer lenses, since the above imperatives do not rule. Their pictures reflect a slower and more peaceful life; scenics, sunsets, wildlife.

What I find personally unfortunate is that the lens makers are all scrambling to support the urban photographer with high speed wide angle ex pensive glass. I would love to see some really good longer lenses - f3.5 or higher, but super sharp and not weighing very much. And not costing more than a transoceanic business class ticket.

My hope is that if someone at a lens maker would become aware of this dichotomy, they might consider offering a line along the lines I wish for.

Obviously I have tried to reduce a complex subject in a simplistic argument, but I do believe I have hit on something that is real.

I hope any comments to this topic will remain civil and constructive.

Cheers

Bob Locher

I live on an acreage 8 miles from a town of about ... (show quote)

I believe I understand the points you are making and for the most part agree with you (I live ~25 miles from a town

). Your thesis started with this statement, “Most of the current photography world is geared towards city living and the urban experience.” I mostly agree with that but would exchange “manufacturing world” for “photography world”. That is as it should be since, around the world the majority of the population lives in cities. You gear your product to your market.
Where we have chosen to live comes with trade-offs and we must compromise somewhat. The area where I live is densely wooded and I have yet to need any more than a 300mm and that so seldom I shouldn’t have mentioned it. When I do get an open shot, taking multiple shots for stitching with a 50mm or 85mm has made my wide angle lenses paper weights. That’s what works for me, not knowing your environ I only posted my situation to illustrate where I’ve adapted. However, a super sharp, moderately priced f/3.5 or f/4 long lens might be a pipe dream.
As I was typing this I received a notice that Sigma has announced a 60-600. Maybe there’s some sweet smelling smoke there

nikon123 Loc: Toronto, Canada

As Thomas Edison said, ‘I’ve never failed; I just found 10,000 ways that don’t work’.
Photography is not a science; it’s an art. There’s lots of science in the creation of the cameras, but seriously who cares. I’m on this site to continue learning. Don’t get personal; just read, analyze, add your view and experiment.
If we cannot get along on a photography blog, how in G-d’s name will we survive and flourish. For most of us, photographybis s hobby with a little commercial stuff thrown in.
Thank you to those who read to the end of this time.

Rich1939 Loc: Pike County Penna.

blackest wrote:

If you stick to a position then perspective doesn't change. If you move from that, well it's easy to get confused :)

AndyH Loc: Massachusetts and New Hampshire

I just had another thought on Bob Locher's original question. With the increasing resolution and IQ of digital media, it has become increasingly easy to attain additional reach through cropping and enlarging. As we know, the longer the glass (especially if it zooms), the bigger and heavier it will get, and consequently the more expensive. I see a lot of long shots on UHH, of wildlife, birds, etc., but I also hear a lot of references to lenses of about 300mm as being favorites. Could it be that there just isn't as much demand for those very long, very heavy, very expensive dinosaurs? Unless you're getting paid to shoot outdoor sports at night under the lights, it's just not worth the money, when you can crop and enlarge with pretty darn good IQ these days.

Back in film days I got along with a 200mm f3.5 as my longest and fastest most of the time, and I've got the DX equivalent right now. It's the Sigma 18-300 zoom for DX, which isn't that fast, but is fairly light. I wonder whether there's a relatively fast, lightweight 400 mm I could add?

I think the practical issues are more important in this case than the philosophical.

Andy

CamB Loc: Juneau, Alaska

I love your translation of Bokeh from Japanese. I never think of Bokeh with a wide angle lens. You would have to stick the camera right into the subject to hope to acheive any of that. I love shooting 'urban' with a long lens. Trying to make a city feel like there is space doesn't cross my mind. Of course, I like shooting most things with a long lens. I like the feeling that looks imparts on my photos. I hardly ever use my 12-24 lens anymore, city or country.
...Cam

Bob Locher wrote:

I live on an acreage 8 miles from a town of about 25,000 people and a few miles from a whole lot of wilderness. I love the physical beauty of the area and am primarily interested in landscape photography.

I am interested in lenses. I watch for new releases, I view YouTube reviews and read reviews on many sites. What I have noticed is that the bulk of the offerings there days tend in one direction - high speed wide angle lenses, be they fixed primes or zooms. These are of little interest to me. I have several slower wide primes, and thought they are excellent optically I rarely use them. On my APS-C Sony A6000, I mostly shoot with lenses 60 mm and longer, with also some work using a 30 mm Sigma.

So am I out of step with the rest of the world? The answer is obvious - of course I am. But then I have been most of my life on most things, so I am used to that.

Anyhow, I finally figured out where I am out of synch. And here is my epiphany: Most of the current photography world is geared towards city living and the urban experience. So. Photographers use wide angle lenses to achieve a feeling of room in a crowded environment. "Bokeh" - that term derived from the Japanese that means "$500 more" - is valuable because it tends to isolate a subject from the people around the subject. And to get decent bokeh from a wide angle lens in daylight you need large apertures. Again, shooting in low light levels is primarily an urban thing. If it is dark, there is some semblance of visual privacy from the hordes around the subject. Privacy, space, peace - these are the attributes so missing from the urban scene.

Longer lenses are rarely used; they compress too many people and too much background in an urban setting. Urban photographers are trying to find sanity in the urban rat-race, and of course that ever elusive element: "Cool".

My observation is that photographers who live away from the urban sprawl tend to use longer lenses, since the above imperatives do not rule. Their pictures reflect a slower and more peaceful life; scenics, sunsets, wildlife.

What I find personally unfortunate is that the lens makers are all scrambling to support the urban photographer with high speed wide angle ex pensive glass. I would love to see some really good longer lenses - f3.5 or higher, but super sharp and not weighing very much. And not costing more than a transoceanic business class ticket.

My hope is that if someone at a lens maker would become aware of this dichotomy, they might consider offering a line along the lines I wish for.

Obviously I have tried to reduce a complex subject in a simplistic argument, but I do believe I have hit on something that is real.

I hope any comments to this topic will remain civil and constructive.

Cheers

Bob Locher

I live on an acreage 8 miles from a town of about ... (show quote)

no nameJoe

Dream on the mantra for manufacturers is the bottom line

BebuLamar

Bob Locher wrote:

I live on an acreage 8 miles from a town of about 25,000 people and a few miles from a whole lot of wilderness. I love the physical beauty of the area and am primarily interested in landscape photography.

I am interested in lenses. I watch for new releases, I view YouTube reviews and read reviews on many sites. What I have noticed is that the bulk of the offerings there days tend in one direction - high speed wide angle lenses, be they fixed primes or zooms. These are of little interest to me. I have several slower wide primes, and thought they are excellent optically I rarely use them. On my APS-C Sony A6000, I mostly shoot with lenses 60 mm and longer, with also some work using a 30 mm Sigma.

So am I out of step with the rest of the world? The answer is obvious - of course I am. But then I have been most of my life on most things, so I am used to that.

Anyhow, I finally figured out where I am out of synch. And here is my epiphany: Most of the current photography world is geared towards city living and the urban experience. So. Photographers use wide angle lenses to achieve a feeling of room in a crowded environment. "Bokeh" - that term derived from the Japanese that means "$500 more" - is valuable because it tends to isolate a subject from the people around the subject. And to get decent bokeh from a wide angle lens in daylight you need large apertures. Again, shooting in low light levels is primarily an urban thing. If it is dark, there is some semblance of visual privacy from the hordes around the subject. Privacy, space, peace - these are the attributes so missing from the urban scene.

Longer lenses are rarely used; they compress too many people and too much background in an urban setting. Urban photographers are trying to find sanity in the urban rat-race, and of course that ever elusive element: "Cool".

My observation is that photographers who live away from the urban sprawl tend to use longer lenses, since the above imperatives do not rule. Their pictures reflect a slower and more peaceful life; scenics, sunsets, wildlife.

What I find personally unfortunate is that the lens makers are all scrambling to support the urban photographer with high speed wide angle ex pensive glass. I would love to see some really good longer lenses - f3.5 or higher, but super sharp and not weighing very much. And not costing more than a transoceanic business class ticket.

My hope is that if someone at a lens maker would become aware of this dichotomy, they might consider offering a line along the lines I wish for.

Obviously I have tried to reduce a complex subject in a simplistic argument, but I do believe I have hit on something that is real.

I hope any comments to this topic will remain civil and constructive.

Cheers

Bob Locher

I live on an acreage 8 miles from a town of about ... (show quote)

You can get a 1000mm f/11 mirror lens and mount it on your camera.

speters Loc: Grangeville/Idaho

Bob Locher wrote:

I live on an acreage 8 miles from a town of about 25,000 people and a few miles from a whole lot of wilderness. I love the physical beauty of the area and am primarily interested in landscape photography.

I am interested in lenses. I watch for new releases, I view YouTube reviews and read reviews on many sites. What I have noticed is that the bulk of the offerings there days tend in one direction - high speed wide angle lenses, be they fixed primes or zooms. These are of little interest to me. I have several slower wide primes, and thought they are excellent optically I rarely use them. On my APS-C Sony A6000, I mostly shoot with lenses 60 mm and longer, with also some work using a 30 mm Sigma.

So am I out of step with the rest of the world? The answer is obvious - of course I am. But then I have been most of my life on most things, so I am used to that.

Anyhow, I finally figured out where I am out of synch. And here is my epiphany: Most of the current photography world is geared towards city living and the urban experience. So. Photographers use wide angle lenses to achieve a feeling of room in a crowded environment. "Bokeh" - that term derived from the Japanese that means "$500 more" - is valuable because it tends to isolate a subject from the people around the subject. And to get decent bokeh from a wide angle lens in daylight you need large apertures. Again, shooting in low light levels is primarily an urban thing. If it is dark, there is some semblance of visual privacy from the hordes around the subject. Privacy, space, peace - these are the attributes so missing from the urban scene.

Longer lenses are rarely used; they compress too many people and too much background in an urban setting. Urban photographers are trying to find sanity in the urban rat-race, and of course that ever elusive element: "Cool".

My observation is that photographers who live away from the urban sprawl tend to use longer lenses, since the above imperatives do not rule. Their pictures reflect a slower and more peaceful life; scenics, sunsets, wildlife.

What I find personally unfortunate is that the lens makers are all scrambling to support the urban photographer with high speed wide angle ex pensive glass. I would love to see some really good longer lenses - f3.5 or higher, but super sharp and not weighing very much. And not costing more than a transoceanic business class ticket.

My hope is that if someone at a lens maker would become aware of this dichotomy, they might consider offering a line along the lines I wish for.

Obviously I have tried to reduce a complex subject in a simplistic argument, but I do believe I have hit on something that is real.

I hope any comments to this topic will remain civil and constructive.

Cheers

Bob Locher

I live on an acreage 8 miles from a town of about ... (show quote)

I think you figured out wrongly. What makes you think that most of today photography is geared towards city living? I think nothing could be further from the truth. Landscape photography is as big as it has always been, Portrait photography has made great strides and is as popular as ever! Todays photography is wonderfully multi faced. Lens technology too has come a long way and even lenses on the cheap are good performers and the amount available is incredible! And by the way, wide angle lenses are the preferred lenses for landscape shooting for the majority of people, but it is a thing of preference of course!

artBob Loc: Near Chicago

Guess who is right in this discussion about the subjects of contemporary photography? No one. As with the doomed discussion on perspective distortion in lenses, there have been a lot of opinions and judgments, but little fact-checking. Looking at a google search for winners in photography competitions, I found (to my surprise, because I agreed with Bob Locher from my experience viewing photography around Chicago) that NEITHER landscape nor city photography was very popular, at least with the judges: https://www.google.com/search?biw=1024&bih=729&tbm=isch&q=photography+contest+winners&backchip=g_3:photography+competition&chips=q:photography+contest+winners&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwik6PirlsXdAhVJ4YMKHSEsAY4Q3VYINSgA

Rich1939 Loc: Pike County Penna.

[quote=artBob]
I knew it was too good to be true

Bipod

Bob Locher wrote:

I live on an acreage 8 miles from a town of about 25,000 people and a few miles from a whole lot of wilderness. I love the physical beauty of the area and am primarily interested in landscape photography.

I am interested in lenses. I watch for new releases, I view YouTube reviews and read reviews on many sites. What I have noticed is that the bulk of the offerings there days tend in one direction - high speed wide angle lenses, be they fixed primes or zooms. These are of little interest to me. I have several slower wide primes, and thought they are excellent optically I rarely use them. On my APS-C Sony A6000, I mostly shoot with lenses 60 mm and longer, with also some work using a 30 mm Sigma.

So am I out of step with the rest of the world? The answer is obvious - of course I am. But then I have been most of my life on most things, so I am used to that.

Anyhow, I finally figured out where I am out of synch. And here is my epiphany: Most of the current photography world is geared towards city living and the urban experience. So. Photographers use wide angle lenses to achieve a feeling of room in a crowded environment. "Bokeh" - that term derived from the Japanese that means "$500 more" - is valuable because it tends to isolate a subject from the people around the subject. And to get decent bokeh from a wide angle lens in daylight you need large apertures. Again, shooting in low light levels is primarily an urban thing. If it is dark, there is some semblance of visual privacy from the hordes around the subject. Privacy, space, peace - these are the attributes so missing from the urban scene.

Longer lenses are rarely used; they compress too many people and too much background in an urban setting. Urban photographers are trying to find sanity in the urban rat-race, and of course that ever elusive element: "Cool".

My observation is that photographers who live away from the urban sprawl tend to use longer lenses, since the above imperatives do not rule. Their pictures reflect a slower and more peaceful life; scenics, sunsets, wildlife.

What I find personally unfortunate is that the lens makers are all scrambling to support the urban photographer with high speed wide angle ex pensive glass. I would love to see some really good longer lenses - f3.5 or higher, but super sharp and not weighing very much. And not costing more than a transoceanic business class ticket.

My hope is that if someone at a lens maker would become aware of this dichotomy, they might consider offering a line along the lines I wish for.

Obviously I have tried to reduce a complex subject in a simplistic argument, but I do believe I have hit on something that is real.

I hope any comments to this topic will remain civil and constructive.

Cheers

Bob Locher

I live on an acreage 8 miles from a town of about ... (show quote)

Whatever works for you is good. But in general:

The normal lens (e..g, f=50 mm) approximates the perspective of the human eye: it produces a "normal" amount
of foreshortening. By contrast, images made with wide-angle or tele lenses look "photographic". A fish-eye lens
and a long tele lens are the two extremes: like nothing any human being ever saw except though a lens.

Obivously, there's some middle ground: about 45 mm to about 60 mm is not noticably different than 50 mm,
but does change the field of view a bit. (But generally not enough to make a big difference or to worth bothering
about unless you're using a zoom.)

There are subjects where one automatically knows which lens to reach for (buildings, portraits, etc.) but landscape
usually offers a choice. So why not experiment?

For landscape subjects, 50 mm is a good lens to start with, to see how it looks. If you need wider, go wider,
if you need longer, go longer--but no winder or longer than necessary. And that first, normal lens view is an
important reference point. It is my impression that landscape photography was better when photographers
typically carried and used 50 mm equivalent prime lenses as "standard equipment" -- too many focal length
options is as bad as too few!

The current (Sept. 2018) issue of *Outdoor Photographer* magazine contains an article "The Normal Lens:
Advantages for Landscapes" that delves into this issue.

dyximan

Bob Locher wrote:

I live on an acreage 8 miles from a town of about 25,000 people and a few miles from a whole lot of wilderness. I love the physical beauty of the area and am primarily interested in landscape photography.

I am interested in lenses. I watch for new releases, I view YouTube reviews and read reviews on many sites. What I have noticed is that the bulk of the offerings there days tend in one direction - high speed wide angle lenses, be they fixed primes or zooms. These are of little interest to me. I have several slower wide primes, and thought they are excellent optically I rarely use them. On my APS-C Sony A6000, I mostly shoot with lenses 60 mm and longer, with also some work using a 30 mm Sigma.

So am I out of step with the rest of the world? The answer is obvious - of course I am. But then I have been most of my life on most things, so I am used to that.

Anyhow, I finally figured out where I am out of synch. And here is my epiphany: Most of the current photography world is geared towards city living and the urban experience. So. Photographers use wide angle lenses to achieve a feeling of room in a crowded environment. "Bokeh" - that term derived from the Japanese that means "$500 more" - is valuable because it tends to isolate a subject from the people around the subject. And to get decent bokeh from a wide angle lens in daylight you need large apertures. Again, shooting in low light levels is primarily an urban thing. If it is dark, there is some semblance of visual privacy from the hordes around the subject. Privacy, space, peace - these are the attributes so missing from the urban scene.

Longer lenses are rarely used; they compress too many people and too much background in an urban setting. Urban photographers are trying to find sanity in the urban rat-race, and of course that ever elusive element: "Cool".

My observation is that photographers who live away from the urban sprawl tend to use longer lenses, since the above imperatives do not rule. Their pictures reflect a slower and more peaceful life; scenics, sunsets, wildlife.

What I find personally unfortunate is that the lens makers are all scrambling to support the urban photographer with high speed wide angle ex pensive glass. I would love to see some really good longer lenses - f3.5 or higher, but super sharp and not weighing very much. And not costing more than a transoceanic business class ticket.

My hope is that if someone at a lens maker would become aware of this dichotomy, they might consider offering a line along the lines I wish for.

Obviously I have tried to reduce a complex subject in a simplistic argument, but I do believe I have hit on something that is real.

I hope any comments to this topic will remain civil and constructive.

Cheers

Bob Locher

I live on an acreage 8 miles from a town of about ... (show quote)

Best of luck with the civil and or constructive LOL