Short tele better for landscapes ? [Archive]

Bertram2

09-11-2005, 17:56

Hi to all,
I just would like to collect some personal experience from those members who shoot landscape with RF and SLR:

Especially the RF community is tending towards the wider lenses, and as the very most of them I also used wides for landscapes mostly.
I did not even think about a longer lenses (50 to 90) like a reflex the decision was for wide, as if this would be the only way to do it. Maybe also a bit because I remembered my former SLR landscapes with long teles from 105 on,which mostly showed a quite exaggerated (compressioned) perspective.

Since a while I learn that a 50 often makes the better landscape and sometimes a 75 is still better than the 50, more and clearer details, stronger concentrated on the essential impression of the environment.

It just takes more time to din the crop which "shows les and says more" if you know what I mean. And I am beginning to practise it , let's see if I can get used to.

Wides i use only for places without enuff room to move backwards, so to say. Cityscapes, street, indoor.

Opinions and experiences ?

Thanks !
Bertram

FrankS

09-11-2005, 18:09

DougK

09-11-2005, 18:11

I like the normal lens myself. I've used wider and longer lenses but I just don't feel like I have the same control or vision as I do with the normal lens (be it in 35mm or medium format).

Bertram2

09-11-2005, 18:26

Hi Bertram,

I don't think that there's any way anyone can help you with this question. What focal length lens to use depends soley on the physical circumstances of each particular picture-taking situation and the effect that you want to acheive.

Hopefully others can be more helpful than this!

Frank,

actually I don't need any help here, I am just interested in learnin' if others are going the same way as I go at the time. It's only about opinions and experiences of other members. I am anyway (unfortunately) one of those who don't believe anything if it is not the result of their own experience ! :)
Best,
Bertram

back alley

09-11-2005, 19:12

aizan

09-11-2005, 20:06

i don't really do landscapes, but sam abell uses a 28/90 kit for all his work, and he takes great landscapes.

pvdhaar

09-11-2005, 22:26

I think it all boils down to where you take your pictures. If like me, you're living in a densely populated country (Netherlands), where there's always a high-rise building or a power cable on the skyline, then you'll learn to appreciate the isolating value of a short tele. Another problem is that most of my country is flatter than a pancake, so it's really difficult to do the near/far kind of pictures that benefit from a wide-angle. End result: it's 50/50 between the 25mm wide and a 50mm normal.

Duncan Ross

09-11-2005, 22:43

I seem to have the rather predictable habit of trying to get something in the foreground of my landscapes; it can he harder with a longer lens keeping everything in focus so I'll typically use one when my foreground object is large enough!

This is with a Jupiter-9 85mm lens;

StuartR

09-11-2005, 23:02

I think the same scene can often be successfully photographed with all different focal length lenses (of course, not all scenes), but it is really what you want to stress. If you are not sure, why not try them all? Here is my interpretation of a farmhouse on the horizon that I saw in Iceland:

21mm
http://www.stuartrichardson.com/horsefarm-ruins3.jpg

35mm
http://www.stuartrichardson.com/horsefarm-ruins4.jpg

135mm
http://www.stuartrichardson.com/horsefarm-ruins1.jpg

StuartR

09-11-2005, 23:12

But I would add that I think short teles can be very good for landscapes. They compress depth a bit, and they are usually very well corrected and give a less distorted image than superwides. As was mentioned earlier, they also can help you isolate areas of a scene if there are distracting elements around (though this was rarely a problem in Iceland...)

Here's one taken with the 75mm summilux

http://www.stuartrichardson.com/skaftafell-airport.jpg

The 100mm apo macro in the R system also does an excellent job for its incredible sharpness and color accuracy.

http://www.stuartrichardson.com/foggy-sun.jpg

Bertram2

09-12-2005, 01:47

I think the same scene can often be successfully photographed with all different focal length lenses (of course, not all scenes), but it is really what you want to stress.
21mm
http://www.stuartrichardson.com/horsefarm-ruins3.jpg

35mm
http://www.stuartrichardson.com/horsefarm-ruins4.jpg

135mm
http://www.stuartrichardson.com/horsefarm-ruins1.jpg

Stuart,

thanks for these examples ! They are visualizing perfectly my thoughts. In this case the short lens did the best job ind showing less but saying more, IMO at least.

Nonetheless wides can be the better choice for landscapes, i find them useful at the seaside when you got high skies with big 3d clouds in the 2 upper thirds of the pic to demonstrate the spacious environment. And of course there are photogs using wides exclusively but also perfectly controlled for landscapes, a matter of style.

As far as I am concerned I simply detected that I often took a wide for landscape without thinking, just as if landscapes are the natural environment for wides. And I observed that many other do so, and they all have the same probs, they don't get the foreground under control and the miniaturization of details let's the pic get meaningless..

Maybe that's all mostly a simple beginner's mis-take, but I think it is also the attempt to follow the "modern" wide style of report photos we all see daily in magazines and even in TV nowadays.

In general each focal length different from 50 must be well understood before one can use it perfectly for what it is good for, the often seen thoughtless abuse of wides proves it. The results lok por but not modern :(

Regards
Bertram

Brian Sweeney

09-12-2005, 01:54

I like all three shots, especially the last. Almost like a portrait of the house against a backdrop. When going to Skyline Drive in Virginia to catch Fall colors, I used to carry a range of lenses for the F2, 24, 43~86, and 200.

Stephan

09-12-2005, 03:31

I agree, the third is definitely the nicest to me. But di you shoot it with the building on the first third up too ? 'cos the sky looks great :)

J. Borger

09-12-2005, 03:33

Wide angles are often synonymous with landscape photography.
There can be said a lot about using other lenses however too.
In the examples above there is already stated that "what you want to emphasize" should determine the use of lens.

I would like to add a few

First of all you get different type of pictures:
Long lenses: you get more graphical type of landscape pictures ... more 2D
Wide angles: more depth ... 3D

But wide angle landscape pictures tend to fail miserably if you are unable to get a composition with a lot of foregroundinterest. And his depends a lot on the scenery you are shooting.

Are you able to walk into the scenes?? Or are you shooting from the roadside .. encountaring a lot of fences and other obstacles a lot of the time?
If the latter is the case ... i would recommend a longer lens.

I live in a European (low!!) hillside environment .. a lot of farmland with fences and roads. You simply can not walk where you would like too. There also is not a lot to put in the foreground except grass ....... in that type of environment i tend to use a 70-200 zoomlens on a DSLR 80% of the times.
If i take a fixed focal length lens i take a 85mm (or a 75mm on rangefinder) ...

In general i think unless you shoot: in the high mountains, coastal areas or inside forrests .... a longer lens is often a better choice.

My favourite landscape photographer is Charlie Waite .... www.charliewaite.com

I studied his work carefully in the past... at least 40% of his work is with a short-medium telelens.

The wide angle fixation comes largely from shooting American National Parks with Large Format cameras. It is a certain school of landscape photography ..... but the field is broader!!

You might also check 2 of my galleries with landscape pictures to get an idea.... most of them are with longer lenses:

http://www.shutterfreaks.com/gallery/album48
http://www.shutterfreaks.com/gallery/album47

Kind regards

Han

oftheherd

09-12-2005, 04:07

When I used to shoot landscapes, I preferred the normal lens for whatever format I used. But in Korea, I loved the 18mm for letting me get shots of temples I might not have gotten otherwise as I couldn't back up without falling off a mountain, or because I wanted more of an interior. I seldom used tele's. I think that may have been more my style than anything else. From lusting for telephotos, to getting them along with wides, and seeing what I got in the viewfinder, I soon gravitated more to normals and wides.

VinceC

09-12-2005, 05:06

I consider the 50, 85 and 135mm to be my "landscape" lenses -- I probably use the 135mm more than the other two because of its ability to isolate a slice of the scene.

I think of my wide angles -- 21, 28 and 35 -- as lenses that are more suited for interiors or confined spaces. Or for environmental portraits/still-lifes in which you show how the subject fits into the larger scene.

back alley

09-12-2005, 05:38

for the sake of those on dial up, please refrain from posting large pics inside a thread.
i think jorge set up the thumbnails with that in mind.

thanks guys,
joe

Kin Lau

09-12-2005, 06:07

I liked StuartR's #3 as well.

Numerous comments have also been made in various books that a long tele allows you to get to where it's physically impossible to, just as an ultra wide allows you to get the whole shot in.

MrRanger

09-12-2005, 06:39

[QUOTE=StuartR]
The 100mm apo macro in the R system also does an excellent job for its incredible sharpness and color accuracy.
[QUOTE]

What IS that in the upper right hand corner of the picture? a UFO?

Mike :D

richard_l

09-12-2005, 07:13

FrankS

09-12-2005, 07:22

I use a 50mm lens for 95% of my shots including landscapes. Misty Lake in my gallery was made with a J-8. Hope you find this info helpful.

VinceC

09-12-2005, 08:21

>>...long lenses do not compress depth. Standing at the same spot and aiming the camera in the same direction, take a picture with a 135mm and a 35mm. If you crop the 35mm shot so that it has the same field of view as the 135mm shot, they will look exactly the same as regards perspective/depth. If you don't believe me, try it and see for yourself.<<

That is correct. But a longer lens allows you to create a usable image from only the compressed area of your field of view instead of, say, cropping out 95 percent of the frame. The wider lens captures the compressed area as well as lots of other areas. The 135mm is particularly useful because it's in the realm where compression and flattening start to really be noticeable as an element of composition in the 35mm film format.

richard_l

09-12-2005, 08:30

Very well stated, Vince.

Kin Lau

09-12-2005, 09:30

Actually, long lenses do not compress depth. Standing at the same spot and aiming the camera in the same direction, take a picture with a 135mm and a 35mm. If you crop the 35mm shot so that it has the same field of view as the 135mm shot, they will look exactly the same as regards perspective/depth. If you don't believe me, try it and see for yourself.

True if you're cropping down to the centre, but that would be because you've cut out everything that's closer. Try cropping down to only 1 corner, and you'll see the effect much better... of course, not many of us would shoot that way. The whole point of using a wide angle often to include something of interest in the foreground, and a tele to isolate. I find wides hard to shoot with for this reason, finding that shot/scene with good foreground, middle and background to hold the interest, unless I do some creative cropping and end up with a panoramic image instead.

VinceC

09-12-2005, 10:31

In my experience, the human eye tends to isloate the subject it is looking at, even if much else is in the field of view. That's one reason why many people like the look of midrange telephotos.

Also, for an example of how a wide-angle lens behaves when cropped, check out point-and-shoot digital cameras. My Canon G1 uses a 7mm to 21mm zoom to accomplish the equivalent of 30mm to 100mm lenses, because the sensor is so much smaller than 35mm film. The 21mm lens is capable of very pleasing portraits, but it's very hard to isolate the subject from background because of extreme depth of field.

shutterflower

09-12-2005, 10:39

It depends on the nature of the scene. Sometimes, I certainly wish I had a long lens for my 4x5, because the beauty of the trees on the lake is diminished by an excessively wide shot. Sometimes, I am glad I shoot at 75mm (4x5) because I like its capabilities with city shots and with emphasizing foreground object, skies, etc.

SOmetimes, I will angle the lens down and get lots of foreground and leave the actual subject in the top third of the frame, or grab lots of sky and leave the subject at the bottom third, or fourth, etc. The use of the lens depends on what you want to accomplish. Shooting flowers, I like the telephoto / macro. But sometimes, the wide angle is nice because it can bring the world around the subject into the frame.

It depends.

richard_l

09-12-2005, 14:26

True if you're cropping down to the centre, but that would be because you've cut out everything that's closer.Yes, the flattening effect is due entirely to the distance from the camera to the subject. I just wanted to make the point that the flattening effect has nothing to do with the focal length of the lens (except indirectly, as it pertains to the field of view).

In the same way, a wide lens appears to exaggerate perspective (the big nose effect) only because we tend to move in closer to the subject with such a lens. A longer lens used at the same distance would show exactly the same exaggerated perspective. Perspective changes due to distance are mathematical phenomena resulting from projecting a 3-dimensional scene onto a 2-dimensional plane (the film plane).

As stated succinctly in the National Geographic Photography Field Guide, "In truth, perspective depends on the distance from the camera to the subject."

Richard

Bertram2

09-12-2005, 16:54

Many thanks for all contributions, I agree (almost) to all and and everything ! And I am very surprised that opposite to my expectation the wide-patrty has only 32% !! I had expected around 65 or so.
It confirms that my thoughts are going in the right direction now, but it confirms also that again I have found out a truth others have found out a long time ago !! :-)))
@Han: Enjoyed your careful description of what and how and I visited your galleries too and I was really impressed !! A bunch of perfect landscapes, perfect also the monitor presentation, a pleasure to watch these pics. !! Somehow the landscape looks pretty familiar to me, is that in Germany?

Best regards to all,
Bertram

peter_n

09-12-2005, 17:54

A long focus lens can be really useful if you have subject matter that contains unusual juxtapositions, for example a boat and buildings.

J. Borger

09-12-2005, 21:29

@han ......... Somehow the landscape looks pretty familiar to me, is that in Germany?

Bertram

Almost Bertram .... i live in the most southern part of the Netherlands close to the border. About 5 miles from Aachen.
For urban shooting i am mostly off to Cologne or Duesseldorf ....... 3/4 of an hour drive from my home.
THe landscapes were all taken on the dutch side of the border though. The dutch "hills" ..... squeezed between Eifel and Ardennes.

Kind Regards

Han

Poptart

09-13-2005, 00:33

Unless there's somebody naked in the frame I'm not usually too keen on "landscape" photography.

Bertram2

09-13-2005, 02:49

.
THe landscapes were all taken on the dutch side of the border though. The dutch "hills" ..... squeezed between Eifel and Ardennes.
Han
Ah, interesting, it's a shame but I really did not know that there are such hills up there. You caught it all very nicely, both albums have a constant top quality,
"all for the wall" :)
Best,
Bertram

Roman

09-13-2005, 03:03

Does anybody remember that 1980s pop son 'In the Dutch Mountains' by The Nits?

Roman

J. Borger

09-13-2005, 04:11

Bertram .... thanks for the compliment.

Roman ... yes .. i remember the song .... did not know the Nits were known as far as Austria.

To clarify on the geography..... within a circle of approx 30-40 km you can see ALL of our dutch "hills" . It really is a small area.
Highest pount is about 325 meters above sea level.
Besides these natural hills we have some other mountains, also only in this part of the country, ......... some relics from the past ....called coal mountains! For outsiders sometimes hard to distinguish nowadays .... ;)

Kind Regards

Han

PeterL

03-18-2006, 12:39

I just would like to collect some personal experience from those members who shoot landscape with RF and SLR
I'm afraid that I can't vote in your poll, because my lens selection depends on the situation and the landscape. I've used anything from 28mm to 200mm for landscape with success varying more with how I coped with the situation, than with the lens length. And those are resp. the widest & the longest lens I have :) I've never used my 200mm for anything but landscape and a few beach shots, taken in the week after I bought it, because I hated carrying that big a lens around :p

Peter.

scottmcl

03-18-2006, 14:14

I don't shoot a ton of landscape except for vacations and weekend trips. But I find the 135mm focal length just about perfect for "selective landscape." It just seems to match up with what my eyes see.

My 135 isn't an RF lens, it's a Nikkor 135/2.8 AIS which I shoot with an FM3.

Trius

03-18-2006, 16:32

Stuart demonstrated what I learned from my tutor a long time ago. A short tele is really good for mountains and similar environments, as it compresses space and emphasizes the size of the background elements. But in a crowded scene such as a forest or woods, or when showing wildflowers close in a meadow, a wide angle is wonderful.

yossarian

03-18-2006, 16:37

I live in Florida. Scenics can no longer be photographed here. Unless you are prepared to Photoshop out all the condos. But when I made trips to Arizona, too
many years ago, nearly everything was wide. It makes compositions more complicated, but it just felt right to me.

Fred

Nikon Bob

03-19-2006, 01:01

I use different focal lengths depending on where I am and what I want to do. I have to agree that short telephotos are good in the mountains.

Nikon Bob

FrankG

03-19-2006, 03:49

Generally, I use a "normal" for landscapes but often use a short tele as well---to zoom in a bit on the nice portion of the landscape. I guess about 60% with a normal, 40% with a tele. I never use a wide for this kind of shooting but sometimes I miss a good shot because the lack of one.

ddunn

10-18-2006, 08:31

In my experience, the human eye tends to isolate the subject it is looking at, even if much else is in the field of view. That's one reason why many people like the look of midrange telephotos.

The fovea of the eye provides the sharpest image. Many years ago I read somewhere that the 90mm lens on a 35 subtends about the same angle of view as the fovea. [In other words, the 90mm captures what you are seeing the sharpest.] That bit of knowledge got me hooked on the 90 as my "normal" lens, with the 50 as my wide.

OldNick

10-18-2006, 21:38

This was shot with a zoom at the equivalent of approx. 105mm. It was necessary to use the tele in order to avoid unwanted wires in the field of view. As it turned out, the FL was about optimum for this shot.

jaapv

10-20-2006, 03:21

Short tele's??? Who needs them?;) Leica M6TTL, Telyt-V 280. Kodachrome 64

http://www.rangefinderforum.com/photopost/data/4997/crop0045.jpg

jaapv

10-20-2006, 07:32

The fovea of the eye provides the sharpest image. Many years ago I read somewhere that the 90mm lens on a 35 subtends about the same angle of view as the fovea. [In other words, the 90mm captures what you are seeing the sharpest.] That bit of knowledge got me hooked on the 90 as my "normal" lens, with the 50 as my wide.

That must have been a long time ago... This is true only when you look at a 6x9 contact print. In the fifties when this was the norm this argument was indeed used to call 9 cm focal length the most "natural" . Not that the nowadays much larger print size makes a 90 mm focal length less nice, it only causes our "normal" feel with 35 mm lenses. :)

uhligfd

08-13-2007, 09:01

Something is completely wacky with jaapv's reply above:

"That must have been a long time ago... This is true only when you look at a 6x9 contact print. In the fifties when this was the norm this argument was indeed used to call 9 cm focal length the most "natural" . Not that the nowadays much larger print size makes a 90 mm focal length less nice, it only causes our "normal" feel with 35 mm lenses."

A 90 mm lens on a 6 by 9 cm film is slightly wide angle. The diagonal of that film size is 108 mm. The diagonal of our beloved 35mm film is around 43mm. So, in fact he refers to the "naturalness" of "normal lenses" such as the 45mm on 35mm film or to 105 mm lenses on 6 by 9 cameras.

It all depends on the angle of view, not the focal length. Enlargements etc (of the full frame) do not affect the angle of view. 90mm on 35mm film is not the "normal eye view" at all, but selects a small setion of our normal viewing field. Sorry. And for a 6 by 9 camera this selective tele angle of view would require a 226 mm lens or nearly so. (226 = 90/43 * 108)

photophorous

08-13-2007, 09:32

I just returned home from a backpacking trip in Colorado, where I took only a 35 and a 50 mm lens. I was seriously considering buying that C/V 21mm because I thought the wide open vistas, high in the mountains, would benefit from a wide angle lens. It turned out that the only time I wished for the wider lens was when I was confined by rocks or trees and wasn't able to back up enough to include everything I wanted to include. That was rare. After looking at my photos for the past week, I think the 50mm lens did best in the wide open areas. I probably would have used a 75mm more than the 21mm, but I used the 35 and 50 about the same amount.

One thing did occur to me, though. Most of my sharpest photos are from the 50mm lens. With that focal length, I was less likely to have near and far subjects in the same shot. That meant I could focus at infinity, and use f8 more often than with the 35mm lens.

Paul

payasam

08-13-2007, 09:58

The slight foreshortening that a medium long lens gives is often an advantage. More obvious is the fact that it makes it possible to isolate certain features.

wolves3012

08-13-2007, 11:22

i don't really do landscape stuff anymore but when i did i quickly discovered, for me, that a longer lens actually gave mw more of what i was looking at when i was looking at the landscape.

it helps to isolate. a wide lens includes to much as often you can't get in close enough for a landscape pic.
a wide view dilutes the majesty of a grand scene into tiny details on the film and subsequent print.

go a little longer...

joe
I'll second that. Landscapes are amongst my favourite shots and when I first tried them I applied the logic of "go wide, get the full vista that you'd get sweeping your eye across a scene". Wrong! The results were very disappointing because the majestic mountain is reduced to a pimple on the horizon and only the foreground has anything discernable. I soon learnt that a 50-plus is usually the only way to go. Pick out a dominant feature and use a tele to bring it in. Isolate the most interesting part of a sweeping vista because you'll never get the impression you had when you were there anyway. There are times when a wide-angle is justified but my experience suggests it's not often.

My two-pence worth anyway but it's exactly that, an opinion. Judge as you see fit when the scene is before you.