Focal length preferences?

Hi all - a bit of a funny question to ask, but does anyone find themselves gravitating to a particular focal length for a majority of their photography?

I don't mean those that like portraiture always sticking to lenses of 85-100 simply because they have a flat field or those that like landscapes to stick within the 17-35 range for the angle of view - I've recently found myself just becoming used to a single length and preferring it for 80% of shots.

I'm finding that I can generally do landscape, portraiture or sports with my 135 and that length doesn't seem to make me crave something shorter or longer.

I do find that I'm not as happy when I'm toting a 50 - but I have a similar experience with my 24 as the 135, I just get on with it, I can see elements in the frame easier and get a nicer composition as a result...

make sense to anyone?!

I don't really know what else to try in the mid range if I don't like the 50 field of view. a part of me says 85, another says 35.

Sometimes I say to myself if I sold the 50 I'd have nothing in the middle of the 24 and 135, then I kick myself and realise I'm not overly keen on the length!

85mm

If I could only have a single focal length, it would be 50mm. But the 50 and 135 combo was one of my favorites.

For me its about controlling perspective. For portraits most subjects benefit from a longer focal length because you dont get perspective distortion. For landscape you can better give the sense of depth by using a wider lens that gives more perspective distortion. So I tend to shoot the 135L for portraits, the 24-105 or 17-40 for wider work. At one point I had 3 fifties and I rarely ever used any of them.

I use a 50mm for the majority of shots, occasionally use a 35mm.

I'm all over the map from wide to long with focal length preference being determined on what I shoot. I have be on shoots where I only used the 17-40 on a FF body and the next day on another where I used the 100-400 on a 7D. I can't say I have a preference at any one FL.

I prefer wide angle, on medium format its 55mm and on 135/FF its 35mm. I have standard lenses for both formats for when that's the right lens, which for me personally is only occasionally.

UKmitch86 wrote in post #16006016
Hi all - a bit of a funny question to ask, but does anyone find themselves gravitating to a particular focal length for a majority of their photography?

I don't mean those that like portraiture always sticking to lenses of 85-100 simply because they have a flat field or those that like landscapes to stick within the 17-35 range for the angle of view - I've recently found myself just becoming used to a single length and preferring it for 80% of shots.

I'm finding that I can generally do landscape, portraiture or sports with my 135 and that length doesn't seem to make me crave something shorter or longer.

I do find that I'm not as happy when I'm toting a 50 - but I have a similar experience with my 24 as the 135, I just get on with it, I can see elements in the frame easier and get a nicer composition as a result...

make sense to anyone?!

I don't really know what else to try in the mid range if I don't like the 50 field of view. a part of me says 85, another says 35.

Sometimes I say to myself if I sold the 50 I'd have nothing in the middle of the 24 and 135, then I kick myself and realise I'm not overly keen on the length!

The question is unanswerable. because circumstances and framing differ from event to event and location.

Two motorcycle pictures from the same Canon 60D.

The question is very much answerable. The OP isn't asking what the single best focal length is. They are asking if anyone just gravitates towards a particular focal length.

I like normal the most. If I were to have only ONE lens it would be a longer 50 - like helios 44. It's IMHO the most versatile for "art" photography.

If I shot more people, I could live with one 35mm

The rest is optional and just fun to play with.

I've found that I shoot almost all of my shots somewhere between 18 - 400mm.

Seriously, though, since I tend to shoot a lot of landscape, sports and street/festival candids; if I were to make a graph of the focal lengths for all of my shots, I'm betting I'd see some spikes around the 24, 85 and 200mm ranges (that would be with my 5D), but probably no real significant trends.

For those of you folks that weren't aware of it and have an interest in a serious answer to the OPS's question, there's a neat little (free) program called Exposure Plot that you can run against your JPEG files and track your most used ISO, SS,AP and FL.

http://www.vandel.nl/

Neat program, Walt. I love 50mm and 85mm on a FF camera. I want a 35mm now to see what all the fuss is about. It's just a matter of preference and your vision for a particular scene.

considering that my X100s has a fixed 35mm focal length and I only have a 50mm for the M6, those are my prefered focal length.
i honestly believe that for my photography, those 2 covers 90% of my shots

for walking around I really love my 40mm. With that said if I only could have one lens I'd probably keep my 50mm 1.8 as if I stop it down to 2.8 it's very very sharp and it's not super soft wide open either.