On Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 10:06 AM, J.C. O'Connell <[email protected]> wrote: > there is no "true normal", normal is not an exact defintion of a focal > length, and 50mm was what came with many many slrs for many years, one > could argue that that was "normal", not 43mm or 55mm > on film > -- > J.C. O'Connell (mailto:[email protected])
A 'True Normal' is a lens with the focal length approximately equal to the diagonal of the format, for 35mm this is an approximately 43mm lens. Normal does have a standard definition of focal length, but 35mm (and 645 MF) generally ignore this for a slightly longer 'normal'. And yes, 50mm is the traditional normal length for 35mm, but it is not a 'true normal' in any respect, it was chosen solely because Oskar Barnack liked a longer normal. -- M. Adam Maas http://www.mawz.ca Explorations of the City Around Us. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
