Thursday, January 17, 2002, 5:16:37 AM, Mike wrote: >> I was sitting in my spare bedroom the >> other nite, camera and FA 28-70 1:4 lens (that my coworkers got me for >> Christmas!) just kind of zooming in and out, when I noticed that my "field >> of view" in my free eye matched that of the lens at about 65mm. It's pretty >> close to normal, but not too close.
MJ> Chris, MJ> That depends entirely on finder magnification. It doesn't really have MJ> anything to do with the field of view you find most comfortable. To elaborate: finder magnification of newer bodies is about 0.75x so 0.75x65mm=49mm, pretty close to "normal" 50mm. With older bodies, which had higher magnification, around 0.85x-0.9x was the norm I think in the good old days, notice that Exakta's normal prime lens (first cine SLR I think) was 58mm, to allow easy viewing with both eyes open. That would mean Exakta had 0.85x magnification. The abundant 55mm (Pentax too) is meant for the K series with 0.9x magnification. Now somebody can elaborate on why 50mm is considered normal ;-) (I think there are two reasons - 1) technical: eyes have 20 diopter vision normally, that means the little lens we have, when at ease, has 20 D=50mm focal length; 2) experimental: we see most easily about the same FOV as 43-50mm lenses do on 24x36 frame /very roughly/. Of course, I could easily be wrong.) Good light, Frantisek Vlcek - This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org .
