Focal Length Magnification

milster

milster

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Just out of interest, I'm just wondering what sort of magnification you get at different focal lengths assuming your using a full frame camera?

I think I read somewhere that a 35mm lens was closest to what you see with your eyes (or was it 50mm :thinking:), so what magnification would say, a 200mm lens give? I'm not talking about zoom, just magnification.

:thumbs:
 
if you hold your camera up to your eye with a zoom lens on you can find the spot where the magnification is similar. i found its around 70mm on FF for something directly in front of you, periphery is a different beast entirely
 
robhooley167 said:
if you hold your camera up to your eye with a zoom lens on you can find the spot where the magnification is similar. i found its around 70mm on FF for something directly in front of you, periphery is a different beast entirely
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:thumbs: Same as Rob.
 
The 35 or 50mm mark wasn't about magnification but field of view, but this is really complicated because of the way our eyes work, we can actually see a very wide view but lots of it is filtered out (peripheral) what we believe we generally see is about 50mm ish FF.
 
robhooley167 said:
if you hold your camera up to your eye with a zoom lens on you can find the spot where the magnification is similar. i found its around 70mm on FF for something directly in front of you, periphery is a different beast entirely
Click to expand...

This is dependant on the magnification of the viewfinder. The 7D has a 100% viewfinder and a 50mm lens will give a field of view in the viewfinder that is the same as the naked eye.
 
50mm on a crop body viewfinder will give you about 75-80mm equivalent on full frame
 
I'm sure I read somewhere that 53mm is closest to what we see, but a couple of people told me it's 44, hmm. I'll go on believing it's 50 because I don't think I'll be able to find a 44mm prime anywhere!

It's hard to explain the field of view for specific lengths, why not go to a camera shop where they have some things on display & find out for yourself? :)
 
hollis_f said:
This is dependant on the magnification of the viewfinder. The 7D has a 100% viewfinder and a 50mm lens will give a field of view in the viewfinder that is the same as the naked eye.
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Is the 5D MKII's viewfinder 100%? Just curious :}
 
hollis_f said:
Crop factor doesn't matter.



I believe it's 71%.
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Hi frank, the viewfinder coverage is 98% at a 0.71 magnification. i think the magnifications is also sometimes shown as percentage which can cause confusion...

:)
 
Rapscallion said:
Hi frank, the viewfinder coverage is 98% at a 0.71 magnification. i think the magnifications is also sometimes shown as percentage which can cause confusion...

:)
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Yup,you are correct. Normally I would quote the magnification as 0.71x, but I was trying to be consistent with the question.

It took me quite a while to grasp the fact that it was only the viewfinder magnification that determined the focal length that gave a 'normal' field of view in the viewfinder. Here's the thread that persuaded me.
 
I'm fairly sure the original question has nothing to do viewfinder magnification or crop factor as the question says "... using a full frame camera."

As Phil has pointed out our range of view is very wide but what we see is much narrower.

Years ago around about a 50mm lens on a 35mm camera was considered to be the standard lens because it produced an image that more or less equated to what we see.

A 200mm lens will then give a magnification of 4 compared to the standard lens.

Dave
 
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