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Rediscovering 50mm
Somewhere between wide and telephoto lies a standard. Written and photographed by Pinaki Chakravarty

We’ve all heard of wide angle and telephoto lenses, and chances are you’ve zoomed from one to another at a flick of a button. A wide angle shot will show you more, allowing you to encompass buildings, landscapes or groups of people, while you’d have been able to fill the screen by using a telephoto lens for faraway subjects, like birds, or a tight crop of a person’s face.

Everything is relative
But of course, terms like ‘wide angle�and ‘telephoto�are relative. That means that when you’re looking through a wide angle lens, it is wide only because of the fact that it is wider than another focal length, and if you’re peering up a pigeon’s nostrils (while it is perched on a balcony 20ft away), you’re using a lens that is a longer focal length than another.

So the question is, what is the standard against which we say that a lens is wider or less wide than? And that’s exactly where you’ll find the 50mm, also called a ‘normal�lens. It offers the most natural perspective, just like the human eye. Any lens with a focal length less than 50mm is a wide lens. Anything more than 50mm is a telephoto. Many people confuse ‘zoom�with telephoto, but a zoom lens is one that moves from one focal length to another, as opposed to a fixed lens, which offers only one point of view. You could have a wide angle zoom just as you have telephoto zooms (or wide angle to telephoto zooms).

The best lens in the world
The best thing about a 50mm is its natural perspective. Things don’t look closer to or wider away than they should. Such a lens was the natural first choice when the current family of small format cameras were developed (confusingly called 35mm �which points to its film size instead of a corresponding lens). This means that the 50mm lens has been in existence longer than any other, with the most research and development invested in it over decades. So the humble 50mm, generally available from manufacturers at a base price of just RO50, is also one of the sharpest and fastest lenses in any company’s line-up.

Are we joking? No, it’s true: for RO50 you can have a lens that can take pictures in lower light, and produces sharper images, than a big heavy zoom that costs ten times as much. Is there a catch? Yes, of course: you’ll have to walk back and forth to include more or less in your frame (instead of zooming in and out). You won’t have the exaggerated perspective of a wide angle lens, which can be used to add drama to a scene. And you’ll have to be uncomfortably close to your subject if you want to fill just a part of his face in your frame.

Making a zoom fast, i.e., so it opens up so wide it can let in lots of light very quickly, requires complex optics that are expensive (a Nikon 17-35/2.8 or Canon 16-35/2.8 could cost about RO600), way beyond what an amateur would want to shell out. This is why most would buy a cheaper zoom, which would be much slower �so slow that amateur cameras like the Nikon D80 or Canon 400D and their type always feature little built-in flash units that pop up most of the time by default. But using flash is a complex technique that separates masters from weekend shooters, so the results are usually terrible �especially from such a direct lighting technique that makes people look like deer caught in the headlights.

The way out? For half or even one-third the money of a cheap zoom that is of questionable quality, you’ll get a 50mm that is exceptional in every sense.

Starting with the standard
If you’re a beginner, there’s another reason why you should start off with 50mm. If you begin with a zoom lens, you’ll end up zooming in and out without ever thinking of why you’re doing so, or learning the characteristics of individual focal lengths. If you start out with just a fixed 50, you’ll know it inside out in time, learning to focus on your composition, moving in or away with a definite purpose. You’ll find out how out of focus the background can get, or discover its minimum focusing distance �typically around a foot and a half.

Mastering a normal lens will put every other focal length into perspective. You’ll see how 35mm is moderately wide angle, just enough to include a little more, while not so wide as to distort the perspective too much, all the while adding greater depth of field. 28mm is the widest most photojournalists used to go, but today the standard professional zooms go up to 16 or 17mm �wide enough to fill a third of your composition with your subject, while leaving the rest for its environment.

If it’s good enough for him...
The possibilities of the 50mm reached near perfection in the hands of Henri Cartier-Bresson, the ‘father of street photography�who influenced generations after. Bresson acquired a Leica camera with a 50mm lens in Marseilles, and would later describe the combination as an extension of his eye.

The anonymity it gave him in a crowd or during an intimate moment was essential in overcoming the formal and unnatural behaviour of those who were aware of being photographed. The Leica opened up new possibilities in photography �the ability to capture the world in its actual state of movement and transformation. He said, “I prowled the streets all day, feeling very strung-up and ready to pounce, ready to ‘trap�life. I suddenly understood that a photograph could fix eternity in an instant.�And that’s exactly what photography is all about.