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Focal lengths and perspectives

with Jan Vincent Kleine & Marian Hirschfeld - #UrbanSportsphotography #CreateYourLight

19.05.2021 - Reading Time: 6 minutes

As part of the #CreateYourLight Challenge, adventure and #NikonFamily photographer Jan Vincent Kleine and videographer Marian Hirschfeld are dedicating themselves to urban sports photography. In doing so, the two address another exciting topic: The versatile perspective possibilities that different zoom and fixed focal lengths allow for portrait shots. Together with dancer Paloma, they experiment with different perspectives and distances on a parking garage roof in Cologne in order to fully exploit the potential of the Z lenses for various effects and thus achieve special image compositions.

Lenses and focal lengths

What do the individual focal length numbers actually mean? Put simply, the smaller the number, the wider the angle of view. Conversely, the larger the focal length, the smaller the angle of view and the closer you are to the subject in terms of perspective. With zoom lenses, there are generally three classic ranges that are used for different purposes. Firstly, there are the wide-angle zooms with shorter focal lengths and larger picture angles, such as the NIKKOR Z 14-30 mm 1:4 S ultra-wide-angle zoom. Then there are the classic standard zoom lenses. These cover a relatively large range around the standard focal lengths, allowing you to achieve an astonishing amount in different areas of photography. With our NIKKOR Z 24-70 mm 1:2.8 S, for example, you can go from a wide angle at 24 mm focal length to a slight telephoto focal length at 70 mm. The third range includes the classic telephoto zooms such as our NIKKOR Z 70-200 mm 1:2.8 VR S. These zooms are ideal for sports photography due to their upward flexibility, but are also used in other areas of photography, such as fashion photography.

Of course, you can also capture these focal lengths with fixed focal lengths. These are generally faster and therefore give you the option of playing better with sharpness and blur, for example. Fixed focal lengths are more challenging for you as a photographer, as you cannot zoom in on your subjects. Here you need to be active yourself and move around to achieve a different image section. Within our Z series, the wide-angle NIKKOR Z 35 mm 1:1.8 S, the NIKKOR Z 50 mm 1:1.8 S or the portrait fixed focal length lens NIKKOR Z 85 mm 1:1.8 S are ideal for this. There are currently a further 53 fixed focal lengths in the SLR camera range that you can use flexibly on your D-SLR or on your Z camera using the FTZ adapter. These lenses help beginners in particular to understand the principle of focal lengths and to perfect their photography. The "compulsion" to move is incredibly important when it comes to perspective. This is the only way to understand how much influence the distance to our subject has on the perspective.

Perspective

The proportionality between foreground and background, which is created by the combination of distance and focal length, is particularly exciting in terms of perspective. Two aspects are very important for understanding the relationship between focal length and perspective and perspective distortion. The first is to photograph from a fixed and unchanging position using different focal lengths. Stand a few meters away from your subject and first take a photo at 24 mm, for example. Then take another photo from exactly the same position, but this time with a focal length of 70 mm. The longer focal length will of course allow you to get much closer to your subject and also reduce the angle of view. In terms of perspective, however, you can produce exactly the same image section by cropping the 24 mm photo in image editing. In terms of perspective, you would have exactly the same result with both images. The second important aspect is photographing with a constant focal length while changing your own position. In the video example, Jan Vincent is standing approx. 1.5 meters away from dancer Paloma, while the high-rise building in the background is approx. 100 meters away. If he now moves another 1.5 meters away from Paloma, he is twice as far away from her, but the distance to the skyscraper only increases by 1.5%. This means that with the same focal length and two different distances to the subject, the background remains the same size, but the actual subject in the foreground changes in size depending on the photographer's position. If you take these two aspects into account and combine them with each other, you can achieve a truly extraordinary image effect.

Focal length and locations

This series was photographed from 14 mm to 200 mm at a constant distance. Here you can wonderfully observe how each increase in focal length corresponds to a closer crop in terms of perspective.

Nikkor 14mm
Nikkor 24mm
Nikkor 70mm
Nikkor 85mm
Nikkor 105mm
Nikkor 135mm
Nikkor 200mm

The same series from 14 mm to 200 mm photographed from increasingly distant locations, so that Paloma always remains the same size in the picture. A clear change can be seen in the background in particular, but Paloma as a motif also changes in its effect on the viewer. The closer an object is, the greater the change.

More posts in the blog

Nikkor 14mm with movement
Nikkor 24mm with movement
Nikkor 50mm with movement
Nikkor 70mm with movement
Nikkor 85mm with movement
Nikkor 105mm with movement
Nikkor 135mm with movement

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