Yet this experience is subjective; the cone of visual attention is a selective cocktail party effect. In an objective measure of the physical optics, wider is truer, but note that I'm not necessarily saying 'better.'
Again, I disagree with the assertion that wider is any more true to human vision, primarily since distortions are immediately apparent as the focal length gets shorter than 24mm or even 28mm. Using very short focal lengths just compresses what would otherwise be peripheral vision towards the center. This isn't somehow "more true" to human vision.
In order for such short focal lengths to truly be representative of human vision, you'd have to abandon rectilinear optics and flat media; and you'd have to graduate the level of detail such that most of the resolution was concentrated in the center rather than the periphery. If you're not willing to do so, a "normal" focal length reproducing the central vision will always be truer to human vision due to having a more reasonable perspective.
I can't tell if you're arguing for or against barrel distortion to improve accuracy, but both exist in either case [1,2].
Our attention and peripheral vision come into play also in how we consume a photograph. You will employ your peripheral vision less when you view images on your phone compared to a wall-sized print. Additionally, the longer the focal length, the more prescriptive the effect; the photographer and photograph are telling you what to look at. Wide lenses invite the photographer to work with juxtaposition and layering, and the viewer to selectively attend to different elements, which is actually in agreement with your closer-to-experience angle, i.e. the viewer must decide where to focus their cone of attention in a wide-angle photograph, just like they would in real life.
Again, I am not dealing with an absolute capital-T True representation of human vision. We are constrained to modern optical formulae and 2D mediums of commercially available photographic equipment. You could snowball this all the way into stereoscopic 3D fisheye videos livestreamed from eyewear, to get even closer to True human vision.
I still maintain that wide lenses are so useful and popular for documentary and snapshot purposes because they record more of the elements we once and will attend to; a more convincing simulacrum. It's no coincidence that 35mm and 28mm and wider are used by so many photojournalists and street/documentary photographers, often exclusively in the latter case.
> If you're using flat media and rectilinear optics, shorter lenses get progressively less and less representative of human vision.
Below ~12mm, yes. 28mm is still a compromise between field of view and usability; even with a 21mm, I have to be right in front of someone for them to fill the frame, because I would have to do the same if I were looking at them with my own eyes.
> This is always true at every focal length. Your choice of composition informs the viewer whether it's a wide angle shot or super-telephoto.
"Lately I’ve been struck with how I really love what you can’t see in a photograph." - Diane Arbus.
Photography, with its receptiveness to stream-of-conscious approach and synchronous rearing with postmodernism, is an inherently subjective medium. Joel Meyerowitz, on his use of wide angle lenses, terms the explicit look-at-this approach as 'collecting' [1]. There are subgenres dedicated to not collecting, introducing ambiguity that invites the viewer to form their own interpretation of the recorded reality.
I took a walk this afternoon and looked at a tree ~5m away. I could visualize framing the trunk of the tree with a 50 or 75mm, but also noticed a child running towards the tree. The childless telephoto perspective would've been a more accurate representation of my subjective experience of focusing on the tree, but an objectively less accurate representation of what I was actually seeing in my field of vision. A tree-only photo tells you to look at the tree, whereas a wider perspective invites you to consider the relationship between the disparate elements. Meyerowitz also waxes poetically about this [ibid].
Again, the Ricoh GR and Leica Q, the most popular dedicated street/documentary cameras, have 28mm lenses, and the Fujifilm X100 a 35mm. Essentially all of the street photographers I've met internationally use either a 28mm or 35mm most of the time. There is a visceral you-are-right-there-in-the-moment feeling from looking at a wide angle photograph, especially when printed large, that simply cannot be reproduced with a normal-telephoto.
And yet, as I've argued with objective statements re: field of view and subjective experience from others and myself, we use these wide angles because they are objectively and subjectively closer to matching our human vision.
Once you get to a certain level, you can begin to make choices that invites the viewer to make a choice, and realize that your choices are only ever second to theirs. Wider lenses are more effective at this specifically because they gather more elements in the frame, inducing more ambiguity and opportunity for alternative interpretations, just like how we always have to decide where our cone of attention points.
Stopping short of advising you to touch grass, I'd invite you to shoot exclusively with wides and fisheyes for a while, and practice soft focus for peripheral awareness [1]. Apart from that, no argumentation on photography through the limited medium of text is going to reconcile our perspectives.
Except due to distortions and perspective differences, shorter focal lengths are objectively further from matching human vision.
Subjects regularly look much further from the camera than they actually are. Objects at the edge of the frame are weirdly stretched. Whatever is closest to the camera will appear disproportionately large in your final image. Objects in the background are disproportionately small.
Not to mention barrel distortions tend to be much more prominent as focal length is shortened.
Normal focal lengths are the closest to human vision. Wide angle fisheye lenses could be ok with curved media, but otherwise they're just warped.
Considering the area of focus of human vision, along with the fact that we don't see in rectilinear terms, trying to reduce all the aspects of human vision to one factor: field of view... seems foolish at best.
If we viewed photos in some kind of spherical VR space or on curved media, then wider field of view with a fisheye lens could be argued to be more similar to human vision. However, we almost exclusively view pictures as flat sheets of paper or flat rectangular screens.
For those reasons and others, 35-50mm is far more similar to actual human vision.
Composition (and thus the number of elements in frame) is a choice that gets made by the photographer, and can be achieved by altering the scene, changing distance, or changing focal length. Having more or fewer elements in frame has nothing to do with mimicking human vision, and whatever focal length you've chosen is a decision you're making for the viewer. If you make a 360° photo, that's still a composition decision you're making on behalf of the viewer, and it directly effects how they consume your work.
Now, if you want your image to be a wider angle, that's fine. That is a legitimate compositional choice... but it is a choice that you the photographer are making. It's not better or worse. Nor is trying to be "closer to human vision" inherently better or worse than any other choice. Knock yourself out with whatever focal lengths suit you.
>Not to mention barrel distortions tend to be much more prominent as focal length is shortened.
>Considering the area of focus of human vision, along with the fact that we don't see in rectilinear terms, trying to reduce all the aspects of human vision to one factor: field of view... seems foolish at best.
If you can cherrypick to distortion, I can cherry pick to compositional element-gathering ability, of which a wide field of view is objectively better at, and which is actually more important to documentation-oriented photographers. To revisit the impetus for this conversation:
>Considering the area of focus of human vision, along with the fact that we don't see in rectilinear terms, trying to reduce all the aspects of human vision to one factor: field of view... seems foolish at best.
The wideness is precisely why practiced documentary photographers/photojournalists choose 28-35mm for their more authentic representation; it is a better representation of the messiness of the world that takes a trained eye to organize. Empirically and experientially, experienced portrait photographers will use normals and telephotos for pleasing-yet-detached proportions, and experienced street/snapshot photographers will continue using wides for the authentic drop-the-viewer-in-the-world effect. To say that they should actually be using 50mm is... foolish at best. When someone pays me for portraits, I will use a 50-75mm, but when I want to remember what it was like to be somewhere doing something and living, I and many others will use a 28mm or 35mm.
I will now go photograph grass with a 28mm and you should too.
I'm cherrypicking to perspective. Distortion is an additional argument, alongside field of view of the area of focus, etc.
> documentary photographers/photojournalists choose 28-35mm for their more authentic representation
I dispute the idea that there is anything like a uniformity of choices, and I dispute the idea that documentary photographers choose a focal length for authenticity purposes. If you're doing a documentary and especially if you're doing photojournalism, you're choosing focal lengths that properly frame your subject at whatever distance you need to stand at... because often you won't be able to choose your distance to the subject.
This fstoppers article suggests that the two most useful photojournalism lenses are a 24-70mm zoom, and an 85mm portrait lens.
Other articles seem to suggest that photojournalists should carry zoom lenses covering a range from 12 or 16mm to 200mm, which makes perfect sense.
I see no indication that 28-35mm is preferred.
> To say that they should actually be using 50mm is... foolish at best.
Then don't say that. What does this statement have to do with this conversation?
> When someone pays me for portraits, I will use a 50-75mm, but when I want to remember what it was like to be somewhere doing something and living, I and many others will use a 28mm or 35mm.
And that's fine. You can use whatever focal lengths you want to evoke different emotions. That's one of the reasons we don't just use one lens or one focal length all the time.
This isn't really relevant to the assertion that short focal lengths are somehow closer to human vision.
>I dispute the idea that there is anything like a uniformity of choices, and I dispute the idea that documentary photographers choose a focal length for authenticity purposes.
Documentation: the act or an instance of furnishing or authenticating with documents [Merriam-Webster]. Documentary photographers are thus by definition chiefly concerned with representing events as authentically as they happened.
I've done several years of work as a photojournalist [1-3]. Of the other photojournalists I've bumped into, the wide-normal zoom or a 24/28mm prime gets used most of the time. Barring logistical mandates, only amateurs aren't able to choose their distance to the subject and rely solely on telephotos; more experienced PJs know how to get close. “If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough” - Robert Capa.
I also do a lot of personal street/documentary work and have shot around prominent photo circles in Japan and New York [4,5]. As I've said repeatedly, the most popular cameras in this genre (Ricoh GR, Leica Q, Fuji X100) sport fixed, i.e. unchangeable, 28mm or 35mm lenses. Many of those who shoot on Leicas, whose system lenses are so expensive you can only have a few, often choose either a 28mm or 35mm. It's a running joke within New York specifically that you don't shoot street unless it's with a Leica M6 and 28mm.
> Then don't say that. What does this statement have to do with this conversation?
With regards to documentary photography, which is trying to portray things as authentically as they happen, by your standards, normal lenses would be the principle option because of the distortionless proportional perspective, but this is empirically not the case.
I think we're on different levels of experience here, and I will sign off this conversation as I advise again: go photograph grass with a 28mm.
> I've done several years of work as a photojournalist [1-3]
This is an anecdote, and even if accepted it doesn't do anything show uniformity.
You have chosen short focal lengths. That's fine.
> With regards to documentary photography, which is trying to portray things as authentically as they happen, by your standards, normal lenses would be the principle option because of the distortionless proportional perspective, but this is empirically not the case.
