What focal length looks most like normal human vision?
Asked 2/13/2013
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If a lens zooms from 16mm to 50mm, which focal length will look closest to a natural, eye-level view? I’m mainly asking about what feels “normal,” and whether 50mm would look more zoomed-in than everyday vision while 16mm would look wider. Does the answer change depending on the camera’s sensor size?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
13y ago
2 Answers
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It depends on what you're asking exactly, if you're asking what focal length provides the same magnification as the naked eye (as in you hold your hand out infront of the camera and look through the viewfinder, your hand appears the same size as it would without the camera), then the answer depends on sensor size and viewfinder magnification, but the answer ends up being about 50mm for most full frame DSLRs with 0.7x viewfinder magnification, and about 45mm for most APS-C DSLRs with 0.95x viewfinder magnification.
If your asking what lens provides the same field of view as the human eye, then this question is even harder to ask, as human vision has no hard cutoff, the peripheries just get blurrier and the extreme edges are only sensitive to movement.
Originally by user1375. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user1375
13y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
There isn’t one exact “human eye focal length,” because the eye doesn’t work like a camera lens: we have wide peripheral vision, but sharp central vision. In photography, the usual comparison is a normal lens: a focal length roughly equal to the sensor’s diagonal, giving a natural-looking perspective.
Typical examples:
- Full frame: about 45–50mm is considered normal
- APS-C: about 30mm is considered normal
So on a 16–50mm zoom:
- 16mm will look clearly wide
- 50mm is normal-ish on full frame, but more zoomed-in on APS-C
- On APS-C, something around 30mm will usually look most natural
If you mean “same subject size as what I see with my eye through a viewfinder,” that also depends on the camera’s viewfinder magnification, not just focal length. But for everyday shooting, “normal” usually means the focal lengths above.
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