Thursday, January 22, 2015

Near and far.

I generally lean towards shooting a bit more on the wide-angle side of the spectrum. I don't know why, and its not all the time, by just most of the time. The exception is when doing some portraits... But then again, not all... Confused yet? Me too! That's why I decided to take my son, Kole out and try one of my favorite lenses, the Sigma 35mm, f1.4 and compare the look of photos shot using it to those shot using my Canon 135mm, f2.0.
For those of you in the know, a smaller lens focal length, like 35mm is going to give you a more wide angle look, and a larger lens focal length, like 135mm, gives a narrower, magnified view.
The photo above was shot using the 135mm lens.

The photo above is very similar to the first photo but was shot using the 35mm lens. I moved closer to Kole to keep him as the focal point of the photo. If I hadn't moved closer, he would have appeared much smeller. But, you can notice how much more background gets into the photo, and how much smaller the background details appear, whereas, in the first photo, the background is very compressed.
The same scene and subject, with two very different resulting photos. Which is best? Depends what you're in the mood for, I guess... 
 
The photo here is a close-up using the 35mm lens, and you can see that it starts to distort Kole's body a little, so you either like that or hate it.
 
 
And these last two images (above and below) were shot with the 135mm lens. You can see how it really isolates the subject (Kole) from the background. This gives a more dreamy look and is really nice in this situation with the sun backlighting the scene.

So, tell me what images speak to you! Is 35mm the king of focal lengths or is 135mm the way to go for photos like these? I love both, but I can see where the 135mm lens really shines!
One issue with the 135mm lens it that it is not easy to get good results. It sometimes requires using a tripod, and/or manual focus to ensure a sharp image. Whereas the 35mm generally rocks in any situation :)
 


2 comments:

  1. What I noticed most was the difference in the fence line. But I never would have noticed without the contrast of the other photo with this one. Someone would have to know what this fence actually looks like to see the difference. But in the top photo the fence is all smooshed together with the box at the end appearing very close. At first I thought you moved him on the fence for the second photo until I counted the fence posts. WOW!

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    1. The difference is quite dramatic as you pointed out.
      Thanks for reading the blog :)

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