Perspective of lenses

Shot with 50mm Lens

A very important question to ask or beginner photographer ask this question most of the time that which lens we should buy and what is the perspective of the lenses and which lens perspective is better. Lots of confusing questions. Let's get into the details.

Let's understand the word Perspective. 

Perspective meaning is a POINT OF VIEW and angle of coverage of the area. How lens views and covers the field in the world of photography, It means lens understand the height, width and distance of the subject from the camera distance and frame the subject accordingly. Human eyes can see everything in the three-dimensional views but the camera work only into two dimensional and that's a limitation of most of the lenses. 

Because of perspective or angle of coverage and lens optics, every lens like Standard, wide, tally behave differently or as per the clear cut requirement of the shoot. It is now the photographer's duty to understand the lens's perspective very carefully. He must know in advance which lens has to use for which shoot (industrial, portrait, Interiors etc) otherwise GOOF-up can be executed so well. and cannot be corrected even in post-processing. Believe me 

Now the question is, how the shot looks like when shooting from the different lenses. How to compare each shoot from different lenses. The solution is to collect all the different lenses like 10mm, 40mm, 50mm, 100, 200 mm, 300mm, 400 etc if not having more lenses then whatever lens you have that is fine but have at least 2-3 lens to compare the perspective. 

Now set the camera on a tripod at a specific place with the 10mm/50mm/100mm lens then shoot the subject, you have to shoot the same subject from the same distance, but with different lens then only you can see the covered area of the different lens. 

1. 10 mm or wide-angle lens will cover all the content of the frame from corner to corner.
2. 50 mm will cover half of the human body and the blurred background 
3. 100 mm lens will cover the full human face and less background or isolate the background.
4. 200mm lens will cover 60% of the human face only a little less background and will give you more details, the emotion, expression of the face.

Please do not change the distance and the subject. Make sure your subject (Human) stand at the same place and your camera tripod remain at the same place while doing this exercise. You have to change the lens only on the same fixed camera on the tripod. Once the shoot is done, please write the lens focal distance like 50mm etc on the photos so that you can compare all the photographs together by reading focal distance on the photos and then you can see the variations of all the photographs. Gradually you start understanding the focal distance, perspective of the lens and How much area will be covered by which focal length lens. 

It is good exercise and can be applicable to check any lens's quality, perspective and any other important details of photography gears.

Keep experimenting and have wonderful & happy photography.

Photographer and Blogger Prasenjeet Gautam (www.prasenjeetgautam.com) has captured the above Image of Industrial product.