One participant in our photography class had two lenses with her. A wide-angle zoom and a telephoto zoom (I can’t remember the exact focal length ranges). She asked me if she should use the wide angle zoom for landscapes and the telephoto zoom for wildlife photos. An interesting question! Because it illustrates a common and fundamental misunderstanding. For reasons I don’t understand, many amateur photographers associate landscape photography with wide-angle lenses and wildlife photography with telephoto lenses.
Which lens for what?
It’s true, of course, that many landscape shots are taken with wide-angle lenses. And for a portrait of a lion in the wild, you usually need a long focal length. But the question “which lens for what” cannot be answered in a general way. The “right” focal length always depends on the respective image idea and to a large extent also on the spatial conditions. A good portrait focal length is usually 70 mm to 85 mm (based on full-frame format). But why not use an extreme wide angle sometimes. The result may not please everyone, but if it fits the image idea, why not?
In our archive there are many landscape shots taken with long to very long focal lengths. Would you like to see some examples?
200 mm
400 mm
700 mm
Admittedly, photos of animals in the wild taken with short focal lengths don’t really exist that often in our archive. But they do exist:
24 mm
Well, not exactly in the wild… 35 mm
Conclusion
There is no such thing as THE lens or THE focal length for a particular subject. It always depends on what your intention is with the image. Basically, you can photograph any subject with any focal length. Just try it out. Maybe you will get a completely different perspective.
What do you think? Please feel free to leave a comment. I’m looking forward to it.
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