Survey: What Focal Length Do You Use Most Often?

Take a random sample of 20 or  more keepers and see what focal range you use the most often. Don't guess. Report the focal length that actually results in a keeper.

In other words, what focal length in your bag should be the highest quality? The focal length that you spend a little more on, because you use it the most often for important photos? "Honey, I really NEED that $3,000 Leica! Here, let me prove it."

In my case I thought it would have thought it was the 28mm length but it looks like I used the 50mm focal length the most in the last two months.

Here is a random sampling of every 4th photo in my gallery:

50 +tube extension

50 +tube extension

50 +tube extension

50 +tube extension

28

400

50

50

28

50

28

28

200

50 +tube extension

50

15

37

128

42

150

40

28

Use ExposurePlot to make life simpler.

My LX3 on a two week holiday to Japan......

Guy's LX3

As usual, most used both ends of a lens, slight hump around 35mm equivalent, which happened to be my most used prime in Nikon film days.

Next Japan holiday was with E-PL1 and 14-150mm, 9-18mm and Pana14-45mm....

Guy's E-PL1, 14-150, 9-18, 14-45.

Shown again as equivalent focal length, I'll have to stop doing that with M4/3.

Again peaks at ends of the three zooms (at equivalents of 18mm, 28mm, 36mm, 90mm and 300mm, always happens no matter what you think you are doing. Despite the peaks the 35mm equivalent focal length area looks well populated by bumps and would be heavily used so that (17/1.8) will be my first dedicated M4/3 prime.

If I was forced to carry only one prime it would be the future 17/1.8, if forced to carry only one zoom it would be the 14-150mm, as in my opinion, getting the shot is way more important than how perfect the image is.

Regards....... Guy

NT

I use my Pana 15-45 almost exclusivley, first on my G1 now on my OMD. I did the following breakdown to help me detrmine which prime to get. This is two years of data.

--
Thanks Lonnie
Olympus OMD
Panasonic 14-45
Panasonic 45-200
PL 45 mm Macro

Heh, heh, our zoom plots really just show that zooms are extremely useful, picking primes makes life more restrictive.

There's room for both primes and zooms but best to have the right lens on hand at the time it's needed.

Regards....... Guy

Or look at it this way:
You could replace a zoom with two primes and not miss a shot. In fact you'd have a faster lens at both ends AND probably get better optics. The Panasonic 14mm 2.5 is $214. The Olympus 45mm f/1.8 is $400. The Panasonic 14-50mm 2.8-3.5 is $821 - it's slower, more money, less macro.

What this tells me is the someone needs to put out a 200mm autofocus prime.

Naturally I'm headed towards a collection of both zooms and primes and will carry/use what I need for the occasion.

Logically to avoid too much cropping the prime range should probably be spaced about square root 2 apart, such as a series like 10mm, 14mm, 20mm, 28mm, 40mm, 56mm, 80mm, 112mm, 160mm etc but logic never comes into camera design, it's always romantic preferences that intrude, so the available range is distorted a bit but still useful.

For instance the 75/1.8 might be a great lens but for me a waste of money as I would not use it much. But the close enough 60/2.8 macro makes much more sense for me, close enough in framing and a little cropping gets it to 75mm if desired, and a good lens with excellent macro, so is a truly useful lens for me. So that's on my buy list now that Oly Australia has a 20% discount running. Paper thin DOF never appealed to me so I never need the largest apertures.

I see my zoom collection will be 9-18mm (for any wide in good to reasonable light), 14-45mm (for the switched OIS), 14-150mm (for travelling light), and 40-150mm (for better tele). If the 12-60/2.8-4 ever surfaces as M4/3 then there will be a re-think.

Prime collection I can see will be 17/1.8, 45/1.8, 60/2.8 macro and that's about it. I do have Nikon fit primes I can adapt from 17mm to 180mm but never seem to use them.

In all cases I would only carry what's needed on the day, never the whole mess. I use two bodies so lens swapping is reduced and backup in-built.

As usual, everyone is different in their use and choice of lenses, that's just me above.

I knew a guy who only used (in film days) a 70-200mm lens, he could not see the point in using wider and he still won competitions at our camera club. Me, I like wider, but then do use longer quite a lot to pick off details, hence the love of the convenience of zooms.

Regards....... Guy

If your talking one focal length its the 25 1.4 Panasonic.  Actually tonight I have some candid stuff to shoot and am using the Panasonic 25 1.4 & 12-35 2.8 with Metz 50 AF-1 and Gary Fong collipsible light sphere.

The space is tight an I have some small group stuff to do so the 45 2.8 will not work for the interior stuff for anything more than one person well.

I may not even need diffusion as the ceiling is maybe 10 - 15 feet tops. Its nice to leave the TTL cord & bracket on occasion.

From my exif data, 35mm is 80% of it, with the rest split between 28mm and as long as I can get. In M43 terms that makes my ideal setup a 14, a 17, and 100-300. As I can't bring myself to buy a dark zoom I went with the 75 for the long stuff.

My most used lenses are 25mm and 75mm. I rarely use zooms, except for the 7-14mm and sometimes the 100-300mm for nature stuff.

My current walkabout kit is a SLR Magic Hyperprime 12mm T1.6, Voigtländer 25mm f0.95 and Voigtländer 75mm f2.5. A Voigtländer 17.5mm would be a nice addition. Sometimes I add a Pentax SMC Takumar 50mm f1.4 or a Nikon 60mm f2.8 macro. There are no hard rules.

When I look at my stats it looks like I use all of my lenses equally and then I realize what really happened is that I used them all for about the same amount of time after I purchased them.

So, for me it's whatever is my newest lens which is currently my 12-50mm.

BUT,

Next week it will probably be the Panasonic 14mm!!

And then I need to quit buying lenses!

--
Dan

14mm followed by 45mm

--
The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

Closest to perfect lens for m43 is the Pana 12-35 f2.8 IMO.  I own it and use the whole range, but most shots are at the widest end.  I initially used the Oly 40-150 for tele needs, but have just acquired the 35-100 and expect it to get a lot of use w/ 100-300 for really long stuff.  Primes?  I use Oly 12 f2 and Pana 40 1.7, but am interested in Oly's new 17 f1.8 though I can't figure out why.  LBA presently best explanation;>)

Cheers.  Ernie

That logic does not take into account zooming with your feet, which is nearly always an option.

Me neither, as apparently I don't use that focal length much.

Me too, as my 'data' shows that I do a fair amount of macro shots.

Everyone is going to have a different answer to the original question, based on their style.

According to my data I think I could do most of my work with a 20-ish prime, a 50-ish macro and a 200. Sure, a 14mm and a 400mm could find some use too.

That Exposure Plot software was very useful.  An analysis of most of my 2012 photos gave me an almost normal distribution centered about 50mm equivalent, an almost normal distribution of shutter speed centered around 1/250, an almost normal distribution of iso centered about 400.

There were anomalous spikes of focal length at 600 (100-300 lens while birding) and shutter speed at  1/60 (flash photos)

F-stops were clustered around two spots.  f1.8 ( 25mm f1.4 lens) and f7.1 (100-300mm lens).  The rest of the f-stop range was scattered between these two clusters.

Except for the 25mm f1.4 lens for low light and my 55mm Konica Macro, nearly all my other shooting is with zooms (12-35), (14-42 until getting the 12-35), and (100-300 for birding/nature). The Konica photos were almost all slide/film copy, so were excluded from the analysis.

It appears I have very average shooting habits.

Ah, the feet.

For me that logic doesn't work as perspective is always determined by where you stand, then next selecting the right focal length to get the desired framing.

Plus of course many times when travelling, the "zoom with feet" just does not work as I'd either be in the middle of crazy traffic or standing in crocodile infested water.

Regards..... Guy

Ah, the feet.

For me that logic doesn't work as perspective is always determined by where you stand, then next selecting the right focal length to get the desired framing.

Plus of course many times when travelling, the "zoom with feet" just does not work as I'd either be in the middle of crazy traffic or standing in crocodile infested water.

Regards..... Guy

Might I suggest getting those crododilia to step into the middle of crazy traffic. That would take care of so many issues.

I tried to use Exposureplot, but it wouldn't report the real focal lengths. But exiftool and a shell script gives:

The 45/1.8 dominates completely, followed by the long and short end of the 40-150, followed by the short end of the 12-50 kit zoom.

With ExposurePlot you can edit the Equivalent List to do what you need, or when looking at Lens Length tab set the boxes down the bottom like this to get the focal length reported. Just make the boxes 14=14 or 1=1 or whatever to get the real exif focal length charted (or 14=28 for seeing the 35mm equivalents for M4/3). Or more simply to get real focal length reporting, just click the 1:1 button (the tele lens icon).

Hope that helps.

Regards...... Guy