@bleirer This is true in theory but not so much in practice, I think. It is true, for example, that if you crop the crop out of a wide angle image you'll have the telephoto view, but unless you have zillions of pixels of resolution the crop, while proportioned the same, will not be the same. And the reverse is not quite true. You cannot inversely crop an image to put in information that was never in it. And all the optical equivalents omit the issue of what you see when you look at something with your own eyes. We see with a certain perspective, and while it is theoretically possible to translate our vision into a variety of focal lengths and perspectives, there is a bit of mental exercise involved.
And, of course, the old adage to "zoom with your feet," while useful to remember, cannot be applied every time. The real life complications of chasms and highways, walls and falls, compromise our ability to act out all the optical truisms.
In other words, I still think there's a place for a question like "what is your favorite focal length," which applies to what focal length you like to use which produces what you want to show with the least amount of processing and transformation. And that is going to depend mightily on what kind of things you are trying to show.
I guess the point I was going for is that one focal length doesn't impart any special sauce over another. All are just picking a way to frame the image with enough pixels on the subject. Even so called telephoto compression is simply perspective based on camera to subject distance, no matter the focal length.
@bleirer That is quite true, and in an ideal optical world with boundless pixels we could get nearly all we need from the widest rectilinear lens possible, and do all our composing afterwards, cropping to taste. Which, when you think about it, is sort of what we do when we look out on a scene, before we grab a camera and choose a lens to try to come up with what our brain has already composed.
Not such a bad idea if it were possible. Imagine wanting a 1000 mm. telephoto shot of a distant lion, and you can get it without even having to aim!
For birds and bugs I use my 500 pf and love it. For general photography, my 35mm 1.8g was hands down my favorite lens...just seemed to work for everything else, people and landscapes mostly. These days though I've started transitioning to mirrorless and use the 24-70 f4. What a great lens. I just happened to check my most used focal lengths yesterday and 24-35mm came out tied by a large margin over the others. No surprises.
My Olympus 4.0/300 + MC14 is my favourite lens. Means my prefered focal length is more than 300mm mFt.
For me it is very similar to what Spencer described for himself.
First and foremost, the focal length correlates with the subject I want to work on.
However, my preferences change from time to time, and good work by other photographers can also be an inspiration for turning to or rediscovering a certain focal length.
If I could only have one focal length, it would probably be a 35mm, including a pocket sized multi-row panorama system, like my Novoflex VR-Slim.
Not only because of the very versatile focal length for my main areas of application, but also because of the Voigtländer 35mm f/2 Apo-Lanthar Z that I use.
It's an exceptional lens, both in handling and image quality, as well as in the aesthetics of the rendering.
I personally also like the decelerated, very deliberate workflow with such lenses, if the subject allows it.
So it doesn't just depend on the focal length, but on the whole lens package, and I'm still a fan of optically very high-quality manual focus lenses that not only make manual focusing a pleasure with their precision, but also feel like they've been built for decades of hard use.
it is the complete tool as such, the lens in all its properties, be it mechanical, optical, handling. So it's more certain lenses that I particularly like and not so much certain focal lengths.
I still use some of my father's M42 lenses from the 50s, 60s, 70s, SMC Takumar, Auto-Rikenon, Carl Zeiss Jena 58/2 Biotar Pre-Set with 12 blades, A. Schacht Ulm M-Travenar, all are still fully functional and would probably survive further generations with continued good care.
I doubt that my Nikkor Z optics, as much as I appreciate them in the sum of their qualities, can live up to this claim.
There are more,depending the place where I am : when I drive 16 mm- 19 mm ,on street 24 mm , in nature 100-400 mm and so on.
I analyzed the photo parts of my SSD with the ExposurePlot software. It creates a nice bar plot with percentages over mm.
It showed that I tend to go to the extremes of my zooms. Very much so with the Z100-400mm (many photos at 400mm or 560mm with TC). This is my wildlife lens. Using the Z24-120mm I took many photos at 24mm and 120mm. The distribution also shows a substancial and rounded "hill" between 30mm and 80mm peaking at 50mm. Macro work with the Z105mm yields another big spike.
In the distributiuon I recognized my subjects (wildlife, macro, landscape, family) and my lenses.
Great list! It's interesting how focal length preferences can really shape your creative perspective. For me:
Landscapes: 35mm hits a sweet spot—wide enough for context, but with minimal distortion.
Portraits: 85mm is a favorite—flattering compression and good subject separation.
Wildlife: 400mm feels like a good balance of reach and usability without being too heavy.
Macro: I’m with you—100mm is hard to beat, but wide-angle macros definitely bring a fresh, immersive look.