Your favorite focal length....

[Lost Canadian]

I'm curious what others like to shoot at... Reason I'm curious is that unbeknownst to me I have roughly three focal lengths that I shoot around most frequently, and two are classic standard focal lengths. After examining the metadata of all my shots over the last couple years I've discovered that a majority of shots that I take are surprisingly in the 30-40mm range, followed by the 80-90mm range. If you had asked me that without looking at the data I would have said 50mm and 14-25mm range. 14mm as that's the widest lens I own.

Here's what I actually shoot based on percentage.

1) 30-40mm = 43% (Crazy I thought. I'll be buying a 35mm 1.4 based on this data alone.)
2) 80-90 mm= 25%
3) 14-20= 13%

Every other focal length makes up the balance. Surprisingly, I almost never shoot beyond 110mm, like next to never.

How about you guys and gals?

 

[4xdog]

You're talking full-frame equivalent, of course, Trevor?

I shot an awful lot of film at 135mm. Maybe 105mm now with the Canon 5Dmkii. I haven't taken that many artistic digital shots with wide angle (auto racing has been a main photographic pursuit over the last few years, where telephoto helps a lot and I was shooting 250mm with a 1.6 factor most of the time). Most of my wide-field images are taken with my point-and-shoot at what -- 30-40mm equivalent?

I have the 40mm pancake for the 5Dmkii which I'll be taking to the Monaco Grand Prix in a couple of weeks, and we'll see how that does for walking-around shots. I expect to use the 70-200 2.8 with 1.4x teleconvertor most of the time for the racing.

If I get to drive from here in MO to San Diego over the summer, the current plan, it'll be a great chance to play with wide angles and landscapes.

 

[Lost Canadian]

You're talking full-frame equivalent, of course, Trevor?

Yes, sorry, should have stated that.

 

[tibfibber]

Lately the Sigma 1.4 30mm has been on the 7D for almost all of my walk arounds. Which makes sense if you recall when 50mm was standard on just about every 35mm out there. I have been thinking of picking up the 40mm pancake as well.

If I look at a plot from the last couple of years (about 50k images) about 22% were with the 85/1.8, with 135, 100 & 50 and 12mm showing up a lot. This is with various 1.6 and full frame bodies. Regardless, I've found having a small fast prime in the bag is more useful in getting a shot, than a particular focal length.

 

[Scott Brady]

Fun to consider. I shoot a lot of 85mm 1.2L, stopped to 1.8 or 2.0. Although I probably have a 70-200mm 2.8 on the camera more than anything and shoot with a ton of compression and shallow DOF. It will be interesting to run a report on that.

 

[Sirocco]

Probably my Sigma 10-20mm (15-30mm?) whilst we are away. I have not looked at the data but it seems to be from 12-20mm mostly.

Maybe I to should have picked up that 24mm Nikon 2.8 I saw in the market street of Tbilisi 3 weeks ago!

G

 

[Haakon]

The two single most used ranges for me (in 35mm equivalence) are 21-30mm @ 13% and 400mm+ @ 24%, landscapes and wildlife.

Other than clusters at the ends it's a fairly even spread across the entire range.
10-70mm 38%
70-200mm 24.3%
200 and up 37.8%

Also interesting (to some maybe) 51% of my photos are at ISO 400 or higher, 20% are at ISO 1600 or higher - maybe I should look at FX again.

 

[Lost Canadian]

1) 30-40mm = 43% (Crazy I thought. I'll be buying a 35mm 1.4 based on this data alone.)

I'm a man of my word. lol

All the reviews aren't kidding, Sigma has totally raised their game and this new lens is mind blowingly good. All metal, beautifully constructed, looks amazing, and even the little details like the rubber around the base of the lens hood lends to a spectacular feel. Without question one of the finest lenses I've ever placed my hands on. Honestly can't believe this is a Sigma and not a Ziess or one of the pro OEM's. And the optics,...unbelievably good. Better than the Nikon 35 1.4 I tried along side which is pretty impressive in its own right. I've only had the lens for a day but have a feeling this guy will be a permanent fixture on my camera, it looks great, feels great, works great,...and most importantly I feel really comfortable using this focal length. Feels like home.

If you want technical review look here:
Dpreview
Photozone
DxOMark Highest rated lens they've test to date by the way. That's saying something.



Here are a few test shots and really extreme crops.

Shot wide open at f1.4.

AF performed flawlessly nailing focus on Sophie's eye, shot wide open at f1.4.

AF test in next to no light. I could barely make out Sophie's eye to place the AF sensor, but the lens/camera combo nailed it. Shot wide open at f1.4, ISO 6400, 1/25 sec.

Corner performance. Shot at f5.6. Handheld.

Close focus. This is about as close as the lens will focus, and when shot wide open at f1.4 the focus plane is pretty thin. Lens nailed it though. No AF fine tuning required for this lens. I was focused on Japan.

 

[Ryanmb21]

Curious to see your results Trevor, my wife and I like our 28mm f1.8 but that sigma is interesting!

 

[Lost Canadian]

Curious to see your results Trevor, my wife and I like our 28mm f1.8 but that sigma is interesting!

I looked at the 28mm 1.8 as well but for me I felt 28mm had just a tad too much distortion for environmental portrait work, where I'll be using this lens a lot, and it was also a tad too close in focal length to my 14-24mm. I have a wedding next weekend and am looking forward to putting this guy to work. I'll post some images from that event. Do you like the 28mm focal length? How do you find its use, say in relation to 50mm which I think you mentioned before that you liked a lot?

 

[john101477]

Based on metadata, I am roughly at 400mm almost double the amount of time I am at any other focal length followed by 18mm and 200mm, both with in 200shots of each other. This will probably change over the next year with the use of my new 16-35 lens which has only been off the camera a handful of times since purchase. There are positives and negatives to the lens but for the most part it is good.

 

[nwoods]

How are you running these reports?

 

[Haakon]

I use Exif Viewer http://www.amarra.de/download.html to export all the data to cvs then use Open Office (you could use Excel) to crunch the numbers. It will also give you bar graphs of various data so you can easily see trends.

 

[Ryanmb21]

I am not concerned with the number of shots, but I am more curious of the most "effective" focal length.

What focal length produces the most of your best shots?

 

[tibfibber]

I think you'd have to break it down by shooting style/subject matter. (not to mention crop or ff)

street shooting, dogs, people, travel - I've been mostly keeping the Sigma 1.4 30mm prime mounted on the 7D. That's just me.

There are way too many variables to simply pull out focal length as a useful metric.