Camera Lens Length

The length of your camera lens. Does it matter?

You hear and read about lenses that are 50mm, 85mm, 35mm, 24-70mm, 70-200mm. Does it matter? Yes, it does.

Those numbers represent the focal length of your lens. Actually, it’s the focal length between your lens and your image sensor when the subject is in focus, to be exact. ? There are some reasons that the focal length of your lens matters though. It makes a difference in your pictures.

The first picture below was shot with a 35mm lens at an f-stop of 2.8. The second and third pictures were shot with an 85mm lens at an f-stop of 2.0. The 85mm lens creates much more of a soft blurry background (or bokeh) than the 35mm lens does. But the 35mm allows more of your background to be in focus. So, what do you desire in your final image and why? Also when you get real close to your subject with a 35mm lens it will distort your subject just a little bit. The wider the angle of the lens the more your subject will be distorted. With a 28mm or a 17mm lens there would be even more distortion.

See my settings and lenses below:

Manual camera settings for these images below:
ISO – 320
aperture – F 2.8
shutter speed – 1/200
lens – sony Zeiss 35mm 1.4
camera body – sony mirrorless a7III

Manual camera settings for these images below:
ISO – 400
aperture – F 2.0
shutter speed – 1/200
lens – sony 85mm 1.8
camera body – sony mirrorless a7III

Manual camera settings for these images below:
ISO – 250
aperture – F 2.0
shutter speed – 1/200
lens – sony 85mm 1.8
camera body – sony mirrorless a7III

Also, I just recently updated my page on this website of “What’s In My Camera Bag?”. So, go check it out and you can see all the lovely things and the beautiful lenses I love and maybe even splurge and get yourself a new lens. Links should work too!