I'm taking a bit of a different approach to this post.  Many times I'll hesitate from sharing any photographs of firearms.  I find many people fear even looking at them, they feel uncomfortable being around them and they feel alienated by the use of their images.

With that in mind, these are excellent examples for a teaching opportunity in focal length and how to control how your subject matter appears based on what you're doing with your lens, using a zoom, not using a zoom, etc.

For this post, I've put all the images which use a wide angle (less than 45mm) focal length on the left side, normal in the middle (about 50mm-55mm) and larger than 55mm on the right side.  I used a 24mm-70mm lens in this shoot which gave me perspective control in how the viewer sees the subject, it also can be troublesome, especially if you were taking portraits of a person.

Why does focal length matter?  Well, like I mentioned above your normal vision is comparable to about the focal length of 50mm-55mm.  Anything less starts becoming wide angle, anything larger starts compressing the image.  That's not a bad thing, but it's something that you need to be aware of in order to control your images rather than to be controlled by your images.

 If you notice, all the images on the left (again, they were shot using about a 24mm focal length) give the appearance that the rifle has a very long barrel, the muzzle break on the end looks quite large and the scope appears to be very distant from the end.

In portraiture this may result in making a subjects nose (or whatever feature is physically closest to the lens) to appear bigger than it actually is.  If you're photographing someone with a large nose and you're focusing on the face then you might make the nose look even larger than it actually is.

If your sitter wanted to enhance a physical feature by making it appear larger this could play out to your advantage, using a wider angle lens and using an angle where that physical feature is closer to the lens.

 

 With that in mind, if you're working with someone who wants to make a physical feature less noticeable you might in turn consider using a larger focal length (preferably 100mm-200mm).  This can be effective if your sitter has a large nose and is concerned about how large it appears.  A woman who is well endowed and wants to appear...less endowed... may also prefer a larger focal length to be used, because it can help make those closer physical features to appear smaller.


So what's right?  What's the best lens to use?  When it comes to photography if you don't have a camera it doesn't matter what camera is best for a genre if you didn't have a camera there with you to capture the moment.  If you only have one lens, you can work around any shortcomings it may appear to have. If you're working with a wide angle lens and trying to conceal other features simply using a prop with your subject can make all the difference.  If there's a broom stick, baseball bat, pillow, or another prop appropriate to the end-goal of the image that can be used, having your subject hold that object in front of them, hold it to them, etc may be able to help you overcome that wide angle effect.

If you're working with a 70mm-300mm lens you might consider keeping your lens at 70mm and adjusting your own positioning to change the image's crop.  If your sitter wants to enhance physical features then you might consider getting more of a profile for the shot, because shooting along (or across) the subject will show those changes in physical features more even when using a longer lens.