regdo wrote:

> A more simple way to determine what would be your "natural focal length" 
> could be to have an eye looking at something through a reflex camera equiped 
> with a zoom, and the other directly. Zoom in and out so that you cannot see 
> any difference between the images of each eye.
> I did it when I bought mine and arrived at about 50mm.
> Don't know if it's representative, though.

No, that is a totally false method. The reason is that most viewfinders 
don't show the full frame but a cropped portion - 90% of the full frame, 
for example. Also, there are differences in the magnification of the 
viewfinder. Then there is also the fact that focal length alone has 
nothing to do with FOV. 50mm lens on 8x10" large format camera has quite 
a different FOV than the same lens on a small sensor P&S digicam. I 
guess you meant a 35mm film (or "full size" sensor) camera?

IMHO, the whole concept of "normal" is quite misleading as human eye 
doens't have a strict field of view but one that degrades gradually to 
borders. Also the eyes are allways moving. The best bet is to do what Le 
Forgeron said: "My current view on this subject is: the final image 
should cover the same angle when viewed." But I don't understand why 
even that should be a goal. Just see what looks nice and use that...

Severi S.

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